On Tue, 12 Feb 2008 19:13:26 -0500, "D.Duck" wrote:


"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
news
On Tue, 12 Feb 2008 18:47:36 -0500, Gene Kearns
wrote:

On Tue, 12 Feb 2008 21:49:28 GMT, Short Wave Sportfishing penned the
following well considered thoughts to the readers of rec.boats:

|Crap - the PS went on the main computer.
|
|I'm telling you, the next computer is going to be a Mac.
|
|F'in PCs.

Lemme guess...... an E-machine....

Please - built by me.

I called my brother who has several and he said he goes through one or
two a month.

This one was a 500 watt PS, but it's cheap - I just took it apart -
all potted, nothing fused, etc.

Educated guess, an electrolytic capacitor failed.

Probably. The machine boots fine, but only lasts for five minutes
then goes stone cold dead.

I took the PS apart - everything potted which I suppose I should have
suspected so you can't really tell if anything is cooked by looking. I
hooked it up to AC and tested the loads - crapped out in less than
five minutes. Held the loads fine up to failure though. Interesting.

So the chore for tomorrow is get a new power supply.

I talked to my brother tonight about it - he's got 800 or so PCs under
his umbrella at the health centers he supports. He said that over the
past three years or so, he's noticing more and more power supply's
just crapping out. He stocks them now that money is tighter - can't
just pull out the goodies and buy a new computer like he used to. He
also used to spec out 500 watt supplies - now he specs out 750 to slow
the rate of attrition down.

Based on what I see with this bad one, he's right.