Diagnostic Tools for Testing 2nd Hand Machines?

tom asks: "Buying second hand computers you always run a risk. I was wondering if the slashdot readers could suggest a toolbox of (preferably small) tools that you could take along with you on one or two floppy's so you could run some diagnostics on machines you would consider buying. I'm thinking of the checkdisks, benchmark programs, soundcard checks, USB checks etc."

Comments

Bootable Linux

[pythorlh]

Maybe one of href=http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/08/04/0 00205&mode=nested&tid=106

Re:Bootable Linux

[DasBub]

For the Copy & Paste impaired:

Knoppix, a feature-rich GNU/Linux distro that boots from and lives on a CD.

Well now.

[Neck_of_the_Woods]

The best bet that I have found with buying systems that are used, in bulk is just to go ahead and assume that they are all broke. Assume nothing is going to work right, and factor in how much it is going to cost you in time to get something working and if it is worth it. I had the luck of running up on about 20 p2 systems a year back and purchased them for 30 bucks each, assuming that everything in them was hosed and the most I could get out of them was one or 2 parts on average. I got more on most, 1/2 had failed drives was the biggest problem. Followed by hosed motherboards. All in all I got about 12 full systems out of the 20, and gave them away like candy to people I knew that needed them. Ended up keeping 3 for myself. It all ended well, but assume they are hosed and you will not end up on the short end.

Good luck,

memtest

[kraf]

see subj.

memtest86

[josepha48]

if you are buying intel hardware memtest86 is probably the best thing to start with. (http://www.memtest86.com/)

This will check the compuiter memory but may take a while.

Also you could LInux on a floppy or NetBSD/FreeBSD/Linux on a cdrom and see how it detects the hardware, by looking at the outputs of dmesg, and a few other things like that.

Re:memtest86

[josepha48]

dmesg has this kind of output. Also on a LInux distro you can look at the /proc filesystem. /proc/pci tells all sorts of info about the PCI bus and what is attached. It tells the Bus, device, function, USB stuff, Ethernet stuff, etc. All devices on pci. Alternatively you could use lspci as well. Below is the output of lspci:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX - 82443BX/ZX Host bridge (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX - 82443BX/ZX AGP bridge (rev 03)
00:04.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB PIIX4 ISA (rev 02)
00:04.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82371AB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01)
00:04.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82371AB PIIX4 USB (rev 01)
00:04.3 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 02)
00:09.0 Ethernet controller: Accton Technology Corporation SMC2-1211TX (rev 10)

If the CPU was bad the system would probably not boot. I have not heard of to many intel CPUs being bad, but I'm sure a

Re:memtest86

[josepha48]

Yes use the -vv option of lspci it will give IRQ's for all PCI devices. Also cat /proc/interrupts, as this will tell what is on what IRQ. EG:

0: 280187814 263632587 IO-APIC-edge timer

0 is the irq of the timer in this case and it is adual cpu system. ide usually sits on 14 and 15, etc.

/proc/dma tells of what dma are in use. /proc/cpuinfo tells whole bunches of cpu info, like processor, speed, vendor, extensions, stepping, etc..

look at /proc. the /proc/irq diretory has hte irqs as well, then there is /proc/scsi if you have scsi and there are files that tell vendor make and model of scsi devices.. there is whole lots of info here.

Re:memtest86

[josepha48]

For isa pnp devices there is always pnpdump. This outputs the pnp devices.

For other isa hardware dmesg is probably your best bet. If you compile a kernel with most isa drivers in it it would detect the isa card and should put in the /proc filesystem info on the card. In the case of none pnp isa cards you can look at the jumpers and see what irq they are at. If it is a sound card and it is an old soundblaster it is probably irq 5 or 7. NIC, are probably 7 or 11. Most older hardware may not have usb either so that may not be a concern. I'd probably take a boot floppy and a cd.

Oh and if you watch your computer boot up the screen that flashes for a second or two has ALL The info about your hardware. In fact just going into the bios will in many cases tell you your CPU speed , your hard drive size (use the detect harddrive option) and many other things.

I still say dmesg will tell you lots, even isa stuff.

Get a booting -from CD distro + Compile the kernel

[pruneau]

My .5 cents.

If you manage to get a --on floppy or --on cd distro, make sure you have a compiler and enough room to extract the linux kernel sources, and watch out for signal 11.

It's usually a goot burn test/benchmark of disk/cpu/memory.

Your brain - then some very basic tools

[ivan256]

I don't know about it fitting on a floppy disk, but the best thing you can bring along is in your head already. Base the price you're going to pay on what the terms of the deal are. As is, no refunds? Assume they're all broken, and price accordingly. Guaranteed working? For how long? Again, base your price mainly on the terms, not on the equipment.

After that, there are some simple things you can do to find out what you're getting, assuming they'll let you test every unit. I've written some shell scripts the I've got in an initrd with busybox that I burned to a CD that tells you if the machine can boot, and if so, what hardwhere is in it. It looks for PCI devices, SCSI disks, IDE disks, memory... Basically any info you can pull out of proc. It formats it all nicely on a single screen, so you don't need to type anything, and you spend 45 seconds at a machine max. There's no need for a full OS with apps, or a bootable distribution. I have a single floppy version as well, but it won't find every SCSI device. If you'd like a copy, send me an e-mail.

Case and power supply is all

[shoppa]

IMHO the most likely things to be salvaged from an old PC are the case and power supply. Make sure the case will take a new ATX motherboard, and be sure the power supply has enough oomph to run the new motherboard.

