Unpowered
I’ve been using OPENSUSE for many years, starting with 6.1 Professional. The last version I used was 13.1 in failsafe mode – a graphic driver problem. I write software mainly in C for electronic (www.eocs.org.uk) music devices. Recently I had to replace my old system so had a local firm build me a new one. I specified no OS. I had a copy of OPENSUSE Leap 42.3 and started to install it. After about 60 per cent of the installation, the system just hung. I tried again – same result. A dodgy DVD, I thought, so I tried Leap 42.2 from the LXF220 DVD. Same result, so I started to worry about the DVD drive. Purely by chance I happened to knock the tower slightly while the system was hung. An investigation revealed that the IEC mains connector was loose.
Fortunately I could see no sign of burning on either plug or socket. Pushing the connector home properly, the system installed OK. I don’t know if the supplies to the drives are less well stabilised than the other supplies.
This problem reminded me of a similar one I had a few decades ago with the paperfeed mechanism on a line printer on an ICL 1301 mainframe. We were having intermittent paper-feed problems which turned out to be due to an unstabilised power supply with a dodgy mains connection. Are there any new problems? Alec Duncan, email
Neil says…
How odd. I honestly don’t know enough to say if such a thing would be causing the issues with the optical drive. Why it caused the drive to conk out at 60 per cent both times is beyond me, and yet not affecting the CPU, memory or the main hard drive having issues? But I guess you hadn’t had long enough to find out…