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What a hellish week
16 years ago
General
I've just had some really bad luck recently.
So I mentioned before that my monitor was starting to kick the bucket. I ordered a new one. Meanwhile, a couple of days ago, the PSU in my workstation blew! Fair enough, it was 7 years old. It had a good run, but it's just bad timing.
So a couple of days ago I'm moping around, trying to think of some work I can do. I figure I might aswell update the render farm. Node 1 is fine, nodes 2, 3, all good. Node 4 won't power up. The PSU in that had fucked up too! The problem is I don't know when this happened - I last used the node in October last year.
All of this stuff getting ruined at the same time might suggest some kind of power surge, but my stuff is surge protected. I had the opinion that the socket bars would fuse before any significant damage occurs. Maybe I'm wrong?
Anyway, I bought 2 PSUs yesterday - they work fine. I received the new monitor yesterday too. I open everything out, and try to connect the VGA cable. The cable that was supplied with the monitor is wired incorrectly! In these old 15-pin plugs, the middle row is staggered to the right, because the socket is staggered to the left. This VGA cable had one set of pins staggering in each direction! As if they were designed to fit into each other, but obviously pins don't fit into pins.
I went out and bought another VGA cable. I couldn't be bothered waiting another few days. Brought it back, plugged it in. This monitor produces some kind of ghosting effect (not LCD latency, I'm talking about the periphery of static images). You can see "white shadows" of high-contrast images running to the right. It's difficult to explain, but basically the monitor's faulty.
So I need to send it back.
FUCK
THIS
WEEK!
So I mentioned before that my monitor was starting to kick the bucket. I ordered a new one. Meanwhile, a couple of days ago, the PSU in my workstation blew! Fair enough, it was 7 years old. It had a good run, but it's just bad timing.
So a couple of days ago I'm moping around, trying to think of some work I can do. I figure I might aswell update the render farm. Node 1 is fine, nodes 2, 3, all good. Node 4 won't power up. The PSU in that had fucked up too! The problem is I don't know when this happened - I last used the node in October last year.
All of this stuff getting ruined at the same time might suggest some kind of power surge, but my stuff is surge protected. I had the opinion that the socket bars would fuse before any significant damage occurs. Maybe I'm wrong?
Anyway, I bought 2 PSUs yesterday - they work fine. I received the new monitor yesterday too. I open everything out, and try to connect the VGA cable. The cable that was supplied with the monitor is wired incorrectly! In these old 15-pin plugs, the middle row is staggered to the right, because the socket is staggered to the left. This VGA cable had one set of pins staggering in each direction! As if they were designed to fit into each other, but obviously pins don't fit into pins.
I went out and bought another VGA cable. I couldn't be bothered waiting another few days. Brought it back, plugged it in. This monitor produces some kind of ghosting effect (not LCD latency, I'm talking about the periphery of static images). You can see "white shadows" of high-contrast images running to the right. It's difficult to explain, but basically the monitor's faulty.
So I need to send it back.
FUCK
THIS
WEEK!
I don't think standard "surge" protectors do anything much if your mains is consistently over voltage (for example), but not spiking. Really, what are sold as "surge" protectors are actually spike protectors, to cut out from lightning strikes, etc., as I'm sure you know, rather than surges which are much slower, gradual changes in voltage. I think consistent overvoltage could possibly "wear" (for lack of a better term) the transforming electronics faster than normal. I could be wrong, though; just musing.
That bad cable sounds really dodgy. I mean... they must have tried hard to fuck up a well established standard like VGA. What on earth were they trying to achieve? What sort of monitor is it? I'd be wary of getting another like it.
*wishes you better luck for next week*