Yesterday there was an explosion in the computer box. Well, not so much an explosion as a popping, smoking, and ceasing to work. And everyone knows, once the magic black smoke escapes from electronics, you can never put it all back in to make things work again. (This situation is why I didn’t make a post yesterday.)
At the end of the day, after the computer had been mostly repaired, we had the best bus ride ever. Ever. The weather had gotten worse all day, and by the time we were done everyone else at LDB had been taken back to the safety of town. So, we had Ivan to ourselves. But, more important than leg room is that Shuttle Bill was our driver. Despite the bad weather, and Bill having the day off, he came out and took us home in spectacular time.
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- Elio feeds BLAST
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- Secondary alignment tests continue, to make sure the fix worked
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- Matt solders some new resistors to fix a board
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- After the explosion, Mark and I give the box a visual and olfactory inspection. The bad board was partially located by smell (photo from Matt)
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- Partially emptied computer box, after finding the damaged part
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- Circuit boards removed from the computer box
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- Watchdog circuit, simple and hard to damage
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- One of the flight computer motherboards. Not simple, and luckily undamaged
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- Good BLASTBus PCI card. (The BLASTbus is a signal bus we invented to talk to our ACS and DAS)
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- Damaged PCI card. Can you spot all three differences?
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- Test setup to boot computer and breathe big sigh of relief upon discovering that it still works
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- I reassemble the box, with a replacement for the busted PCI card (photo from Matt)
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- The weather at LDB, for which it was kindly suggested we might want to leave now
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- The BLAST Bus. Passengers for the best Ivan the Terrabus ride ever
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- Natalie, BLAST sticker, thumb
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- Mattracks truck, driven by LDB station manager Dave Sullivan
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- Notice how you can see nothing else through all the snow
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- Matt, across from me. He got up to photograph the Mattracks too
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- Dave passing us just before the hill, in some serious snow
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