Greetings Folks. I have been having problems with a couple of old machines, desktop boxes, which both recently (within a few days of each other) went into "won't switch on" mode.
One of these is now solved: the internal power push-button (pushed via an external push-button) had slipped its moorings. Now re-moored, with a touch of superglue to inhibit future wanderings. (The other machine turned out to have a blown PSU, with a short somewhere in it, so probably irrecoverable).
Anyway: to the Topic Of The Day. When I switch on the "solved" machine, the (external) keyboard works fine, e.g. I can press Delete to enter BIOS setup, and use the keyboard to navigate the BIOS menus.
Also, when it does go into its Linux boot sequence, it happily gets as far as the GRUB menu, where I can choose which version of Linux to boot. Again, the keyboard works for this.
Then it goes into the full Linux boot, ending up with a login prompt in a text-terminal console (X hasn't started yet).
But, at this stage, the keyboard has no effect. If I enter a userid, nothing changes on screen. No keyboard press produces any effect.
So it seems that, somewhere along the line of the boot sequence, it has lost track of the keyboard.
No problem, however, with remote access via ethernet from another machine.
Two questions:
[A] Does anyone have any ideas about the possible source of this glitch, and how to set about fixing it?
If relevent, the Linux version is SuSE 7,2 from 2001, with kernal 2.4.4.
[B] Normally, there should be no problem using this machine, since I normally access it remotely anyway. However, every so often it will, during boot, decide that a hard drive has beeen unmounted too often without a file system check. So I will need to be able to use the keyboard for this (unless it works through it without problems, needing no intervention). In any case, if there is a power cut (as happens from time to time round here), then I will definitely need the keyboard during the fsck because the file systems will have been "not cleanly unmounted".
Also, this state will have been reached before it sets about activating the ethernet ports, so in principle remote access will not be available.
So: Is there some way of working round this so as to achieve remote access?
With thanks, Ted.
---------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@wlandres.net Date: 18-Dec-2011 Time: 16:57:55
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On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 05:20:41PM -0000, Ted Harding wrote:
I have been having problems with a couple of old machines, desktop boxes, which both recently (within a few days of each other) went into "won't switch on" mode.
Just how old are these machines? What is their hardware specification? What kind of keyboard is it?
Does anyone have any ideas about the possible source of this glitch, and how to set about fixing it?
If relevent, the Linux version is SuSE 7,2 from 2001, with kernal 2.4.4.
I think that there is a good chance this could be relevant, are we talking about a machine with a usb keyboard?
Adam
[For the time being, I'm withdrawing this request for help: see below]
On 18-Dec-2011 Adam Bower wrote:
On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 05:20:41PM -0000, Ted Harding wrote:
I have been having problems with a couple of old machines, desktop boxes, which both recently (within a few days of each other) went into "won't switch on" mode.
Just how old are these machines? What is their hardware specification? What kind of keyboard is it?
One machine dates from the mid-1990s (that's the one with the zapped PSU); the other (with the keyboard issue) from 2001. In both cases the keyboard is not USB, but PS/2.
Does anyone have any ideas about the possible source of this glitch, and how to set about fixing it?
If relevent, the Linux version is SuSE 7,2 from 2001, with kernal 2.4.4.
I think that there is a good chance this could be relevant, are we talking about a machine with a usb keyboard?
Adam
As above: No (though your reasons could be interesting). As it happens, when I transplanted the machine from the kitchen table to its usual place, after plugging all the cables back in and switching on the above keyboard issue had disappeared, so (with luck) things should be OK now (but don't quote me within the hearing of that machine).
Thanks for the comments, Adam. Ted.
---------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@wlandres.net Date: 18-Dec-2011 Time: 20:47:44
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Adam Bower -
Ted.Harding＠wlandres.net