Here is the file I converted to MP3. Morgan Freeman: "They did not in fact convert it to MP3." Tech Support |
- Here is the file I converted to MP3. Morgan Freeman: "They did not in fact convert it to MP3."
- The Agency: Part 7 - Farewell, Adieu, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye
- The odyssey of my first IT job at a startup.
- Why do ISPs have to be so bad at their jobs?
- Backups are a good thing, right? RIGHT?!
- At this point the universe is just screwing with me...
| Here is the file I converted to MP3. Morgan Freeman: "They did not in fact convert it to MP3." Posted: 06 Feb 2022 03:40 PM PST I have worked in the Creative Services department at a large law firm for over 20 years now. We have gotten the reputation for taking any kind of audio or video format both physical and digital and make it useable. 1" video tape on a spool? I know a guy in the metro area who can do that. U Matic tape, I have a deck in the back. Friday, Word Processing says they received some large MP3 files from outside the firm that will not load into their dictation software. The things are well over a GB which is pretty hefty for a mere MP3. I try numerous programs and get nothing. I then try VLC player. I comes up as video but no audio. I think for a minute, "no, it can't be?" I change the extension from MP3 to MP4 they play fine. Turns out someone thought they could convert an MP4 to an MP3 just by changing the file extension. I mean that is how that works right? [link] [comments] |
| The Agency: Part 7 - Farewell, Adieu, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye Posted: 06 Feb 2022 06:04 PM PST Hello everyone! This is the next-to-last story in the saga of my time at $Agency, where it all ends. All of this is from the best of my memory along with some personal records, but ultimately it is how I remember things. There certainly can be some inaccuracies. Also, I don't give permission for anyone else to use this. TL/DR: Yeah, I don't do that. Enjoy the story :) Again, for context, I am not in IT; rather, I'm a GIS (Geographic Information Systems) professional. This particular world is quite small, so I will do what I can to properly anonymize my tale. For reference, during the course of these stories I was employed at a research agency affiliated with a major university. Here is my Dramatis Personae:
Last time we left off, I had just gone on paternity leave to help care for my newborn daughter. Her birth galvanized me to do my best and try to improve myself and my career. Today, we'll see how all that panned out. No spoilers but the title might just give everything away :) I returned back to work in the early part of the new year and I hit the ground running. Not only was I inspired to do my best thanks to the new addition to my family, I was also actually well-rested and relaxed from the paternity leave. Let that sink in. Caring for a newborn is no joke - kudos to those of you that have done it more than once. In my case, compared to the insanity of $Agency, caring for my infant daughter had been a literal cakewalk, as if I'd taken a vacation. Very little can display how stressful a job can be more than this - I should have taken this revelation more to heart, honestly. Anyways, within a week of me coming back, I engineered a meeting with all my bosses ($DragonLady, $MrScott, and $AwesomeBoss) to determine what I'd need to do to advance myself at $Agency. One thing was stacked pretty heavily against me - I did not have a Master's Degree or higher. Because of this beauteous thing known as academic stratification, not having that degree would severely hamper my promotion changes (only those with higher degrees can enter the upper echelons/ivory towers of academia). However, the meeting did have some promising results. We talked about industry certifications. $MrScott told me that if I was able to get one of the high-profile certs, this could be used in lieu of a higher degree when determining advancement. I also let them know that I had a bunch of cartographic design ideas that I wanted to try out. And I also planned on taking a ton of continuing education courses through the year. It was my hope to have all this done by the time my contract renewal came up. I left the meeting ready to jump right into it. Lock and load, baby! As an aside, at the same time as I had this meeting, I also requested some time off for a vacation during the summer. It would be the first time we'd taken our little one anywhere. I was honestly very excited about it. Knowing how difficult it had been to secure time off in the