Power supply repair number two, for me, is repairing a unit I’ve had for years, and “works”, but frequently, it will power up the the computer, then almost immediately power it back off, and require flipping the switch on the power supply off and on to get it back “working”. This behavior is indicative of either the Over or Under Voltage/Current latch kicking in (this could be semi-confirmed by unplugging fans, or hard drives from the power supply, and it would start up much more reliably). If the unit did successfully power up, it would run the computer with no problems for weeks/months at a time (I had the unit powering an IPTV box for 6 months previous to teardown for repair). Testing with my Dr. Power II shows everything is fine, but the tester only puts a couple ohms of load on the unit. Real testing requires an actual PC load (or a much larger load than I can provide with my Reload:Pro). Opening the unit, I found that several of the solder joints between the output wiring, and the “jacks” for attaching cables looked “cold” or “dry” (meaning, non-good solder connections) (See picture here). This can certainly lead to protection kicking in on devices. Reflowing these connections took a bit of time due to the thermal mass of the wiring and connection board, but after, the connections did look much better. Testing again showed everything was fine (as before). Hooking the unit back up to a real PC showed consistent power up. Calling this one fixed, for now.
Partkeepr and PHP 5.6
Because I couldn’t find any info on this myself (and therefore my Partkeepr install has been broken since updating to PHP 5.6), and it took the developer of Partkeepr some thought on how to Google for it himself, I thought I would post something quick on Partkeepr and PHP 5.6. Basically, it works, but only if you don’t have a couple options set with PHP 5.6’s Zend OPCache (the built-in OPCache in 5.6, which largely deprecated APC). There are two options for opcache that completely break several frameworks, such as Doctrine, which Partkeepr uses extensively. The options are:
opcache.save_comments
opcache.load_comments
If either of these options is set to “0”, things break. And of course, if you read the notes on “opcache.save_comments” it mentioned breaking Doctrine. So, make sure they’re set to “1” if you’re using any of those frameworks, and especially if you’re using Partkeepr. I banged my head against this for days.
The developer of Partkeepr, however, is going to have a runtime check in a new version that makes sure those two options are set properly, otherwise have Partkeepr throw an error. Here’s the initial bug report of mine. Hopefully this post will help someone, and save them some hair being torn out. =)
UPDATE: I was able to just enable opcache.save_comments and load_comments for just my partkeepr domain by setting:
php_admin_flag opcache.save_comments 1
php_admin_flag opcache.load_comments 1
In the VHOST configuration for apache. This lets me leave them both as 0 for all my other sites, thereby gaining the reduced cached sizes. =) Good luck!
Antec TruePower Trio TP3-550 Fan Bus Repair
Couple weeks back I got a request to repair a friends computer. It would lock up, not reboot, etc. The computer was largely for gaming, so after an initial software scan, I figured it must be heat. Opening the machine, I noticed none of the case fans are running. I had initially done the build on the machine, and new all the case fans were wired to the fan power “bus” provided by the power supply (which handled speeding/slowing the fans based on case temp), an Antec TruePower Trio TP3-550. Asking the friend, he mentioned that he had noticed the LEDs on the front case fan had went out a month or two ago. Hmm. Checking the voltage on that fan bus showed only 2V (not nearly enough to run a 12V 120mm fan). The PSU’s fan was also not running. Crap, that was probably overheating the PSU, and causing the instability.
Wanting to get his machine back up and running, I picked up a replacement Corsair power supply, installed it, and got him on his way. Then, I went to repairing the Antec power supply. Warning, because this is a power supply, and especially because this is a high wattage switcher, there are dangerous (and lethal if you live in parts of the world that run off 220/240 household) voltages inside. Make sure the unit is unplugged, off, and even give it an hour or two for the primary caps to discharge. I have seen the primary discharge relatively quickly, so there must be a bleeder resistor in the unit, but I didn’t bother tracking it down.