[ubuntu-uk] Motherboards dying ( was:Re: possible to install ubuntu like gentoo?)

[matt at mattjones.me.uk]

Quoting Johnathon Tinsley <kirrus at kirrus.co.uk>:

>
> ----- "Farran Lee" wrote:
>> not as far as I know - I'm only just getting to grips with the   
>> hardware side of computing. Is it obvious? Does the mb just not   
>> boot at all?
>>
>>
> I've seen it once, when the capacators fail on a motherboard, its   
> pretty much useless. You can tell, by if they bulge at the top, and   
> sometimes leak some brown/orange residue (DON'T TOUCH!)
>
> Apparently, there was some industrial sabotage a few years back   
> (2000 ish I think) which affected a whole bunch of capacators used   
> on motherboards... though this is quite rare...
>
> Johnathon
>

The Dell GX series suffer from the capacitor problem, and I think the  
motherboard is a dell proprietary one, so you basically have to buy a  
new machine. Most new boards don't use the older style liquid  
capacitors, so don't suffer from this problem.

A dodgy PSU can kill a board, the voltage only needs to be a bit  
variable and it can break the whole lot.



I have had a couple of boards go, but then I do have a lot of older  
stuff! Some motherboards are DOA, but this is rarer than it used to  
be. I have also killed a few from general clumsiness.

A sure fire way of killing a motherboard is to think you have turned  
the laptop off, but forgetting that pressing the power button now  
brought up a dialouge asking what you wanted to do Then putting said  
laptop into its lovely warm padded case for the rest of the day, with  
its extended batteries in (It was a old dell with the two battery  
bays) with a reasonable amount of charge in both.

Needless to say it was completely toasted, no power on at all.