Date   : Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:03:12 +0100
From   : pete@... (Pete Turnbull)
Subject: Only one beep

On 26/06/2009 16:04, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
> In article <98922.66086.qm@...>, F. Haroon
> <haroonnet2002@...> writes
> 
>> It could be that the dust has collected on the 
>> motherboard and caused some short circuit somewhere.
> 
> Not seen inside any PCs or servers have you?

LOL!   The least favoured job around here is recovering and 
reconfiguring PCs that have been in student classrooms for two or three 
years.  Those who know about such things won't want me to be graphic 
here; those who haven't had the experience don't need to know ;-)

I have once had to deal with a piece of kit that had actually stopped 
because of dust.  When I worked for a maintenance company I once got 
called out to a hotel whose telephone billing and reception system had 
stopped just after breakfast.  With hordes of customers trying to check 
out, they were a bit harassed.  To cut a long story short, when I opened 
the case of this (silent, which was unusual) PDP-11, I found what looked 
like a grey concrete block instead of the set of circuit boards I 
expected.  It was "a bit warm" as well.  Two vacuum cleaners later 
(well, one but we had to empty it partway through) the fans and then the 
CPU came back to life with no other intervention.  I did suggest that 
perhaps they shouldn't keep it flat on the floor under the reception desk.

-- 

Pete                                           Peter Turnbull
                                               Network Manager
                                               University of York