How to Destroy Your Computer 129
Dan's Data writes
" Destroying your own computer is every user's right
and is the pattern of behaviour expected by the manufacturer
s and, especially, repair personnel, whose very livelihood
is put in peril by those users who perversely persist in
correctly upgrading their equipment." Just read it.
Its funny.
My favorites... (Score:1)
Later on, he bought a CD-ROM drive. He found it didn't work, and called me to help him. He told me that he had plugged one of the plugs in backwards. I told him that that wouldn't break it, and looked inside his computer. I was wrong. He apparently managed to force the 4-pin power cable in upside down (first chipping off the plastic on both sides).
One that I did: I was trying to reverse-engineer the 3-pin CPU fan plug on my motherboard. I was measuring the voltage between 2 pins, and my hand slipped. I shorted +12V to 0V. Fortunatly, Epox had stuck a fuse on the fan plug, so instead of frying my whole motherboard, I only fried the fan plug (which is now plugged into one of the two other fan plugs).
- pm
hmm... grinning is not enough (Score:1)
with the letters " JUST DESTROY IT " on it
and then wear it at work . . .
Now, there is my MESSAGE :
YES, READ THIS ARTICLE ! DESTROY IT !
CRASH YOUR DAMNED COMPUTER YOU DONT LIKE ANYWAY
THEY ARE JUST THERE TO OPPRESS YOU -
AND TECHIES DONT NEED SLEEP -
HELL, THEY ACTUALLY WANT TO WORK AT NIGHT
THE WHOLE WEEKEND THROUGH . . .
DONT CARE IF THEY WHINE AND BEG -
THEY WANT TO SUFFER ! LET THEM SUFFER REAL HARD
DESTROY YOUR COMPUTER NOW,
SMASH IT BURN IT HURT IT . . . .
WIPE ALL FILES ON YOUR HARD-DISK OUT
ALL OF THEM
TRASH theonlycopyofmyphdthesis.doc NOW !
TECHIES JUST WAIT FOR THAT . . .
AND DONT FORGET TO COOMMMMMPLAAAAIINNNNN !!!!!
AS ALWAYS THE TECHIES ARE AT FAULT
NEVER THE OS . . . THEY JUST PRETEND !
WINDOWS WOULD NEVER SELL THAT GOOD IF
IT WOULDNT BE THE BEST OS OF THE WORLD -
TECHIES ARE UNFRIENDLY - THEY USE A STRANGE
LANGUAGE NOBODY UNDERSTANDS AND ALWAYS WANT
TO LOOK AT YOUR PRIVATE FILES . . .
AND THEY TELL YOU IF YOU SMELL !
PUT THEM TO TEST NOWWWWW !
DESTROY IT ! BURN THE SUCKER !
. . . thanks. Everything is fine now.
Im happy and dont want to hurt anyone.
I worked for three years in tech support.
If I ever meet Bill Gates, I swear I will
bite his tie off -
You can quote me on that.
Short-circuit the Power supply (Score:1)
as linux-server. Since I needed another serial
port which the board did not provide (actually,
even the first serial was on an ISA-Card), I
plugged in another card, turned on the machine
and - nothing. Not even the ventilator of the
power supply started. As soon as I removed the
serial card, it began to work again. Obviously,
something on the card was able to produce a
short-circuit which not only affected the board
but the power-supply as well. Weird.
The machine worked for several months as server;
had an Adaptec 1542 controller and was later
replaced with an 80486. With this 80486 I lost
two harddisks. The first had a headcrash during
a weekend. When I came back, the thing made an
awful noise, was very hot and refused to do
anything. So I replaced it and opened the disk.
Looks very nice on my shelf, with the marks. The
other disk I lost was due to inactivity. The thing
had been working for months until I took down the
machine for about an hour for a hardware-upgrade.
After that, it didn't work anymore. I guess it
was a crack on the circuit which widened while
the disk cooled down.
When I last month replaced the server with a new
one, I remarked another interesting fact: break
off one wing of the processor-ventilator and it
not only makes a terrific noise but also vibrates
heavily. I guess the board wouldn't honor that
if running for a long time.
Speaking of weird hardware-damage: Did anyone else
ever have a processor _glowing_? I had that with
an AMD x86, 80 Mhz. A cable was touching it, so
the plastic melted. On the processor there was
that spot with the plastic on it, which began
to glow afterwards, even after removal of the
cable. The socket was molten, the processor broke
into two parts when I removed it.