past, I submitted this request about six months early. Certainly that would be enough time, right? *nervous chuckle* From here, I got started on my career plan. The most difficult thing to attain was the professional certification - it will remain unnamed, but that I think most GIS Professionals are aware of it ;) This certification was a beast, but it was (and remains) probably the highest profile one in the industry. Two parts gave me immense pause - an element called "Contributions to the Profession," and the certification examination. Let's talk about the contribution to the profession. Whenever applying for this certification, you are required to obtain a number of "credits" worth of activities that serve to better the GIS field itself, such as volunteer work, service in GIS organizations, presentations, publications, mentoring other GIS professionals, etc. Honestly, I think it's kind of a cool concept. And for most folks involved in GIS, this usually shouldn't be too big of a deal. For me, though, there was a major problem here. Remember how I previously said that $DragonLady kept tight reins on our professional development? This meant that none of the research that went out from $Agency had any of our names on them. We couldn't make presentations at any industry events nor could we even attend them. Around three quarters of possible types of contribution credits were unavailable to me. Well... sh\t*. Enter $AwesomeRed, once again in the clutch. As it turned out, she was eyeing this particular certification too. We decided to team up together to get all the contribution credits we needed (since it was proving exceptionally difficult to do so by ourselves). At the time, $AwesomeRed happened to be participating in a particular User Group on campus. The members were very interested in using GIS. They loved hearing about tips and techniques from folks that actually worked in the profession. So I started going to the meetings along with her. Eventually, we decided that we'd host a workshop for the group, showing them some basic things about how to use GIS, where they could get spatial data, and fielding some general questions. It would gain us some goodwill and give us huge points towards our contributions credits. Everybody wins, right? Unfortunately, no. $DragonLady got wind of what we were doing. She immediately called a meeting with the two of us. She was very upset that we had done this without informing her. Why? What was going on? Well, it turns out that the User Group organizer just so happened to have reached out to $DragonLady the previous year. She wanted to see if $Agency could spare some of their GIS staff to give some demonstrations and presentations to the User Group - basically exactly what we were planning to do. $DragonLady had told her no. All of a sudden, two employees of $DragonLady's agency just randomly showed up at the group's meetings and were willing to do exactly what the organizer had requested in the first place. The organizer was puzzled and upset. What the h*ll? Why hadn't $DragonLady provided this when first asked? Well, $DragonLady was now very unhappy with us, since we'd "undermined her authority" and basically outright proven to the rest of campus that she wasn't willing to play nice with other people. Y'know, if you don't act sh*tty, you won't be surprised by someone bringing attention to your sh*ttiness. Anyways, we had already agreed to give this workshop. We'd even written everything! Eventually, $DragonLady conceded. She said we could do this on the condition that the workshop was done "under $Agency's aegis" and that she would be able to review our presentation materials beforehand. In retrospect, we didn't need to agree to this at all. This was something that we had agreed to do, on our own laurels and initiative. However, I was still trying to get PROMOTED at $Agency, not fired, so I didn't say anything further about it. I don't recall $AwesomeRed being particularly impressed with $DragonLady after this, however. Oh, and also, even though we provided $DragonLady with our presentation materials, she never actually read them. Sounds about right. Anyways, we gave our workshop about a month later. It went exceptionally well. We were both able to use it as a contribution, and it gave me everything I needed for the certification! Hooray! Unfortunately, due to the fallout between $DragonLady and the now-very-pissed-off leadership of the User Group, we were asked not to participate in it anymore. Sucks, but what can you do :/ Now let's talk about the certification exam. I'm