Had a chat with a retired IT guy that made me rethink my whole approach to diagnostics

I was helping a buddy move some servers last weekend and his uncle who used to work at IBM in the 80s was there. He saw me with my multimeter and asked what I was testing. I told him I was checking power rails on a old Dell PowerEdge. He kinda laughed and said 'you kids always jump straight to hardware when it's usually a config issue.' At first I brushed it off but then he walked me through three times he'd seen techs swap boards for weeks only to find a bad driver or a firmware setting. Ngl it stung a bit because I've definitely done that myself. Now I'm trying to force myself to spend the first 15 minutes on software and logs before I even open the case. Has anyone else had a older tech change how you troubleshoot?

3 comments

3 Comments

eric_knight720d ago

That older generation had to get creative with their troubleshooting because they couldn't just swap parts and hope for the best. Your new 15 minute rule sounds like a solid approach, and it's humbling to realize how much time we waste chasing hardware ghosts. Good on you for listening to that veteran advice.

the_lee20d ago

I read something recently about how older techs used to actually listen to the sounds hard drives made to diagnose problems. Like they could tell from the clicks and whirs what was failing without even opening the case. That's a whole different level of troubleshooting. It really makes you realize how much we lean on swapping parts instead of actually Thinking about what's going wrong. And yeah the 15 minute rule makes sense, I bet half the time we spend on hardware issues is just running in circles.

eva_thompson20d ago

Whoa wait hold on. He said all that and then just dropped three specific examples off the top of his head? Thats wild. I can barely remember what I had for lunch yesterday let alone three stories from decades ago about firmware issues. Honestly that kind of memory is almost scary. Makes me wonder what else that guy has forgotten to tell people haha.