Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

[toastygoodness]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

Are you sure about that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOP500#November_2011

In the top 10, it's almost all Xeons and Opterons.

that's TOP500, they do currently running stable systems (so they've been in production status for a while, not really cutting edge stuff). was mostly talking about IBM's supercomputers, and some of the new NECs. Cells are PPC derivatives and the newest Blue Gene, which runs entirely on PPC and is supposed to be in the 20~ petaflops category, so it blows most of these away. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Sequoia

opterons were previously used cause they saved the most energy and were cheap, but sequoia is supposed to be 3000 Mflops/watt, so it will be the most power efficient supercomputer when it is completed... early this year.

[brethin]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

Untill Intel moves away from x86 based CPU's for good they will allways be slower than anything else built on a faster interface, single core to single core speed (Intels failure to break the 4GHz barrior). Thats why AMD, PowerPC, NexGen, Etc were/are faster but not the standard hence less support, less software and less life on the market.

[kc8adu]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

space applications are limited to qualified parts.
have to meet certain reliability standards and be "space hardened"
the random glitch we might get here due to a event may be nothing but an inconvenience.in space it may doom the mission.so the choice is to pay for the part you want to be qualified and radiation hardened or select an off the shelf qualified part.
this has nothing to do with architecture.
i doubt any current procs in desktops and phones will ever be qualified.

well, the hubble telescope is powered by an INTEL 486 DX.

most space probes use embedded type cpus... the 486 an386 were still inproduction until 2006 (386) and 2007 (486). why? embedded aerospace use. why? its what the designs call for and it is tried and true.

space probe cpus thus are oriented the same way as desktop cpus. there, where every milliamp matters, and reliablilty is a must, you pick the cpu that does the job, no less, no more. .

[b700029]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

you realize that the fastest supercomputers in the world all use powerpc variants right?

Are you sure about that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOP500#November_2011

In the top 10, it's almost all Xeons and Opterons.

[ratdude747]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

Oh sorry.
Why can't I use any new software on my PowerBook G4 then???
I don't care if it's used in fast supercomputers, if it's useless then it's useless.
I'm grumpy right now, don't take it personal
-shovenose

support for the cpu

so much mac use is intel anymore that the demand for PPC mac software is pretty low, hence why most software is made for intel only... also, the g4 is pretty old by today's standards.

[shovenose]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

Oh sorry.
Why can't I use any new software on my PowerBook G4 then???
I don't care if it's used in fast supercomputers, if it's useless then it's useless.
I'm grumpy right now, don't take it personal
-shovenose

[toastygoodness]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

you realize that the fastest supercomputers in the world all use powerpc variants right?

the worst intel cpu is definitely NOT better than a G5. it's inherent in the architecture.

[shovenose]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

Intel is where it's at, sorry guys. PowerPC processors were already outdated when they were sold.

Sure, I'm glad Apple wasn't using Intel back when Netburst was around, because they would have tried putting a Pentium 4 into a thin laptop with insufficient cooling... that would be the end of them...
But the worst Intel CPU is better than the best G5...
A Dual G5 can hold it's own against a Core Duo in benchmarks, but you can't run anything newer than OS X 10.5, Firefox 3.6, etc, on it...
G4/G5 computers, sure they're theoretically fast enough for doing most things (especially the Power Mac G5 Duals), but they're lacking the software support to do.

I'm sure an alien spaceship would use Intel, sorry,
Even when the Apple back when used the I-forget-what-it's-called chip in the Apple I it was plagued with incompatibility with the standard Intel chips.
It's gone back a long long way, and they finally realized their inefficient, hot-running CPUs were a bad idea and switched to Intel.
I'm not saying Intel is flawless and perfect, (look at P4, Pentium D, etc. which was a pile of shit), but they've been the standard for a long time and they will continue to do so.
Even AMD, who wiped the floor with intel when the Athlon 64 came out, is now relegated to the back as Intel's Core i3/i5/i7 and Xeons beat the pulp out of anything AMD...
Edit: damn that was a longer post than I thouhght!
Edit2: no I'm not bashing Apple really lol. I like my MacBook Air. Just some of their decisions in the past weren't great.

