The mystery of the cursed case
8/26/2006
Over the years I have encountered a lot of really weird computer problems. But my latest one has me more perplexed than ever. Can you solve the mystery of the cursed case?
About 4 years ago I bought a really cheap computer just to do backups, put a radio / TV card into, burn CD's (DVD burners were not common yet), and perform Internet connection sharing as my ISP has its Internet access device locked down and you have to use theirs. So cheap it was, and after all even for 2002 I was not asking for a powerful computer. The computer came assembled and ready to go, and worked fine for a year or so. I had two other computers, both laptops and I always had at least a surge suppressor. And then the weirdness started.
About a year later a reasonably nice pair of speakers I had suddenly died. I figured they had just died, things occasionally do and they were not that expensive. But then something else died. I figured that maybe it was voltage on the line dropping which surge suppressors cannot help with and actually are more dangerous than spikes. So I went and bought an APC UPS. And soon after my wireless access point power supply bit the dust. This was a major problem as I bought it in another country and being a WAP it actually took a lot of power and none of the off the shelf DC power supplies could supply enough power. I sent it back to Russia with someone who was going to have it fixed. But now I was really perplexed - What the heck was going on? Was our flat haunted?
Well almost and not quite. The next thing to die was one of the hard drives, and soon after the motherboard. After this everything pointed at the computers power supply. UPS's protect from spikes and brown outs from incoming electricity. But they do not (except the super expensive commercial ones) protect if devices on the backside are causing problems. Unfortunately this episode cost me about $750 in damaged equipment. So we replaced the motherboard, power supply, and one hard drive. We salvaged one hard drive that was still good, the case, keyboard, monitor, and several cards.
All was well, for another 2 years. And then something strange happened again. A few months ago I bought this really neato keyboard (I'll blog on it later and post a link here too). It was not super expensive but it was not really cheap either. It cost 14 Cyprus Pounds (About $33). It was put into service on this mini-server of sorts. They keyboard was rarely used but after about a month the r and o and a few other keys just refused to work. Today I had to rearrange things as I returned back to Cyprus and had DSL installed at the new house which required some putzing with this mini-server again. I had already taken the mouse for another computer and going back and forth was getting tiresome, so I went to a local store and bought a cheap optical mouse. When I plugged it in, it did not work! Now I was really getting angry as it is Saturday and the store just closed (On Saturday in Cyprus stores are only open half a day). So now I had a dead keyboard (bought at the same place) and a dead mouse. They did say to bring the keyboard in and they would check or replace it, even without receipt though.
But here is where it gets weird. If I plug a different keyboard in, it works. If I plug in a different mouse, it also works. So it should mean that the keyboard and mouse are broken right? Nope - if I plug them into another computer they work just fine! So I thought maybe it is the connectors on the motherboard as the other mouse I have is USB and the new one is not. Although this would not explain the keyboard. But the keyboard is USB or PS/2. And when plugged into the mini-server with either USB or they PS/2, it exhibits same behavior. But plug it into another computer and it works, or plug in a different keyboard to this computer and it works! So I have on keyboard that either in USB or PS/2 fails with certain keys, but only on one computer. Other keyboards work, and it works on other computers. And the exact same thing with a mouse!
Is the case cursed? Does anyone have any clue as to what could be causing this? Email me.
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