4 ms·

One of my computers has been aptly named 'THESEUS' due to what was replaced on it. By the time it was repaired to an acceptable level, the only original compone

One of my computers has been aptly named 'THESEUS' due to what was replaced on it. By the time it was repaired to an acceptable level, the only original component remaining was the chassis.

jiggawatts 6y ago
Heh... that reminds me of my favourite troubleshooting story! We had a customer with regularly failing tape backups. CRC errors, verify pass failures, even failed writes, and so forth. We replaced the tapes with new ones. Same issues. We replaced the tape drive with a new one. Still the same problems. We replaced the internal ribbon cable and the SCSI controller. No luck. Firmware flashed everything. Didn't help. New server chassis, wiped the OS and reinstalled everything from scratch. Changed the backup software just in case. The backups still failed! Literally no part was the same. I went on site to start looking into things like the power cables, the UPS, or vibration issues. Basically were getting desperate and grasping at straws. I was sitting down in an office, casually chatting with the IT guy while we were waiting for 5pm so we could reboot the server. He's leaning back in is office chair, and he casually picks up one of the tape cartridges and throws it up in the air and then catches it before it hits the ground. Just playing. Over and over. I asked him if he does that a lot. "Yes, it's fun!" he answered. ಠ_ಠ
- jagannathtech 6y ago
  Many would have hit the ground too! I'm twitching...
- asmosoinio 6y ago
  That is quite the story! Sounds like a very large amount of resources spent on that case. What was your companys role? Backup services/devices?
  - jiggawatts 6y ago
    This was general IT consulting back in the early 2000s. The customer was small, they only had three tower servers and only one had a tape drive.
JackeJR 6y ago
Reminds me of the saying, "I have used this broom for 20 years. I only needed to change the broom head 20 times and the broom stick 10 times.".
- comprev 6y ago
  Trigger's broom scene from Only Fools And Horses. Classic British comedy
frogpelt 6y ago
I was troubleshooting a computer once that would randomly shut off during boot and, one component at a time, I replaced everything on it including the motherboard to no avail. Finally I took all the parts out of the original computer and put them in a different chassis and it worked! Put them back in the old chassis and back to the old problem. Eventually I noticed that there was an extra stand-off in the first computer case and it was shorting out the motherboard. It was literally the chassis causing the problem.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Put in an extra standoff on my very first PC build, and it wouldn't boot until I found and removed it.
- rswail 6y ago
  Back in the 90s we had a faulty DELL server that someone decided needed to have its BIOS upgraded. They didn't read the specs and upgraded to a BIOS not supported by the CPU. Motherboard is bricked. Ring DELL for support. After going through the rigmarole of explaining what had happened and that we had a bricked motherboard, the person on the phone said "Have you tried taking out the CPU and rebooting?" To avoid further delay in getting a replacement sent (we had 4 hour on-site at the time), we went through the motions. Not surprisingly, the motherboard was substantially bricked without a CPU. The DELL engineer that came on-site was suitably amused.
  - Corrado 6y ago
    My neighbour's computer stopped working after a lightning storm and asked me to take a look at it. It wouldn't boot so I started taking things out of it (hard drive, video card, modem, etc.) and trying again. Nothing worked. Finally, I removed the processor from the motherboard, looked at it, and reinstalled it. The computer booted right up and never had another problem. Weird.

One of my computers has been aptly named 'THESEUS' due to what was replaced on it. By the time it was repaired to an acceptable level, the only original component remaining was the chassis.

jiggawatts 6y ago

Heh... that reminds me of my favourite troubleshooting story! We had a customer with regularly failing tape backups. CRC errors, verify pass failures, even failed writes, and so forth. We replaced the tapes with new ones. Same issues. We replaced the tape drive with a new one. Still the same problems. We replaced the internal ribbon cable and the SCSI controller. No luck. Firmware flashed everything. Didn't help. New server chassis, wiped the OS and reinstalled everything from scratch. Changed the backup software just in case. The backups still failed! Literally no part was the same. I went on site to start looking into things like the power cables, the UPS, or vibration issues. Basically were getting desperate and grasping at straws. I was sitting down in an office, casually chatting with the IT guy while we were waiting for 5pm so we could reboot the server. He's leaning back in is office chair, and he casually picks up one of the tape cartridges and throws it up in the air and then catches it before it hits the ground. Just playing. Over and over. I asked him if he does that a lot. "Yes, it's fun!" he answered. ಠ_ಠ

jagannathtech 6y ago
Many would have hit the ground too! I'm twitching...
asmosoinio 6y ago
That is quite the story! Sounds like a very large amount of resources spent on that case. What was your companys role? Backup services/devices?
- jiggawatts 6y ago
  This was general IT consulting back in the early 2000s. The customer was small, they only had three tower servers and only one had a tape drive.

JackeJR 6y ago

Reminds me of the saying, "I have used this broom for 20 years. I only needed to change the broom head 20 times and the broom stick 10 times.".

comprev 6y ago
Trigger's broom scene from Only Fools And Horses. Classic British comedy

frogpelt 6y ago

I was troubleshooting a computer once that would randomly shut off during boot and, one component at a time, I replaced everything on it including the motherboard to no avail. Finally I took all the parts out of the original computer and put them in a different chassis and it worked! Put them back in the old chassis and back to the old problem. Eventually I noticed that there was an extra stand-off in the first computer case and it was shorting out the motherboard. It was literally the chassis causing the problem.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Put in an extra standoff on my very first PC build, and it wouldn't boot until I found and removed it.
rswail 6y ago
Back in the 90s we had a faulty DELL server that someone decided needed to have its BIOS upgraded. They didn't read the specs and upgraded to a BIOS not supported by the CPU. Motherboard is bricked. Ring DELL for support. After going through the rigmarole of explaining what had happened and that we had a bricked motherboard, the person on the phone said "Have you tried taking out the CPU and rebooting?" To avoid further delay in getting a replacement sent (we had 4 hour on-site at the time), we went through the motions. Not surprisingly, the motherboard was substantially bricked without a CPU. The DELL engineer that came on-site was suitably amused.
- Corrado 6y ago
  My neighbour's computer stopped working after a lightning storm and asked me to take a look at it. It wouldn't boot so I started taking things out of it (hard drive, video card, modem, etc.) and trying again. Nothing worked. Finally, I removed the processor from the motherboard, looked at it, and reinstalled it. The computer booted right up and never had another problem. Weird.