sure that some GIS professionals might remember, but when the exam for this particular cert was first put in place, the folks that did so had a rather... ridiculous approach. There may be a better way of saying this, but this seems apt. There were no practice or study materials; the certification institute's official policy was "everything we needed to know, we would have encountered through the course of our professional experience." How about I kick you in the nuts and then put that on the exam? That's an experience. Anyways, the only document they provided as a resource was a general concepts reference that was like 200 pages long and didn't go into detail on any particular point. Jesus. One thing they mentioned was of "high importance" on the exam was programming, software development, and general IT procedures. As such, I started studying this stuff intensively. Y'all, I had worked in GIS for about 8 years by that point. I'd never heard of about 90% of the things mentioned in the IT sections of the general concepts document. The first time I ever heard of the Agile and Waterfall methods was while studying for the presumably "GIS-based" exam. I thought "Tier 1", "Tier 2", etc, referred to ground reference in cartographic design (i.e. "Tier 1" is what your eye is drawn to first, "Tier 2" is what your eye is drawn to second, etc). Literally no offense to you proper tech support folks - I respect you all greatly, and if I didn't, I wouldn't take such delight in your stories and community here - but the IT and tech concepts incorporated into this exam were so far removed from what people actually use in GIS that it was literally laughable. The delusions of a bunch of theoreticians that have so little connection to the day-to-day application of GIS that they don't realize how out-of-touch they are. I studied for this stupid test for three months. I studied the single resource I was given. I reread textbooks from college. I read a TON of IT publications, trying to learn terminology and usage. Seriously, I learned more about IT and tech support studying for this GIS test than from anything else I'd ever done. Thankfully, a bunch of angels here on Reddit (who had taken the exam already) put together some study guides with questions they'd been asked and concepts they saw on the test. If any of you are reading this now, I thank you from the bottom of my heart! After studying all that I could, I went to the testing center to take this exam. It took about three hours, and when I finished, the lady running the examinations smiled at me and said that I had passed. My jaw dropped. This was it! I had completed the certification! Woohoo!!! I got all my things together and prepared for my contract review to take place shortly after I passed the test. I was so excited! I'd done everything I promised. I'd taken a ton of continuing education classes, I'd built my mapbook of a bunch of new cartographic techniques, and best yet, I'd gotten this incredibly difficult certification! I was on cloud nine heading into the review. Apparently this must have offended $DragonLady and $MrScott, as they proceeded to pull out the anti-aircraft guns during the meeting and shot me out of the sky. After laying out all that I had done, they told me that it wasn't nearly enough to get a promotion or to be put into a leadership role. The absolute worst thing said during the meeting came from $MrScott. I'm not sure if this is exactly what was said, but the gist is as follows:
Y'all... this was the most insulting, degrading thing that anyone has ever said to me in a professional context. I wanted to yell at him, to punch him, to well up right there, but I held myself. This crap, coming from a man that was two software suites behind the current technology being used in the profession? That didn't seem capable of learning a new database architecture? Who probably didn't know what 90% of the GIS functions I used on a daily basis actually did? Just who the f*ck is an expert to you? Because your stupid a$$ certainly isn't one!!! GRAAH! I was so mad. What made it worse was that I did everything I'd agreed to do in our meeting months ago, where I felt that I'd been promised an advancement in my career, yet absolutely nothing was going to be done. And this wasn't all. After some half-hearted pleasantries at the end of the meeting, $DragonLady passed over my new contract. I had a 2% raise, the state-mandated minimum. I was crushed. I just sort of looked at it, nodded, folded it, and stood up to head out. As I was walking out the door, $DragonLady called to me.
