[conspire] looking for good FAQ Websites for CPU heatsink/Fan hardware

[Nick Moffitt]

Rick Moen:
> I am biased against BIOS ROM memory-checking routines generally,
> because in my experience they're close to 100% useless:  Almost all
> RAM defects serious enough to cause system instability turn out,
> apparently, to be too subtle to be detected by the BIOS ROM-based
> checker.

I find the stuff in server-class hardware (HP DL38X series comes to
mind) to be pretty good.  Of course, that's often just an interface to
hardware fault checking already built into the system board.

The real reason why BIOS memory checks will often pass when other things
succeed is that they are most often run *at cold boot* time.  This is
one of the reasons why people insist on running memtest86 (or whatever
it's called these days) for at *least* an hour before trusting a pass
result.  Often a fault detected after six hours that wasn't there the
first cycle through could be attributed to airflow problems in the case.

Also the DL385 G2 systems have that great "ALL POWER TO THE FANS!" mode
on boot.  You'll never have dust problems with those babies!

-- 
"If you carefully examine the intercal package (which       Nick Moffitt
was not available for a month despite emails about it      nick at zork.net
being a 404), you will discover that . is in ESR's
PATH."   -- Joey Hess