Worked on friend's old Pentium 166 running Warp 3 on weekend.  Box will
freeze each day, sometimes in half an hour, the next 3 hours.
No discernible time frame.   Screen remains displayed at whatever activity
it was at.  Warm reboot unavailable.  Only solution is kill power
switch.   Until it appears to cool down nothing displays when rebooting. 
No hard drive activity, no bios display, screen blank.  No peripheral
drives function.  Cpu and hard drive function as normal once cool down
period has passed.

 Appears one of 3 possibilities:

  1. A chip on board is failing.    Throw away board
   2. Power supply is fluctuating/failing.   Have multimeter to test
voltage.  Is that sufficient?  How much voltage variance is normal?
  3.  Computer in an old house attached to 2 power bars on 1 electric
outlet.    There must be 6 to 8 plugs attached to the same outlet.
        Would the computer freeze from too many power attachments on power bars?

 Fellow is a pensioner who worked on military electronics thirty years ago
and informs me that the draw from all these cords from 1 outlet
would not exceed capacity.  Am skeptical of that as I do not believe he
realizes the sensitivity of computers to voltage.

Can other electrical devices attached to same outlet disturb the computer? 
 There is the computer, monitor, printer, cable modem, router,
cordless telephone, some type of household battery charger and perhaps
another I can not remember.  Further the cordless phone base
which is an old model (maybe 20 years) sits right beside the computer.  

 I suspect interference from another device but the old fellow thinks he
knows all about electronics compared to myself and will not change
anything on my speculation.  He cannot spend even $20 replacing parts at
present, therefore best option appears trying to remove
interference sources first.   

Am I on the right track?

        Cal




 
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