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From: perkins@bnrmtv.UUCP (Henry Perkins)
Newsgroups: net.micro,net.micro.pc
Subject: General flakiness in Compaq DeskPro
Message-ID: <243@bnrmtv.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 29-Jan-86 14:26:34 EST
Article-I.D.: bnrmtv.243
Posted: Wed Jan 29 14:26:34 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Feb-86 03:42:45 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: Bell Northern Research, Mtn. View, CA
Lines: 28
Xref: watmath net.micro:13653 net.micro.pc:6749

I've been having some problems lately with my DeskPro.  The symptoms are
that every few hours the machine will lock up, or blank the screen, or
give a divide overflow or parity error.  Occasionally I will get another
error immediately after power cycling from one of these conditions.
There is no evidence to suspect a single memory chip, although I have
tried replacing several.  Running the standard diagnostics shows
everything to be working properly.

I had a winchester problem recently and took the machine to the local
Businessland for servicing.  They diagnosed the controller card as being
defective, but found no other problems.  I have since replaced the disk
controller and processor chip (taking out the V30 and putting in a new
8086-2), with no improvement (except for the disk problem, of course).

I have a humidifier and negative ion generator, so I can probably rule out
variations in humidity or static charge.  (I'm not completely convinced
of the latter, as the standard IBM color display I use sits atop the
system box and generates quite a lot of static electricity on the screen.)

The machine is about 15 months old, and my next step will be to get some
solvents and clean the boards in case dirt is causing an occasional short
somewhere.

I'd appreciate any helpful suggestions as to how I might diagnose and
correct this annoying chronic malfunction.
-- 

{hplabs,amdahl,3comvax}!bnrmtv!perkins          --Henry Perkins