nvidia forcedeth & lg dvdram decided to go on strike
 

For reasons unexplained, I came home late last night only to find that my lg dvdram drive has decided to (once again) refuse to read anything I feed it. Mounting gives me a 'No Medium Found' notice. I've had this problem before, and it literally began working for no reason after a week or so. Now it's happened again and I don't know whether I'm dealing with faulty hardware, or whether my ide-scsi (I'm running kernel 2.4.30) system is becoming corrupt (via usb??) or not. I do have a second DVD-RW drive connected and it seems to work just fine.

Furthermore, it now turns out that the onboard nic on my nvidia A7N8X-X motherboard doesn't want to work either. I checked lsmod and the forcedeth module *is* loaded, just to make sure, I unloaded it and reloaded it manually using modprobe, made no difference. It's *possible* it could be a loose/faulty cable, but it seems strange that it was working fine before I rebooted the system (to try and get the LG drive working, this seemed to help the last time the drive died on me) and all of the sudden it doesn't. I'll have to check the physical connections tonight, but assuming those are okay, is there anything else I should be looking at to try and remedy this?

I'd greatly appreciate anyone's input on either of these problems.

Thanks,

- skubik.

FYI, I looked in the KDE 'Info Center' under 'Network' to see what network adapters are connected, and the eth0 device does NOT appear there, only the loopback device.
I also checked my dmesg output, and it looks as though it *is* enabling the device (can post if it'll help)

From the symptoms you describe, and from what my magic 8-ball tells me, you have power problems. Getting a nice overpowered thermaltake power supply and/or a UPS backup surge protector may help. Yes, it costs money. But it looks like you're getting a power related cascade affect that isn't going to stop until everything is cooked/sagged to death.

This ain't linux related. It's waveform and hardware related.

Hmmm, very possible. I don't have *that* much connected, although, 2 DVD writers, 2 mid-range HD's, CPU HSF, Case Fan, and a Radeon 9800 Pro... it all adds up, and I think my supply is only 350W anyways.

I *did* end up getting everything working again though (if only temporarily). My onboard NIC was my biggest concern, and nothing worked, until I reset my router. Then everything seemed to work fine. I mounted all my DVD writers and USB drives simultaneously, and they all mounted with no problems. I *do* have to replace the fan on my Radeon 9800 Pro, however, since it sounds like a mule giving birth from time to time. Guess what my weekend project is (like I didn't have enough to do already, hehehe). :)

If anyone has any other ideas of suggestions in the event this happens again in the (near) future, I'd love to hear them.

Thanks!

- skubik.

One rule of thumb with power supplies. 350 W is minimal- for any desktop with hardware more than a thin client or slimstation, you will need more. If you can hold up your power supply with your pinky and not get strained, odds are it's crap.

A featherweight powersupply simply can't do the physics necessary to give you a constant stream of current. You will need to go higher in watts with your setup, and get a heavy brick. Thermaltake is good and fairly inexpensive. Antec is ok and a little more pricey. The best is probably pc power and cooling, but thermaltake is reaching their quality with their newer 680Watt PS's. Good luck.