A good tool that we use is called PC Sentry Plus (http://www.trinitech.biz). It cost about $300 I think but it is great for diagnosing computers that have an error during the startup BIOS process. The card plugs into a PCI or ISA slot and displays a HEX code of what the BIOS is doing in real time and when it hangs you can see what the HEX code is and look it up in the book that comes with it and see what is causing the problem. Saves a lot of time in swapping out cables and hardware when trying to find the culprit. They also sell a boot disk with some memory and hard drive testing utilities but I don't know how good they are.
I am a computer repair tech, and one machine I was called out to fix was this ancient IBM machine. It ran Unix with the kernel dated as 1976. Anwyay, the problem was that the tape drive in this machine was shot. It was a Wangtek tape drive and luckily I managed to find someone who sold them online. Before I would even touch the thing though I had them sign an 'Antiques computer restoration' form, so should it explode or just plain stop working when I come to replace the drive then it wouldn't be my fault! When I opened up the case I am sure you could have done some kind of testing on the dust to show O2 levels in the atmosphere for the past 10 years as it was that thick, NASTY!
Got it fixed though and I think that is probably the oldest piece of hardware that I have had to work on in the field that still works.
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A good tool that we use is called PC Sentry Plus (http://www.trinitech.biz). It cost about $300 I think but it is great for diagnosing computers that have an error during the startup BIOS process. The card plugs into a PCI or ISA slot and displays a HEX code of what the BIOS is doing in real time and when it hangs you can see what the HEX code is and look it up in the book that comes with it and see what is causing the problem. Saves a lot of time in swapping out cables and hardware when trying to find the culprit. They also sell a boot disk with some memory and hard drive testing utilities but I don't know how good they are.
I am a computer repair tech, and one machine I was called out to fix was this ancient IBM machine. It ran Unix with the kernel dated as 1976. Anwyay, the problem was that the tape drive in this machine was shot. It was a Wangtek tape drive and luckily I managed to find someone who sold them online. Before I would even touch the thing though I had them sign an 'Antiques computer restoration' form, so should it explode or just plain stop working when I come to replace the drive then it wouldn't be my fault! When I opened up the case I am sure you could have done some kind of testing on the dust to show O2 levels in the atmosphere for the past 10 years as it was that thick, NASTY!
Got it fixed though and I think that is probably the oldest piece of hardware that I have had to work on in the field that still works.