4 thoughts on “Computer Problem Update”

  1. The BIOS settings could be corrupted somehow. In that case you can clear the BIOS settings via the CMOS RAM reset jumper on your motherboard (read the motherboard manual for this), or if it uses a removable backup battery, you can take the battery off for like a minute.

  2. Back in the day, I was a field service engineer for McDonnel-Douglas, in LGB. This was when the DC-9 Super 80 was new and shiny, and KC-10’s were being designed….

    The DC-10 would have a problem with the DFDC (digital flight data computer) failing. There were two of them, both were required for flight release, and there was a switch on the nose gear strut that would switch the primary from one to the other on each landing (so that they’d both wear out at the same time……)

    Anyway, in preflight the crew would initiate a BITE of the computers and one would fail – no go for release. Bad news if the plane, loaded with passengers, was not at home station. Even more frustrating, once on the bench they would test OK.

    It turns out that the fix was easy enough: Pull both DFDCs (they were identical) and swap their locations in the racks and reinstall. Both would BITE test OK. We postulated that during flight a connector would vibrate to the point where it was just barely making contact, and just swapping them reseated the pins.

    So it is, I’ve found with computers. Sometimes they just need to be reseated.

    And if that doesn’t work, I have a big orange dead-blow hammer….

  3. My thoughts exactly John. There are two problems here, the BIOS and the memory. It is often best to leave well enough alone but switching the memory sticks back to their original position would give a nice data point.

    And then again it is often better to leave well enough alone. In the long run though that will usually come up and bite you. If you do switch and get a failure it could be because of a bad memory location that is always used on power up by a high memory bus driver. I had it happen to me.

  4. I should have made myself clearer. You may have only a bios problem now. Re-seating the memory may have taken care of the other prob. Though by running Linux you are sure to find some more. I run Ubuntu on one of my machines just to say I can. I will be rewarded in heaven for this.

    When you go to Fedora 12 things will change, LOL.

Comments are closed.