elab crashed on the night of 8/14.
none of the P1000 boxes connected to elab seem to be affected.
The motherboard seems to be broken. chip: smsc sch5514D-NS is burning hot. Initially the fan seems to be working correctly.
A diagnosis CD was made and was tried to boot the machine. However it didn't work.
Called Dell Technical Support. This time even the fan is not working, the power LED is a faint yellow, the motherboard is deemed to be broken. Also the fan did not come on this time, and so the power supply is also deemed to be broken.