First off, thanks to seraphzero, dvboard and pigeonguided as usual for stepping up in response to the bumps and burps of getting Yggdrasil running. I’ve not cracked him open again since yesterday, though.

Before I go on, I’ll tell the story of the potential problem components.
- The CPU/mobo (Athlon 64 X2 4200+ on a Gigabyte GA-M51GM-S2G) were inherited from brendala’s machine (Synergy) that I’d built for her in late ‘06.
- In late ‘08, I boosted Blastoise to 4GB RAM (in the form of 4 1GB Crucial-brand sticks) and fed my old Patriot-brand 2GB sticks to Synergy since both machines have comparable motherboards and can use the same exact RAM specification (in this case, DDR2-667) since they refused to play nice with the newer Crucial sticks.
- Earlier this year, there was a panic button situation in which her machine stopped POSTing, which ended up with me rebuilding her machine (save for the HDD/optical drives). Ultimately the culprit was the 7600GT, which had blown (its caps were split open and some dust was coming out), but Bren DID get a sweet upgrade out of it AND she got 99% of her data back (minus her wallpaper).

Because in the rebuild process I replaced the CPU/Mobo/RAM, I pocketed the orignal gear, assuming that they were still functional. My bad. >_>;

Here’s what Yggdrasil does when I turn him on:

- Lights turn on
- CPU and case fans spin up
- DVD drive blinks and murmurs like any other
- …that’s it.

Nothing comes up on screen. Yggdrasil’s case has no speaker wiring, so that’s not an option here.

Bad RAM is a possibility (and one I am personally leaning towards, since I encountered this issue shortly after building Tsunami in ‘07… and if I recall correctly, seraphzero actually called this as the culprit when Tsunami stopped POSTing). I’ve attempted booting with the monitor cable on the 9500GT and the onboard video (which I believe has the chip for a GeForce 6100) to rule out a bad video card, but considering that neither gives me a POST this is inconclusive. Is it possible that when the 7600GT blew, it took the motherboard with it? There’s no visible evidence of any damage on the motherboard, but I recall neophoenixte having something similar happen awhile back…

It has been suggested I take the mobo out and attempt an out-of-body boot… unfortunately, cable reach and a couple of other environmental things make this a not-viable option. I only wish I had access to a proper repair station with as little carpet as possible. Blah. At the very least I’ll be picking up a RAM tester, though it kinda bothers me that those things are still necessary. I know there’s no such thing as perfectly manufactured hardware but you would think that we had refined parts production by now to where we would have extremely low first-use failure rates.

Tl;dr version: Yoshi is a bonehead for using inherited hardware without making sure it was actually functional. Woohoo!

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In other geek news… Remember nearly 10 years ago, when there was this badass TV channel called TechTV? And then it got bought and literally EATEN by G4 and, like, over half the TechTV overlords either jumped ship or in some cases even fled to Canada? Welp, certainly this is old news to a lot of the nerds among us, but I am Across’ resident party late-comer in many things. Enter TWiT.tv and it’s pretty much a happy reunion with most of our old TechTV overlords (along with several new people) in weekly podcast form and they have a live video feed which is every bit as amusing, if not moreso, than the old TV channel. :3

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Holy crap this room is freezing. Which is… a good thing, really. I hate summer, so I am happy to have the stupidly hot weather go, even if you’ll soon see me bitch about cold rooms.

Better still, it looks like I may actually be able to shower today without putting my shower plumbing in danger. And this will enable me to get out of the house and deposit my VPI checks. Mother has even suggested a Fry’s raid to scope out replacement parts for Iggy, but I would much rather do it via Amazon (because free shipping and no sales tax make Yoshi’s wallet happy) even if I have to wait a little bit. :P I may, however, burn this Visa gift card I’ve been sitting on since last December on an IHOP raid since it’s too small to be of any use to me elsewhere.

Yeah, they’re colored but they’re all part of a set so I’m slapping WIP on these anyway. Also so Aeth doesn’t have to wait for my lazy bum to wake up so he can loot.

I can churn these out quickly (provided, you know, I’m not interrupted by, oh, mother yanking me to stand by so she can put puppies away so I can hammer her box, only to change her mind after waiting for a couple hours, or other trivial crap). I’m so used to going huge on Ramen though… hm.

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Yay reimbursement check from VPI, and for over $300… which, according to mother, is deducted from the $800 she still owes me. Um… sure. It gets deposited tomorrow anyway.

And, uh, apparently I am to be paid for all the roflcoptery involving Synergy? o.O Yay? I thought going in this was “whatever I front isn’t coming back.”
Of course, I have to hope that mother and the ogre will leave for at least a few hours sometime this week. Pretty please? I’d like to give Synergy back to House Cantlay sometime this century. The presence of a box of spare parts can be easily explained away, but Synergy herself is pretty much the equivalent of a 600-pound gorrilla in my room and while mother is strangely good about not opening my room’s door when it’s closed, sometimes I have to leave it open a crack in case Daisy decides to play/nap in my closet. >_>;;;

This damned machine whose POST errors (as in, I get no POST at all) defy logic…

I’ve been poking around about it, trying to avoid having to RMA the motherboard if I can help it. If you wish to follow along, it’s an XFX nForce 750a.

