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Antisocial Hardware?

Posted by Cliff on from the it-really-shouldn't-do-that dept.

87C751 asks: "Over the weekend, I happened upon a deal: 10/100 PCI NICs for $1.99. I bought two and installed one in my Linux box. The box came up to POST, and the new NIC started looking for a DHCP server (which I thought was cute, if useless). Once that timed out, boot sequence continued to the message "NTLDR not found"! In an attempt to do a PXE net boot, the new NIC had -rewritten my boot sector!- Granted, a few minutes with a GRUB boot floppy set things right again, but why in the world is J. Random piece of hardware arrogant enough to frob my disc? Has anyone else been bitten by antisocial hardware?"

6 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. The Dingo Ate Your Boot Sector by HotNeedleOfInquiry · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The NIC did not eat your boot sector. I'm very familiar with the design that appears on the web page you posted and there's no way that the NIC could have done it. It has NO way of storing executable code onboard unless there's a flash or EPROM chip installed.

    I don't know how your boot sector got trashed, but it wasn't the NIC hardware.

    --
    "Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
  2. Re:Beware the cheap NIC by HotNeedleOfInquiry · · Score: 5, Insightful
    "Yes, but there's no centralized MAC address authority"

    Of course there is. It's the IEEE. I know because I shelled out 1600 hard earned dollars for 2^24 MAC numbers. Need their URL?

    --
    "Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
  3. Evil Memory by riclewis · · Score: 5, Funny
    There was a 128MB stick of SDRAM I had once that killed every motherboard I ever put it in. Lost three before I figured it out, and after that I kept it around just to kill old boards.

    Anybody want some cheap RAM?

  4. Power supplies by Jerf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Few people seem to realize it, but if you have a computer that seems cursed, suspect the power supply.

    My (now) wife's computer was toasting everything over a period of years. It didn't stop until I replaced the case, and thus the power supply in passing.

    Nobody ever seems to suspect the power supply if the computer is running, but I suspect that ill-formed power can toast modern electronics.

  5. Jumping to Conclusions by penguinboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Once that timed out, boot sequence continued to the message "NTLDR not found"! In an attempt to do a PXE net boot, the new NIC had -rewritten my boot sector!-

    And you know this how, exactly? Did you try rebooting the machine with the card removed? I had a similar problem with an Intel NIC that wanted to netboot, but fixing the problem was a simple matter of telling the card not to netboot in its BIOS setup. Obviously it wouldn't be impossible for a NIC to rewrite your boot sector (since it's running unrestricted code when the system BIOS initializes it) but it's extremely unlikely.

  6. X-Cable by jsse · · Score: 5, Funny

    Once I got severe electric shock when plugging a parallel cable to a pretty old computer. I believe I saw a flash of lighting between the plug and the socket before I was bounced back.

    The cable has 'changed' internally but no one could tell until one tries to plug it into a live computer - and gets the same shocking experience I had. I didn't throw it away, but mark it with 'X' instead. It becomes 'X-Cable' as in 'X-Men' - it's now possessing super-power after the disaster.

    Spare parallel cable? Sure!