Alright, just noticed today when I was moving my little 200mhz NFS/FTP server around that there was no air blowing out the back where the power supply, you know, blows air out the back.
Not sure how long its been like that, doesn't feel too hot actually, but its been running fine with no problems for almost 3 weeks without a reboot, basically when I first loaded it up.

So how long do you think it will last before it dies, catches on fire or blows up if I don't swap out the PSU soon ??

By the way, there are no other fans operating inside besides the dinky little CPU fan directly on the CPU.

Are you doing it for a sake of an experiment? I just did some experimenting with my stuff, and I came out with an idea that upgrading kernel by rpms is a very bad notion, friend of mine asked me if it was ok to upgrade kernel by getting an rpm and installing it, so for a purpose of pure experiment I did it on MY OWN MACHINE - the result I am running spunky new RH7.2 with factory default kernel 2.4.7-10, I've lost all my boot options for kernel 2.4.18 which I optimized for athlon plus my slackware 8.0 gone to thrash and on top of it kernel 2.5.24 refuses to load, man I am disappointed to say the least. No more upgrading kernel by rpms, I am heading straight for source as I always did without experimenting on my own box.

Actually I was going to see how long it was going to last, but then I decided to not take a chance on coming home and the house burned down or something like that. So I just swapped out the PSU with no problems, works like a champ now..

Got to love the spare parts lying around... they always find a home at one time or another.

yea i was wondering about the burning down part when i read your first post tricky...

I get that a lot with other boxes. Usually the missing fan doesn't do much to the PSU - depends on how hard you drive the thing. The monitor starts looking funny if it runs off the same supply.

i feel cheated! i was going to say two to three months, but now i'll never know!

I wouldn't try it at home (at least not with the only box i got)!!

Why is there a little red block beside the first option (A few more days !), even though it's 0%?

that's normal, don't worry about it.

I bet it would just last, because I have seen magical things happen when running Linux. Hardware that seems to last through most anything, and software that continues to run for months and months without a reboot. It has powers beyond that a normal software.

Hehe, i would of thought another week or so depending on how much processing its doing but we'll never find out now

Hey Trick,

I found out one day while scavenging a 300W Deer and a 250W Enermax, that those little back fans inside the PSU are pretty much industry standard swappable, like generic case fans except 2 pin instead of 3, so if you have a truly dead PSU that shot its caps or whatever, you can scavenge the fan and swap it into to one with a dead fan.

There's nothing like running a machine off a furbie'd power supply.

Cheers,

Finegan

With 200MHz it's possible to run like this all the time

Talking about linux running on hardware better than other os's, I am scared to reboot mine, The last time I rebooted about half the computer didn't make it though post, I only reboot about every 6 to 8 months when I need to do a kernal upgrade and the system will work fine till I reboot it and then I find that the cd-rom and floppy and network card won't post again, another good reason to never reboot linux.

Personally I think it just matters on the temperature.

If possible I'd open up the case while it's running (being careful of course) . Then stick a thermometer in there (one that can measure up to or beyond a 100 degree Celsius). Put the case cover back on and come back half an hour later and see what the temperature is on the thermometer.

So in other words if it doesn't have black smoke coming out the back of it, you should be right.