[AccessD] Ya know they tell ya to remove power...

John Bartow john at winhaven.net
Sat Jan 1 14:31:38 CST 2011


Sometimes we get a "lucky pass" for our little blunders, here's hoping your
luck continues ;o)

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby
Sent: Friday, December 31, 2010 9:33 AM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: [AccessD] Ya know they tell ya to remove power...

A "funny" story with a happy ending.

I was working on a new server I am building for doing a VM.  All done,
working well.  I had an iRam card which is an old card which holds up to 4
gigs of RAM and turns it into an SATA 1 hard disk.  It works fine with vista
and previous but it does not work with Win7 and 2008 clean installs. 
Apparently they just don't have drivers to make it happen.

So I removed the iRam, which was in a PCI slot and I neglected to put the
little metal tab in the back to cover the hold in the back panel where the
card screwed down.

The next day I decided to install an Areca 1220 I had laying around.  The
Areca is a PCI Express card.  Not watching what I was doing I tried to
insert it into the slot adjacent to the pci express slot which happens to be
PCI.  The computer *turns on* and I start smelling that sickening smell of
toasted something.  Since I am installing an Areca 1220 I assume that the
toasted something is a
$450 Areca raid controller card.

I quickly yanked the card out and turn the computer back off.  I then
*remove the power*... and decide what the heck, let's see whether I actually
fried the Areca.  Looking closely at the card I notice a connector trace on
each side burned.  My guess is that these two traces are shorted together on
the PCI Express but are power / ground on the PCI.

As it turns out the Areca was otherwise undamaged, just a couple of
connector pins seriously overheated and damaged.  My motherboard wasn't
fried.  *Very lucky* all in all.

Ya know they tell ya to remove power...

--
John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com
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