Jason Richey wrote: They could paint it yellow. :-) From today's A Word A Day mailing list: resistentialism The theory that inanimate objects demonstrate hostile behavior against us. Replacement is no doubt appropriate since the need for it is undoubtedly there. Ec

On Tue, 30 Mar 2004 14:27:09 +0200 Gabriel Wicke <groups(a)gabrielwicke.de> wrote: Have i yet said it would be nice to have a faster and larger disk system than Suda ? A Raid 10, like Geoffrin, with 4 or 6 15000rpm disks. We would be quiet for some times :) Shaihulud

On Mar 30, 2004, at 04:27, Gabriel Wicke wrote: Heartily agreed. I certainly won't be buying from Penguin in the future; they ought to have sent us a replacement machine weeks ago if they couldn't get it running by replacing one part at a time. -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Jason wrote, last night: I wrote, this morning: Well, I booted up the machine that came via FedEx this morning, and it is geoffrin -- our old hard drives anyway. The case is our case -- the serial numbers match with the paperwork that I have from the original shipment. (from my account on their website) Maybe it has an all new motherboard and ram and is fixed, however, Jason's report from Aaron doesn't make it sound that way. It sounds to me like the machine was shipped back to us even though it is not fixed, which is the absolute worst possible thing that Penguin could have done. I'd accept a refund, or a replacement, but I will of course not accept in any way shape or form the machine without being repaired. That's beyond stupid. It's still early in CA, but getting late enough for it to be o.k. for me to call Jason to find out more details from him about what was said yesterday. In any event, my current plan is to just sit tight for today until we figure out what's going on. I may start running Memtest86 test #11, which is the one it used to fail. (However, the front of the machine is locked, and they neglected to send me keys, so I have to figure out how to boot Memtest86 without accessing the floppy, or I have to figure out how to open the damned thing without the key.) I hate computers. --Jimbo

Erik Moeller wrote: Well, it's all very strange, but I believe that we are now in possession of a fixed Geoffrin. Here's the story, as told to me by Jason, and as told to him by Penguin. This is my understanding, but it may be flawed in minor ways of course. Yesterday, when Jason called, the server was still "in engineering" according to the Penguin internal tracking system and the person Jason spoke to indicated that it could not be fixed and that we would be referred to our salesperson for a refund or replacement. But, that report was incorrect. The machine will still "in engineering", but it was being burned in after they changed something. The machine (allegedly) went through a 90 hour burnin with no memory errors. The change was to "turn off interleaved memory access". Of course I only barely know what that means (mostly from just understanding the component words), but it certainly sounds like a plausible source of the problem, and a plausible solution to the problem. Jason is also FedEx'ing me the keys to the machine, so that I can access the floppy drive without breaking into it. This will give me the ability to run memtest86. So, here's the plan. When I get the keys, I will install the machine in the colo. I will run memtest86 for 24 hours. If it passes, we will put the machine in production. If it fails, then we will (a) order a replacement and (b) demand a refund from Penguin. I think that I'll get the machine installed late tomorrow afternoon, Wednesday afternoon, and have it on the net for everyone on Thursday afternoon. --Jimbo

On Mar 30, 2004, at 12:29, Jimmy Wales wrote: Well, let's schedule some database downtime for Saturday to get things moved around and up and running, assuming things look ok. -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)