Remember the vacation I'd requested six months ago? I was supposed to leave that Friday. Three days away. Why don't you just kick me in the face while I'm down? AAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!! I went back to my office and slumped down at my computer, more upset than I could remember being in recent memory. I had to send a text to my wife to let her know that I would only be able to make it to our vacation on the two bookend weekends. I took a few minutes to compose myself, then logged back into my computer. And immediately started looking for another job. Let me just say that I was terrified as I began this. I didn't know what $DragonLady would do if she found out I was looking for something else - would she just have me walked out? Dealing with her when she was upset was a nightmare, after all. And honestly there were other things - all kinds of uncertainties flooded my head. What if there wasn't something available that would give me a reasonable income, at or above what I was getting paid right now? What if the things that $MrScott had said in the meeting were right - that I really wasn't an expert in this field, that I just didn't have what it took to be a decent GIS analyst, that I wouldn't be able to make it anywhere else? I'll admit that while I did my best to remain confident, I was very unsure of myself as I started down this uncertain road. But I was so tired of getting kicked in the teeth. It was enough to summon my courage to try. I quickly found a couple of things that looked promising, however. I updated my resume and reached out to some old supervisors to make sure they'd give me a good reference (including $FTW). After about a week, I approached $AwesomeBoss as well. I told her that I was looking for something new. She understood. I asked her if she'd mind if I listed her as my supervisor and a reference, and she said that would be fine. She also told me that she would recommend I told $DragonLady that I was looking for something new - if I was honest with her, it was possible that $DragonLady would assist (or would at least not get super-angry for me not telling her). I honestly trusted $AwesomeBoss so I told her I'd think about it. However, I also feel like this was something that was specific to my own circumstances - and I do not recommend doing this for most other folks out there. A week later, I requested a meeting with $DragonLady. In that meeting, I told her that I was looking for a new job. She said that she had seen "a change in my demeanor" and expected as much. She made a couple of comments to try and keep me here - mostly fear-based stuff, which was kind of awful in retrospect. She told me that I'd increased my income here fairly rapidly and that I couldn't expect that at another place. She also said that positions in the public system were limited by pay bands, and I couldn't expect something much beyond what I was getting already. I said fine. Eventually, she gave up. I said I'd be in contact with her if anything changed. Over the course of the following week, I had three interviews. Two of them I was able to do on my lunch breaks; the other I needed some time off, so $AwesomeBoss let me go and covered for me. Each of the three gave me an offer :D The last interview was at a local municipality. They didn't have any real GIS capabilities at the time and they were looking to build some. I liked the bosses - they seemed like very chill, down-to-earth people. Very easy to work for and work with. But the best thing was the pay. I told them going into the meeting that I wanted a pay rate higher than what they were offering. They were ok with that and we went through the interview. The next day, the HR Director from the municipality called me. They met all my pay demands and she offered me the job! I tried to keep my voice in check, but I was pretty much jumping up and down in joy while I took that call! Honestly, this was such a validation of my skills, everyone. I' had managed to get three offers - not interviews, offers - within a month of my job search! All of them provided higher rates of pay. I was able to pick and choose the job that I wanted, not take whatever was available. I don't think anything could have been a bigger middle finger to the attitudes that $MrScott and $DragonLady had than this. I told all three offers to let me wait until the following Friday to decide. I spoke to my wife; we liked the municipality the best. The first thing I did when I got to "work" that Friday was call the HR Director at the municipality and accept the job. I told her that I wanted a month's notice to wrap up things here. She said that would be fine. I then printed out my letter of resignation and the offer letter I'd been given. I stopped by both $AwesomeBoss and $AwesomeRed on the way to $DragonLady's office to let them know; both of them hugged me. I then walked into $DragonLady's office and said I needed to speak with her as it was very important. She stopped what she was doing and turned to me with a rather incredulous look - remember, this was only a little more than a week after I'd told her I was looking for something new, and less than a month after I started looking altogether. I laid the paperwork on table. She sat there and looked at it for a couple of moments. When she looked up, she gave me a counter-offer, saying she'd been putting the paperwork together to get me another pay adjustment based on my new credentials. The new offer was less than I'd be making at the municipality - I would have said no just based on that. But instead, what I said to her was this:
She gave me a wry smile, then said, "Well then, I guess that's it." We then got everything ready for me to leave. I had requested a month's notice since I was so heavily involved in so many things, but because I had so much leave time stored up, $DragonLady wanted me to use some of it before I left. I actually only worked about two more weeks (then had a two week vacation :D ). And I still had two months of leave paid out to me once I quit. In my final days there, I wrote down all of the processes I could think of, spoke to all my colleagues and coworkers to make sure they understood them, and gave them a contact number in case they couldn't figure everything out. Two days before my last day, they held a party for me - ironically, at the same restaurant that $BadMike had his going-away farce. I had made a ton of friends at $Agency, many of whom I still keep in contact with today, so it was very bittersweet. Lots of hugs and the manliest tears ever shed :) I told all my coworkers that I would miss them - because I actually would - and made sure to spend some time with $AwesomeRed, $AwesomeBoss, and many of my other colleagues to let them know how much they meant to me. Despite all the chaos, $Agency had been such a profound part of my life. During my tenure, I had gotten engaged and then married, bought a house, and become a father. I had learned all the foundational things I'd need for my career and achieved the highest certification in the industry. I had also slept on a sleeping back in my office, worked through the night numerous times, been on the verge of tears due to frustration, and dealt with incompetence, laziness, and stupidity the likes of which I had never thought could exist. This job had proven to be simultaneously the best and worst experience of my life. On my last day, I brought my daughter with me. We said our final goodbyes to everyone. I cleaned out my office. I logged out of my computer and turned everything in. At the end of the day, I told my daughter, "Say goodbye to $Agency, sweetheart." She cooed and grabbed my finger. And then I walked out of those doors for the last time, to my next great adventure. :) I hope you all have enjoyed these stories. And you may be wondering what happened at $Agency after I departed. Well, I still have one last tale - an epilogue for you. But that will have to wait until tomorrow :) Thanks for reading, everyone! Thanks for everything, folks! Here are the other parts to the Agency series: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Here are some of my other stories on TFTS if you're interested: A Symphony of Fail Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 [link] [comments] |
| The odyssey of my first IT job at a startup. Posted: 07 Feb 2022 12:53 AM PST So this story goes back to my first job out of college. (not counting theme park ride operator) I get hired on to be the "IT Guy" for a startup. Brand spanking new, 110% optimism, 33% dreams, and just enough BS to make the wheels spin. I show up on the first day and the founder shows up 5 minutes after me with the landlord and the landlord gives him the key and shakes his hand. I check the date on my watch and what do you know.. it's the first of the month. "What's going on?" "Oh don't worry, first day in the office, the furniture and computers are being delivered this morning than we can start setting up computers and everything" "OK" BEST DAY EVER The founder is actually a hardware engineer and just hired me because his wife knows that he has too much on his plate to do all the IT stuff himself. So he opted to hire a cheap fresh IT guy because.. I'm cheap, and if anything pops up I can't handle he will still be there. Let's be honest, 99% of IT is shit that we could have handled in highschool, it's that 1% that takes someone who knows what they are doing. A couple years roll past and the founders McGuffin 9,000 is working, we score a government contract and use the McGuffins they made to collect data (not being more specific than that) So they have these scientist guys out in the field collecting data on their first ever contract. First day out they go back to their hotel to upload the data and go to bed. 7:00 am rolls around and they are at 7% transferred. At this rate it will take over a week to upload every days worth of data The founder/owner calls a meeting and drags everyone in. He has the best possible internet that can possibly be purchased, he's panicking... because no one ever thought to figure out how the data they actually collected can be moved. To put into perspective how much data needed moved on a daily basis, it's more data than my computer I owned at the time could store, compared to the home PC I have today it's a very sizable chunk of the hard drive. And the servers they had were extremely hard drive heavy. That's coming from an IT guy that they had large amounts of storage. I'm at a total loss, I was completely in over my head, and no ideas whatsoever on how to solve this problem. We are all at a loss and the receptionist who is fresh out of highschool and obviously hired for her "extensive communication assets" holds up her hand while the rest of us are standing around like idiots. "Can we overnight hard drives with UPS or something?" I give that girl credit where credit is due. To this day I have yet to come up with a better solution given the limitations of internet