*Pop* goes the power grid.

[vakkotaur]

Or at least a power supply. Hopefully just a power supply.

Earlier today the power went out, and it wasn't just a short blip. The UPSes beeped and things kept running for a little while. Jay's Mac switched itself off and I decided it best to shut down as well. Then I shut a few more things off and turned off the two UPSes in the office.

A while later the power came back on and I heard a *pop* that didn't sound good. It sounded like it was in the house. I first checked the machine room and got worried: something smelled burnt. It was vaguely like a bag of burnt microwave popcorn, but not quite as strong. After calling Jay to let him know, I pulled the plugs on all the computers there.

But it wasn't over. I tried to bring belgian back up and got nothing. Oh, I got lights and the fans spun up... but no video. Still talking to Jay, I mentioned that there hadn't been any error beeps when I powered it up. He asked if the normal beep was there. I hadn't noticed. Trying again, it wasn't there. So belgian is down for a while, either due to a bad power supply or a bad motherboard. Meanwhile I'm using percheron. Xubuntu isn't actually bad, but it still feels weird to me.

I'm not sure what happened to belgian or why, as it was off (well, front panel off, not rear panel true off) and supplied through a UPS, though that was off as well when the power returned. My main concern is the hard drive. I hope that survived whatever happened.

Another power blip, which was only a blip, later didn't help. I got to re-set a few clocks again.

I wonder what happened. The sky was clear.

Comments

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Your hard drive is likely OK. In my repeated experience, that sort of pop is usually a power supply capacitor, triggered by a surge. How a surge got to the machine in the situation you describe I can't say, though.