My Dell Precision 530 was once a great computer costing thousands. Now it’s an old clunker — good mainly for landfill. The funny thing about this machine is that I have watched it deteriorate to the point where I was blaming everything for its increasing slowness. There are a lot of complaints about RAM issues (and it’s expensive RAM), and it is natural to suspect adware and malware infections in an old machine, as well as blaming the anti-virus with its endless updating, but it reached the point where I didn’t care anymore. I figured I would throw it in the basement, and maybe install Linux (known to breathe new life into old computers) in the hope of keeping it alive.
Installing Linux turned into quite a problem. I have several old hard drives lying around, so I figured it wouldn’t be a big deal to just put one in and install Ubuntu, or Mint. Incredibly, it turned out to be nearly impossible. Installation would not complete on three hard drives in a row, no matter how long I waited. The installation program would start and then they would just spin and spin, with no information about the installation, leaving me clueless. I thought the first drive was probably bad, as it had been sitting around forever, and the bios would not recognize it, but Ubuntu would… This kept happening, and on hard drive three I began to grow suspicious. Three hard drives in a row could not be bad, could they? Sure they’re all older IDE PATA style hard drives, but this defies the odds.
Anyway, as I was pulling out the last hard drive in utter frustration, suddenly the plug on the ribbon cable felt weird. I looked down and was that it was coming loose from the cable just where it plugged into the hard drive!
Wow. I have never had a ribbon cable come apart before, but this intrigued me. So I got a “new” one that had been in another retired old clunker, and VOILA! Immediately the problem is solved. Out of morbid curiosity (for this computer has been failing for over a year and getting worse), I thought to put the original drive back in, and all of a sudden it booted up and was so fast I couldn’t believe it. Like having a new computer.
Funny the things we blame.
Check it out:
As you can see, the plastic “latch” which held the plug onto the cable and pressed its prongs into the wires had worn out and had finally broken (most likely from pulling on it when swapping drives over the years), so there are as many possibilities of what may have gone wrong as there are permutations of prongs and wires. (No, I don’t want to count them, but trust me, there are a lot — and nothing is more puzzling than intermittent failure, which was what was happening.)
I wish it had actually broken sooner. Seeing it come apart was an indescribable relief. I was actually happy to see something physically broken, right there in my hand. No more mysterious blame games.
Broken things that appear to be OK are worse than broken things.
(Of course, broken humans often don’t want to admit they are broken, but that is a different issue.)
Comments
4 responses to “Broken is better!”
How strange that it worked, albeit slowly, with the broken cable. Was it because it would keep trying to write to disk, but only a fraction of those writes went through?
Yep old PATA cables will do that sometimes. I’ve had my fair share of broken ends and have since learned to be very careful when inserting / removing them from drives.
IC’s rarely right out break, the chips on a PCB should technically last decades or longer. What usually breaks is the soldier joints due to thermal stress or capacitors due to leaky electrolyte.
Depending on the CPU uArch you can do some impressive things with older systems. Linux itself isn’t a magic wand though, different distro’s are for different things. CentOS (re-badged RHEL)is for enterprise / server / workstation level use. Ubunto is kinda the super-easy all-in-one Distro. Mint is the one focused on being small and using the least resources.
Then you could be a “MAN” and use Solaris :p
Ribbon cable comes in standard widths. That looks like a “40”. Drink.
Good problem solving. I have two old Dells and a brand new Dell- all desktops.
Two of my LCD monitors – one bought new, the other used- had failed. I took them apart and per many YouTube instructional videos I looked at the capacitors- not the problem for failing. So I went CraigsList and bought a 17″ FOR $20 – and it works.
[I could not get away with temporarily using my old CRT, as my new Dell will not connect to a CRT.]
My new Dell is MUCH quieter than the old Dell I have been using for work.
However, not all new is good.As the old Dells came with CDs for the operating system, data transfer could start right away when I first got them. This new Dells do not have CDs for the operating system, which means I need to create some sort of system backup before I start transferring data. Unfortunately, it needs umpteen DVDs for a complete system image. Putting the image on a big thumb drive is problematic. So much for progress.