I walked into the Computer Room at Chez Boca to a squealing UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply), but unlike last time this happened [1] the computers were still powered up. I shutdown both computers and decided to deal with them after lunch. There wasn't much else I could do at that point, seeing how the power was out for our entire neighborhood.
After lunch, the power was restored, so I went to power up the Linux box and … it didn't come on.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX!
I checked the internal cables to make sure none have come loose, evicted multiple dust bunnies, and even changed the CMOS (Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) battery just to be sure. But nothing I did made the Linux box power up.
I called my friend Tom Singkornrat (not only is he wise in the way of hardware, but he lives less than a mile away) and he said that it could be one of two possible reasons—it could be a bad power supply, or it could be a bad mother board. He had a spare power supply I could try. Why not?
The only difficult part of the whole procedure was unscrewing the old power supply from the case. Other than that, the new power supply fit right in and it powered right up. Great! But for some reason the keyboard wasn't working …
I found the issue with the keyboard [2].