Others might quibble about testing the existing (small) hard drives, floppy drive, and CD-ROM, but I'd just count on trashing these items. They're cheap and plentiful new. Besides, if you're buying massive numbers of machines to administer in a giant cluster, you probably don't need or want any removable media on each machine.

Same goes for whatever existing motherboards might be in the machines. If they're a couple years old you'd probably have to go hunting around the net to find BIOS updates etc. to make them work with your peripherals. It's not worth the time, especially with decent new motherboards available for a half-hour's pay.

DOS, the Diagnostics OS

[the way, what're you]

Bring along a DOS 6.22 boot disk. It contains several useful commands, including chkdsk (check disk), dir (detect incorrect RAM), command (complete machine diagnostics) and fc (fix computer). Happy hunting!

SETI@home

[rainer_d]

If you have the time, try running the SETI@home-client for 24h - and then install FreeBSD, make world, compile KDE3, mozilla and OpenOffice from ports.
(>6 GB disk-space needed, though)

SETI will bring the CPU to the limit. If it's overclocked and/or badly cooled or otherwise unstable, you'll see that quickly.

The rest will stress-test your IO-capabilities ;-)

If it survives all that, then it looks like you can trust the system quite a bit.

Rainer

Re:SETI@home

[Fweeky]

SETI will bring the CPU to the limit. If it's overclocked and/or badly cooled or otherwise unstable, you'll see that quickly.

Better to use a dedicated util for this, like CPUBurn, which will exercise the CPU as much as possible to generate heat and verify everything's still working.

Just because SETI/RC5/etc push CPU usage to 100%, doesn't mean they fully exercise all the various units on the CPU, or even that they'll notice if a bit flips here or there.

Re:Well....

[Nynaeve]

Hard drive testing programs:
IBM -- Drive Fitness Test
Maxtor -- Powermax
Western Digital -- Data Lifeguard Tools Utilities: DLGDIAG
Seagate -- SeaTools
Fujitsu -- Diagnostic Tool
NOTE: Some of these tools may work with all drives, but this (free) collection should cover quite a few drives.

For old machines, use old software.

[Deagol]

My favorite pre-web ftp site (after the original SIMTEL archive went down) was Garbo: ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi. It's web-enabled now (change "ftp" to "http" in the url), though most stuff is really dated now.

Scrounge around the "sysinfo" and "sysutil" directories. There are a bunch of old utils that do what you're looking for.

There was a german DOS utility. I can't remember the name, but I think it was simply "config" (or was it "pcconfig" or "pcinfo"?). Anyway, that utility could identify damned near anything in a PC (CPU, chipsets, memory, motherboard, etc.) and it ran some diagnostics. I tried to locate it again for this post, but I couldn't find it. If anyone knows where it went...

Re:For old machines, use old software.

[Deagol]

Sorry for the self-reply! The util was called PC-CONFIG, and it's at http://www.holin.com. Great package. It's shareware, though. The prices are reasonable, however.

My Mini-CD Consists of..

[xchino]

I cary a 3.5" mini cd full of diagnostics programs for winblows, because god knows you need them when dealing with windows and windows users. Here is a list of what's on the disc. First of all it's a basic MS-DOS bootable disk with all the functionality of a regular MS-DOS boot CD (fdisk, format, edit, etc) and a few utilities such as
Fresh Diagnose
VNC server and viewer
NessusWX
Fresh Diagnose is an excellent benchmark/testing utility.
VNC is for accessing remote desktops (Great for lazy people such as myself)
NessusWX is a windows interface for Nessus security scanner. A must for checking default installations of any OS.
All the extra utilites are freeware. MS-DOS is of course copyrighted.

hth

Linux bootdisk ideas

[Deagol]

To stress the memory, I use both stream (memory benchmark util) and memtest86 (as others have pointed out). For stressing disks, I use bonnie or bonnie++ (disk IO benchmark). To check for bad media, use the "badblocks" command -- it'll destroy any data, so be careful!

I use the dnetc client (distributed.net) to tax the CPU.

Re:Get a booting -from CD distro + Compile the ker

[orangesquid]

~$ gcc explanation_of_signal11.c
gcc: Internal compiler error: program cc1 got fatal signal 11
~$ damn. maybe he/she will follow that link and understand it, then.
sh: damn.: command not found
~$ exit
logout

autoruns

[skotte]

here's an interesting one. let's say you (or someone you know) has just bought a brand new computer. or more or less new. or at any rate you know it works.

but the blarsted thing starts all this junk up when the machine boots! everything fFrom media players, to monitor controllers, to printer and scanner watchdogs, almost certainly some schedule apps, and maybe a couple virusscanners! untold ram is just being gnashed away by a string of programs sitting in the systray!

so, i always, when i go to look at a fFriend's new computer, take autoruns fFrom www.sysinternals.com . conveniently shows every thing which is scheduled to boot fFrom anywhere in the registry or startup directory. lovely lovely app.

that, and a nice task manager (there are many available.) i like A.T.M.

Old DOS program called Troubleshooter

[BigBlockMopar]

My suggestion is an ancient DOS program called Troubleshooter. (ts.exe)

It fits on a floppy, boots, tells you all sorts of stuff, including checking CD-ROM drives, multimedia, video cards, convergence and purity checks for monitors in various modes, everything.

Does memory, CPU, bus tests, hard disk tests.

The only problem is that it's older than Pentium MMX, and I've never seen a newer version. It identifies a Pentium, including the speed, but not MMX. I tried it on a 500MHz Celeron, and it told me that I had a 760MHz Pentium. I tried it on a 1.5 GHz Athlon and it told me that I had a 2500MHz K6.

It's less useful for IDing machines now, but it's still great for doing hardware tests.