Aut... um ... digopsy? of whitestar

[unixronin]

UPS decided they could process my damage claim without needing to physically inspect whitestar's mortal remains.  (Nice of them to tell me that only 11 days after filing the claim.)  Thus we proceed to a complete disassembly and inspection for damage.  And speaking of damage, the further I disassembled, the more I found.  More places where the case was bent and violently battered.  A drive cage no longer attached at one of its mounting points.  And it turns out I was wrong when I said about half the motherboard mounting standoffs were sheared.

Well, that is, they were sheared.  It's just that the other half were sheared too.  Yup, every last standoff was sheared off, and the only thing still holding the motherboard to the case was the sound card.  (The graphics card was trying, but not doing much of a job with its retaining bracket badly bent, which in turn is probably because, being an AGP card, it was more firmly attached to the motherboard than the sound card was.)  I also discovered, unrelatedly, that of 14 air outflow passages on the graphics card's heatsink, 12 were completely clogged with dust.  That must have been helping its performance.  (Not!)

The power supply, floppy drive, CPU cooler, and case fans are known or presumed still working.  The CD burner is probably still working.  The graphics card and hard disk may be still working; I can test the hard disk tomorrow, but don't know if I can test the graphics card or not because I don't think I have a desktop with an AGP slot in it available to me for testing.  I have no idea of the condition of the RAM and CPU, and no way to test them without buying a Socket 462 DDR motherboard, and testing them might damage the motherboard if one or the other is shorted.  Ironically, I've always disliked whitestar's case because of its flimsiness, but it has occurred to me that it's just possible that very flimsiness might, if I'm lucky, have saved the hard disk, by way of the entire case acting as a crumple zone.

I suppose, if I got REALLY lucky, I might get away with just a replacement case and motherboard.  The range of choices on Socket 462 motherboards is getting pretty slim, though, and if I have to replace more internal components than just the motherboard, I'm pretty loath to pour significant amounts of money into a platform that's already pushing the edge of technical obsolescence.  If that's the case (so to speak), I'd be smarter to save my pennies towards an Athlon64 (or maybe Athlon64/PCI Express) rebuild and utilize any incompatible surviving parts elsewhere.

Comments

[ehintz.livejournal.com]

Bugger.

[tabbifli.livejournal.com]

Some of the more polite (geekier?) PC repair and used PC shops have memory and card testing capabilities, although there is generally a fee associated with those facilities.

I don't know if you can add the testing fee on to the UPS bill - after all, you wouldn't have to test if it weren't destroyed - but that's something to think about. Plus, it gives you an actual written report on a real invoice (sometimes. You might have to ask for this) that you can provide copies of as physical evidence.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I tested the disk today in a half-torn-down spare machine at work, and it lives -- it appears perfectly undamaged. My theory is the somewhat-flimsy case acted like one big crumple zone and absorbed enough energy to protect the disk from damage.

Unfortunately, the disk is the only part I can test in that machine, because it's an old PII with three PCI slots and PC100 RAM, awhereas I need a motherboard with an AGP8X slot that can take DDR333 RAM and an Athlon XP1700.

However, I think the only remaining parts I need to test are the CPU, RAM and graphics card, and I know of an outfit in San Jose (http://www.pixelusa.com) that might be willing to test them for me on the understanding that I buy my replacement parts from them.