upload speeds. The next best solution was to rent a property and get a server grade internet connection hooked in, then have the field scientists sleep there. Ultimately, Fedex was chosen as the least terrible option. So that's the solution... we directed the field scientist guys to sit around for a day to get new hard drives shipped in so they can copy the data, and send out another copy by Fedex to the office. And we discovered that the fastest way to transfer large amounts of data from an Oklahoma Holliday Inn was to... to ship a box of hard drives across the country. Thus started the most surreal data movement odyssey ever. And the solution was to have enough back work to keep the office guys busy going over the data in case of bad weather or shipping issues caused problems. We switched to 3 day shipping to save money and kept a 1 week backlog of unprocessed data, to create a buffer so the processing team at the office wouldn't be stuck with nothing to do if the mail came late or got lost, or the field team got rained out. It even smoothed out one of the problems that didn't have a solution, which was what does the office staff do the day after a bad weather day in the field? We ended up with an ungodly amount of drives floating around the country, about 95% made it through the mail with the data intact. But that was planned for. Our founder succeeded in his dream of selling his startup to a competitor for a huge pile of money and he lived happily ever after with a retired model and a Ferrari. I myself got a letter of recommendation and went on unemployment before moving back in with my parents, thus my plan to escape Florida ended in total failure. Fuck the 2008 economic crisis. And no.. I didn't get any stock options, just a couple of shirts for a now defunct company. When he started discussing pay I emphatically agreed to "Whatever you think is fair sir". Could I have gotten 2% of a metric shit-ton of money? I doubt it.. that bastard was smart enough to hire green employees when possible. [link] [comments] |
| Why do ISPs have to be so bad at their jobs? Posted: 06 Feb 2022 10:47 AM PST So, I'm the person who takes care of most of the tech things at my small-town church. Sometime mid-late last year we decided to upgrade our network, as we weren't going to stop streaming our services anytime soon, and the old setup was pretty trash (Spectrum-provided modem/router/WiFi combo thing in the office and a secondary home WiFi router in the tech booth acting as a access point and switch). In late December, we finally pulled the trigger and did the network upgrades. Me and the trustee who's name is on the internet plan spent most of an afternoon running Ethernet and installing and configuring the new system that I designed, made up of Aruba Instant On switches and access points and a Protectli Vault running pfSense as our central router/firewall. During this process we had to go through a bunch of customer support misery to get them to put the modem/WiFi router into bridge mode so it was just a modem. A week or so ago, the aforementioned trustee and I decided to upgrade our internet service package to the next level up, mostly so that we had reasonable bandwidth headroom for our livestream. This involved Spectrum coming to replace the modem, which happened while I was at my day job. When I was checking it out this morning, I found that Spectrum had put one of their own WiFi routers in between the new modem and our pfSense router, rendering our whole network double NATed because they apparently weren't aware that we didn't need routing or WiFi from them. I really hate dealing with ISPs. [link] [comments] |
| Backups are a good thing, right? RIGHT?! Posted: 06 Feb 2022 06:24 PM PST Hey there friends, long time lurker, first time poster here. Since I'm a chemist, this is most likely going to be my only TFTS post. This all happened nearly ten years ago. Fresh out of college, I was working at an environmental chem firm for the volatiles department. Since we were testing for things that are normally gasses, we had a few special things about our department. Namely, our own room with overpressure. What that meant for us was that 30ish instruments running 24/7 are loud, and you get used to a certain level of background noise. Our tech guy, Corey (name changed) was honestly great. Low ticket times, and he would be more than happy to explain a few things while he worked. He also religiously backed up our data. I don't remember if it was weekly or monthly, just that the backup happened Friday at midnight. On to the tale! Being out of college, I was fine working a Tuesday through Saturday morning shift. One fateful Saturday I came in and remember thinking, "huh, kinda quiet. Maybe everyone's stuff got done early." It wasn't supposed to happen, but if its a slow day you can't help it. So I get started with the process. Print out last night's data, check the instruments. Except, instrument one is stopped. No errors, just sitting there silently. Ok, this happens sometimes. Maybe the robotic arm got out of alignment or something. I pick up the very light pile of data and look where it stopped. Huh. Last run injected at 11:55 pm. Check instrument two. Its also stopped. Chances of both instruments stopping? Low. Not zero, but less than 10%. Then it hits me. The silence is now much more ominous. Start checking the nearest instruments. Stopped. All of them. Entire department stopped with the last injections between 11:45 and midnight. Aha! A