A Great Day Hits the Crapper

Well Friday was actually shaping up to be a great day in our part of the world. Sent my guy out to pickup a load of stuff from a Dodge dealership. By the call it did not sound all that great but when he got back it was awesome. 3 full servers, 12 towers, boxes of cable and all that. Just the stuff I wanted to see. Well the employees had already gone home for the day so I decided to do some tear down...I sent my partner out to do another pickup from a repeat customer.

So I started my tear down and found the following items:


Starting pulling boards out of one of the smaller servers and this popped out.


This one came out of the next server, smaller board but so impressive


This also came out of the same server as the last one.




As did this one.


This is the motorola gold cap that was residing on one of the boards.

As you can see I had reason to be excited. I was doing the happy gold dance big time. Then the phone rang!
The call was from my partner who told me that the 1 ton van that he had taken on the pickup had stalled and now was acting like a dead battery. Peachy....He got it pulled off the side of the road. I told him to try the battery cables and maybe get a jump. 20 minutes later he called and said that it was running again after a jump.
I thought the issue was complete so I went back to tear down...Well the phone rang again. He tried turning the van off and it would not restart again...Most likely a dead battery or dead alternator was my theory. So I told him to get a jump and bring it back....I had the wife reschedule the pickup for Monday. Once again I thought the issue was complete.
Well that is the point where life bent me over....20 more minutes passed and the phone rang AGAIN! ARG!
Well this time the news was much worse...The van had started to make a loud banging noise and then died in a great big puff of smoke....He got out and looked and we had thrown a rod down through the pan....So one deceased van....Just lovely. So I called the tow truck and arranged for a ride for my partner and got that taken care of.
But things finally did work out....The tow truck driver made an offer on the van, and gave us a free tow....When I went to give him the title he showed me another van he had, 6 years newer than the one that just died and made me a great deal. So while Friday was in the crapper, today is looking pretty good.

Some very impressive boards. I am wondering what a car dealership is doing with servers? Perhaps some other dealerships would have them aswell? Sorry about the old van. I had to replace four tires on my p/u yesterday and got a little weepy, $540. Mike.

They were servers but different kinds of servers...One was a standard network server, just basically a computer on steroids...The other 2 were telecom servers, used for controlling complicated phone systems and so on. I am sure that there are other uses but that is the main one I know. This was a large dealership, they have 12 buildings on their lot and a lot of computers that all have to run together so I am sure that has something to do with it. I would be willing to bet that most large dealerships would have them and maybe even some of the smaller ones.

Yeah the van was a loss but it did its time and did its job well. I paid $900 for it....24 hours later it helped me deliver a load of e-scrap that brought in $8000....So it was certainly paid for lol....Just a pain to have to find something new and get it broken in and all that.

Sweeeeeeeeet!

I can just picture you doing the HG dance and getting that first call then back to work, dancing again and getting the next call, etc, etc, etc. (as the king of Siam would say....while dancing!).

Dee, I've met him,,He could stand to do a little more dancing. LOL real nice score tho, I'm jealous !!

great job man

Originally Posted by Mechanic688

Dee, I've met him,,He could stand to do a little more dancing. LOL real nice score tho, I'm jealous !!

Quite true Mech LOL Once I get my 300 pounds to shake it is hard to get them to stop LOL