[Peter Neill]

For the second day in a row, my (just) 2yr old Tormach controller has refused to boot.
Yesterday I opened it up, re-seated the card, re-seated the ram, put a new battery in, and then it booted up.
Left it switched on for several hours, but with no actual run-time, then shutdown as normal.

Now again this morning it won't boot up. Not even any beeps this time, just a message on the screen that says "attention, no signal".

Reading through the interweb it seems that this a common issue, and often points to a dead controller, though with no specific mentions of which part of it has gone wrong.
So I'm looking at getting another PC to run Pathpilot on, but the question is what will I need, in terms of specification and configuration to run this?
I've never set up a PC with linux before, or had to install Pathpilot from scratch on a new system.

I'd be very grateful for all the advice you can give me. Thank you
Alternatively if you know a simple fix for this, please let me know.

[Steve303]

Do you have a spare power-supply that you can swap out? I've ran into similar issue and it was the power-supply was dead.

[Sir John]

The "no signal" message is coming from your monitor. The symptoms sound like a power issue. Check to see that you have power to the controller (computer) power supply. If you do, then check inside the controller to see that all the power supply connectors are securely plugged into the motherboard, hard drives, etc. If you have a way to check the power output from the power supply, do so. You can get a power supply tester from Amazon.

[Peter Neill]

I have actually managed to get it to boot now!
Obviously in changing out the battery I lost some Bios settings that stop it waking up when power is supplied. Pressing the button on the front of the PC started it ok.

But now - how do I get into the bios on a tormach controller to reset the wake on power command, and are there any other setting that need to be changed?

Edit: And still thinking about getting a back-up PC for any future failures, so appreciate advice on that too

[jwatte]

To get into the BIOS, you need to press some keyboard button during start-up. Depending on the BIOS brand, it's ususally F2, F12, or Del.
It's totally OK to reset the machine while it's booting the Linux kernel and try again quickly if the button you try doesn't work; no need to wait for it to fully boot to give it an orderly shutdown.

[kstrauss]

And still thinking about getting a back-up PC for any future failures, so appreciate advice on that too

Almost any vaguely modern PC will suffice to run PP. I ran my 770 for several years with an off-lease Dell. Look for something cheap, 8GB, Ethernet, a couple of USB ports and a slot that matches your Mesa card. It shouldn't cost over $100 if a local shop sells used computers. If you're feeling flush and your machine supports SATA, add a 120GB SSD (<$50 from Amazon) for faster boots.