a tale of bad hardware

[Mike Lambert]

The short story:

  A bad "wall wart" p/s was causing FreeBSD to randomly crash.

The long story:

  I have this old Dell XPS T700r (P3 700) that has been happily running
FreeBSD since 4.4. Upgrades arrived in order: 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, 4.8... and
then the random crashing started.

New ram, still random crashing.
New disk and disk controller, still random crashing.
Different XPS T700r, still random crashing.
Whole new Dell Dimension 4100, still random crashing.
Install FreeBSD 4.9-RELEASE, still random crashing.
Whole new Dell Optiplex 240, still random crashing.
Upgrade to FreeBSD 4-STABLE, still random crashing.
Thinks FreeBSD is broken.
Starts spending more time using iBook.
Notices old problem of KVM still occasionally, mysteriously
  switching from iBook to Dell (switching does _not_ coincide
  with FreeBSD crashes)
Notices occasional KVM switching is now more than occasional.
Hmmm...  Maybe KVM bad? Maybe KVM P/S bad?
Unplugs external "wall wart" power supply from KVM.
KVM no longer mysteriously switches from iBook to Dell.
FreeBSD no longer crashes (uptime: 33 days and counting).

-- 
Michael Lambert
Systems Admin, IT Dept
JEOL USA Inc
http://www.jeol.com