Turning more things on that had been off for a month....
The living-room projector didn't wake up last night. (Come to think of it, it was working Thursday night, so it's not a sitting-idle issue.) Presumably the lamp has gone bad. It's an expensive item, but, as it happens, I'd already bought the replacement, quite some time ago, for an impending failure that turned out to be a false alarm. So, as long as it's just the lamp, all's well, apart from my needing to find a couple of hours and a flat surface to deal with the changing-a-light-bulb process.
Then, today: I tried to turn the lab Linux box on. The disk-activity light flickers (once per turn-on attempt), but there's no other sign of life. Various green lights on the motherboard are lit up, though, whether I push the button or not. Grrrr!
Ah, well. Tomorrow, the Prius goes in for diagnosis. On consideration, I don't really think it's the known failure mode involving the differential; it sounds more like an electric-motor issue. Which currently isn't getting any warning lights. Curious.
And I can spend some portion of tomorrow fixing computers and projectors. Today went to laundry and watering-system manifolds.
Update: Well, the computer looks to be a cheaper & easier fix than the Prius. (Has to be; I could replace the whole computer for the cost of having the Prius diagnosed, never mind having any work done.) More detailed observation of symptoms: when the disk-activity light flashes briefly on button press, the internal green lights blink off momentarily, as the fans twitch. Connecting a voltmeter across the input to the internal power supply shows a big dip in the 12V at that moment. So... the external power brick (12V, 5A) has maybe gone bad, and can't handle the startup current? Substitute a 12V, 3A supply that's lying around: it seems to work. So, off to Halted in search of a replacement 12V, 5A unit, 'cause I suspect the 3A one might just be a little bit light for running that PC, long-term.
Update 2: Drop-in replacement, $13.95 plus tax and travel. Seems to be working, but Linux is running a long filesystem check. Something about having gone 384 days without a check. I presume it'll come up OK, having gotten to this point.
Update 3: One out of three today... I just changed the light bulb in the projector, and It Still Doesn't Work. I'm guessing the high-voltage supply, maybe the starter circuit, is out of order. Not something I'm likely to fix, especially in the absence of a schematic, and at this point a replacement projector is not at all in the budget, so we'll be without big-screen TV for the foreseeable future.
Oh, well. Paying work resumes tomorrow. Meanwhile, I've got a few hours to work on the project for which I'd turned the lab Linux box back on in the first place....
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