[ratdude747]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

But the Mars Rovers and many satellites are PowerPC!
I'm pretty sure WALL-E might be PPC also.


If it's good enough for space vehicles shouldn't it be good enough for the rest of us?

well, the hubble telescope is powered by an INTEL 486 DX.

most space probes use embedded type cpus... the 486 an386 were still inproduction until 2006 (386) and 2007 (486). why? embedded aerospace use. why? its what the designs call for and it is tried and true.

space probe cpus thus are oriented the same way as desktop cpus. there, where every milliamp matters, and reliablilty is a must, you pick the cpu that does the job, no less, no more.

likewise, probes using PPC were designed because thats what the designers felt was bust.... whatever the reason may have been.

Having had experience, freescale cpus (ppc based) are quite common in embedded applications... the biggest advantage tot he lower speed embedded models is low heat, low power usage, and programmablilty. for exaple, the NI cRIOs I were programming when I was on a robotics team were based on a 400mhz frescale cpu.

[Junk Parts]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

WALL-E was clearly and advanced AI unit. Someplace on his body there had to be an " Intel Inside" sticker. He also could have been powered by AMD. Its hard to read WALL-E. What ever his systems were based on he did get the girl in the end.

[toastygoodness]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

But the Mars Rovers and many satellites are PowerPC!
I'm pretty sure WALL-E might be PPC also.


If it's good enough for space vehicles shouldn't it be good enough for the rest of us?

I liked powerpc as well. RISC architectures are more fun.

[b700029]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

Your PSU has short-circuit/overpower protection, so it would shut down.

Looking at intact pictures of your board it seems there's nothing there besides the header and probably the fuse above it, but better to scrub the area of soot and post a cleaner picture.

[zero10]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

I think it was always shorted, but the polyfuse limited the current so it just acted like a heater. The sustained heat eventually caused the fuse to fail by thermal runaway. According to the standard FW can provide up to 45W of power.

You don't need to fix it, just cut that part out because there's no critical circuitry in that area and you don't need it

I think you are right on the "why now?" bit, there have been no recent changes, heck, the case hadn't been opened in 852 days, and I doubt a poor connection, everything is clean in there and those connectors fit quite well. Can I really just cut that part of the board off? The system did power off before I got there so I think something else must have gone with it, but that would make one hell of a story if it can be saved, quite the battle scar.

[KeriJane]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

no because PowerPC is a proprietary slow piece of crap

But the Mars Rovers and many satellites are PowerPC!
I'm pretty sure WALL-E might be PPC also.


If it's good enough for space vehicles shouldn't it be good enough for the rest of us?

[tom66]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

You're lucky it didn't burn the battery. Those are extremely flammable and might have done more damage.

[b700029]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

SO we can safely assume that this was user error, even tho ASUS is still a piece of shit.

My question is why did it short now and not then, when it was built and power on for the first time?

I think it was always shorted, but the polyfuse limited the current so it just acted like a heater. The sustained heat eventually caused the fuse to fail by thermal runaway. According to the standard FW can provide up to 45W of power.

as much as the tinkerer in me REALLY wants to dig in and try fixing the board I really think fixing it was never an option given the extent of the damage.

You don't need to fix it, just cut that part out because there's no critical circuitry in that area and you don't need it

[Junk Parts]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

JP fears fire! Put that thing in the bin now!

[c_hegge]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

If I understand right, it is irrelevant whether anything was ever plugged into the port since the USB port would be grounded where it was attached, and that would indeed ground the +12V line on the firewire circuitry.

Correct. The GND pins on the USB header connect to the case (which is grounded by the PSU, so plugging a USB header into the 1394 header would be like putting a wire between the +12 and the case (grounded). I think Ratdude747 has the only possible explanation as to why it didn't happen before.

[ratdude747]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

SO we can safely assume that this was user error, even tho ASUS is still a piece of shit.

My question is why did it short now and not then, when it was built and power on for the first time?

because it must have been a poor connection. either that, or it was a recent mistake.

[Mad_Professor]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

SO we can safely assume that this was user error, even tho ASUS is still a piece of shit.

My question is why did it short now and not then, when it was built and power on for the first time?