It’s… possible that there’s a jumper I overlooked. I won’t know until I get the machine “smuggled” back here (as in, transferred while mother is away at a bulldog meetup or something), but still… I’m going to look quite silly if I yank the jumper and I get a freaking POST, but at the same time it’s obviously a good thing since it means I can finally resurrect the machine and pocket the leftovers. :P

Because, you know, I would really hate to have a “1″ in the column of “machines incapable of resurrection” tally. I’ve had a good record thus far in terms of building boxes that don’t die (permanently) and I’d hate to ruin it.

Still, if I’m being foiled by a damned jumper… well, to say the least, XFX is getting beeped on the nose for not clearly marking in their manual “HAY YOU MUST TAKE OFF THIS JUMPER RIGHT HERE OR ELSE NO POST FOR YOU.” Seriously. I know the necessity of being observant, but that’s just absurd. That kind of jumper (which I’m presuming is either a BIOS/CMOS reset or something along those lines) is, like, the equivalent of the “REMOVE BEFORE USING” plastic wrapping that you see on things like printer cartriges, and should clearly be marked as such rather than leave saps like me to bang my head against the desk trying to figure out why I can’t squeeze a POST out of an otherwise-functional box. RAWR.

Anywho…

I really need a restock on my mini-fridge, except lawl transportation issues. Maybe I can try to divert to the market tomorrow after volunteer service. Aw, who am I kidding… can’t leave the Pups of the Apocalypse alone (not even with Evil Stepfather) for too long or BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN. Or so mother claims.

Being a third-rate resident in my own house sucks.

Bren’s box = ACT OF AETH.

Completely stumped.

I have basically rebuilt this machine and I cannot get a bloody POST. Everything is seated and plugged in properly. WHAT GIVES?

And, like, these are perfectly good parts… of course, TigerDirect is all “NO RMA FOR YOU” but I would have pocketed the leftovers anyhow. And cost be damned, this is, like, about pride of workmanship at this point.

So, yes. Act of Aeth.

Um… for the time being, I’ma see about getting an HDD enclosure so I can at least extract the files off the hard drive… and somehow smuggle the guts of Synergy and her failed-resurrection over to my house (probably get them transported while mother’s away at a bulldog meetup) so I can hack away at this without having to cook up excuses to get summoned over here.

Really bizarre stuff, this is. WTF.

Fellow system builders! I require your input.

Synergy (Bren’s machine) refuses to POST. Clearly she’s getting power, since lights and fans are turning on. Apparently over the past several months there were sessions where she wouldn’t POST, but hitting the reset button would make her cooperate… a rarity at first but over time became more frequent. I just heard about THAT today.

At my expense*, I replaced the motherboard (and with it, CPU and RAM), upgraded the power supply (original was a 430W, new one is 550W), switched the RAM slots, switched video cards (both the original and mine are 7600GTs), tried plugging the monitor into every freaking port, tried different monitors. Bad RAM has been ruled out (Bren’s father has a thing for collecting weird tools, lucky me he had one of those memory testers).

This was starting to get a bit silly so I booted up Dinah to google and such. Poked seraphzero and pigeonguided for second and third opinions. Attempting a different outlet to rule out bad wiring on that particular source = fail, no POST.

It’s, lke… GRR, there should be nothing preventing this freaking box from just POSTing. That’s all I want, just a POST, because if I can get that far, everything after is easy or at the least much more manageable.

Could it be as Pigeon suggested, that this could very well be a case of, well, something gone bad in the case wiring and I need to literally replace the box? (oh lawd, bad pun alert.) I mean, frontside case wiring doesn’t look too stable as is… it could be something got bent or whatnot enough, but… man, I’m going to feel a bit silly if this IS the case. (pun! again!)

Or, mayhaps… this is all really an Act of Aeth?

* Yeah, I shelled out for the parts. Service plan? I’m the freaking system builder, I AM the service plan. And, for the billionth time, I’d much rather spend my monies on making sure House Cantlay has usable computers and such, than to support mother’s absurd puppy habit, because at least House Cantlay’s residents aren’t going to be a bunch of drama queens if something goes bad, unlike mother who would (and HAS) declare me WORST PERSON IN THE WOOOOOOORLD over something like bad RAM. Seriousy. If I did nothing to help while their central desktop machine was down, I think my conscience would try to butcher me in my sleep or something. Besides, I get to pocket all the extra salvageable parts AND I get free food and the illusion that I have semi-normal parents for a few hours. So, it’s worth it. >_>;

A Yoshi is tired and maybe a little annoyed. Perhaps I shall bum around with Chrono Trigger DS until I fall asleep or something.