clue! But first, lets test. Start instrument, run blank. Error: method no longer exists or has moved. Stare at screen. Stare. Shove down bubbling panic, try a different method, I have three I can use. Same error message. Ok, this is obviously a department wide issue as the same error is on all the machines. Time to call in IT. I really can't blame Corey for not answering the phone at 7 am on a Saturday. Leave a message, all instruments down, call back immediately please. I take fifteen minutes to do some data work, then call back. Nothing. Same message. Repeat five minutes later, getting more nervous as there isn't anything I can get done. Realize I have to kick this one up the chain. Sorry Corey, three calls in a half hour from the company phone line should have been a clue. Call my boss. No answer, leave a message. Wait five. Call bosses boss. No answer, leave a message. Wait five minutes. Nothing. At this point, I'm glad I didn't eat breakfast. Because having worked here less than six months, I now need to call and wake the Lab Director up on a Saturday. Make the call, he answers immediately and doesn't sound drowsy. Fill him in, he reassures me he will handle it. Half hour later, Corey pops his head in and asks what instruments need started first. I let him know, and within ten minutes I'm back at work. Aftermath. Once I got caught up and saw Corey wasn't busy, I asked him what happened, just in case it happened again. [link] [comments] |
| At this point the universe is just screwing with me... Posted: 06 Feb 2022 05:09 AM PST UPDATE: Well, I think I have an idea of what it is. The ATX 12V specification requires that the PS-ON connector in the 24-pin plug has a voltage that's slightly higher than 0.8V. When you engage PS-ON, it increases the resistance in the wire and drops the voltage, turning the power supply on. What I think the issue might be is that the PS-ON resistance is too high to kick the motherboard on, and the problem is related to how it grounds with the case and/or the PSU when not in a case. And the only thing I can think of that causes that kind of damage is a power surge. The way it works is that if the resistance drops from high to low (closing the circuit briefly), the PSU turns on and powers up the rest of the system. In reverse, activating the switch and closing the circuit again, resistance jumps up and the power supply shuts off if that resistance is maintained. It makes sense too. If there's too much resistance the system won't turn on and I'll get the intermittent behaviour depending on whether the board has been completely drained or if there's still a charge in the capacitors. Probing with a multimeter will confirm the diagnosis. In any case, the motherboard will need replacing. First post here, been lurking for years. I'm a qualified network engineer. I've worked in the IT industry for over a decade, twice in desktop/server technician roles, on-call support, hardware journalism, yadda yadda. I need to vent. I'm not stumped. I know there's an issue with the motherboard in the computer that I'm currently fixing. But for the love of all that is holy, this thing is possessed with an attitude that could be described as "aggressively childish". I built a computer for a customer. It's a low-end system with an Athlon 200GE, 8GB DDR4, 240GB M.2 SSD, etc. It only does productivity tasks and Stardew Valley. This customer is perfectly capable of using technology and she always calls me first before moving the system, swapping cables, or when there's something funky. I curated my customers such that none of them are problem children. Out of the blue, she calls and tells me the computer won't switch on. I get there and sure enough, it doesn't turn on. It's not a cabling issue, there's power to the wall, the power switch is known to be good. I take it back and test it myself, and it still won't turn on. I unplug things and disconnect hardware and remove the other DIMM. It still doesn't turn on. I take the board and power supply out of the case and test it on a box, and it turns on. Back in the case, problem. Out the case, no problem. I tested with another case and I verified that the board won't turn on when it's inside any of the cases I tested. The case itself passes inspection for possible shorts and a faulty switch - nothing, nada, zilch. So I RMA the board and tell the supplier that it might work outside the case, but that there appears to be a problem when it's inside a chassis. They agree to test it for me. Wouldn't you know it, the bastard works just fine in all scenarios, even extended benchmarking and long periods of being idle or in sleep mode inside a case, on a test bench, and the motherboard box. I got the board back on Saturday and put the CPU and RAM in. Hooked up a known good PSU. It doesn't start. I did several component swaps to check what the cause could be, but nothing worked. Just an hour ago I assembled the system to take it to a computer shop for a second opinion, because there's clearly something wrong with the setup but I can't pinpoint it. I know what the symptoms are, but the cause eludes me. Always get a second pair of eyes on a problem when you can't figure it out. The stupid thing starts up on the first try after putting it back into the original chassis. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk titled "I hate computers and printers". We'll probably replace the motherboard. [link] [comments] |
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