Frightening times (Score:1)
Methods of destruction (Score:1)
Genius HD destruction (Score:1)
Death By AGP-Overdrive. (Score:1)
This happened under...(drum roll)...Windows!
Death By AGP (Score:2)
The best I've been able to do is destroy an older monitor with my new PII 400MHZ, 128 MB, and AGP 2x (w/ 8 megs) while playing a game of Unreal! I almost pissed my pants when the picture tube exploded while I was playing!
Frightening times (Score:1)
Why would you want to destroy your computer? (Score:1)
Monitor Destruction HOWTO-ouch (Score:1)
and they had the cheek to phone up and ask us to fix the printer under guarantee!!!
the mess a transparency makes when it goes through a printer fuser is pretty cool..
Frightening times (Score:1)
I've attached power supply cables backwards as well. My system did nothing and nothing was damaged, but it scared me half to death. I will forever have "black cables go on the *inside*" etched in my mind. Also, one of my friends accidentally put a 486 CPU in at a 90 degree angle from the correct position. He was lucky: when he powered up the system, nothing happened, and nothing was hurt. Again, though: it scared the hell out of us.
And all the PC screws I've ever seen have been basic Phillips heads.
--Lenny
//"You can't prove anything about a program written in C or FORTRAN.
It's really just Peek and Poke with some syntactic sugar."
Blue Sparks: Frightening but cool. (Score:1)
About four months after I bought my current monitor, the display went inexplicably dead. After a day or so, whenever I turned on the monitor, 2-inch long blue sparks would shoot out of the power supply in back, scorching my table and making impressive crackling noises. I showed it to my friends and they all agreed: it was seriously cool.
It was still well within warranty, so I shipped it back to Princeton with a nice note about the lightning. A few weeks later, I got it back, all fixed and fully functional. The note attached simply said: "resoldered power supply...".
I don't know if the electrical arcs hurt anything internally, but I'm still happily using this monitor 2 years later, so...
--Lenny
//"You can't prove anything about a program written in C or FORTRAN.
It's really just Peek and Poke with some syntactic sugar."
Printer Destruction HOWTO-yummy (Score:1)
When you fire up the printer for the next job, people will swear its luchtime when the onions hit the fuser sizzling.
Paper jams? No, that means you are not doing it right. Try, try again. Sometimes you have to get the right consistency on the paper ingredients. Be sure to print out a few memos. Make a copy for everyone.
Blue Sparks: Frightening but cool. (Score:1)
Also related to heat damage are the electrolytic capacitors. They are easily guessed by the toasted and 0darkened areas of printed circuit boards. The oil in them boils away and they go out of tolerance. Bad capacitors cause the picture to get scrunched or out of sync. In the worse case, the sync gets so bad, the flyback circuit burns up including the transformer. While the transformer itself costs about $20-$50, the repair is worth $150 if you like to make money...
Most people now days will junk the bad monitor and try to buy something that is properly designed. It seems like engineers of yesterday built the chassis with absolute maximum ratings in mind to cut costs.
Most monitors will have an operating life. Increase this by keeping them cool. Allow them to breathe. Don't place stuff on top. A small fan could be very promising.
Genius HD destruction (Score:1)
Monitor Destruction HOWTO (Score:2)
Good thing it was shut off while I was at work. When I was home, I turned it on, the screen had a slight flicker. I smelled something burning, but could not determine its source. It got real bad. That is when I discovered the smoke. When the cover was off, I had to scrape the shit off the high voltage section. It looked like it was close to catching fire...
A friend found a great way to destroy a 27 inch TV. Water a plant on the top when the tube is nice and hot. The neck will crack. That TV was a good source of parts for many projects.
shorts. (Score:1)
-mike kania
Death By AGP (Score:1)
Stan "Myconid" Brinkerhoff
Frightening times (Score:1)
Stan "Myconid" Brinkerhoff
Another way to destroy your computer: (Score:1)
The kicker: This guy teached a intro to computer hardware class.
Using Xfree to destroy a monitor (Score:1)
My only concern (Score:1)
My apologies (Score:1)
My near miss.. (Score:1)
Back when I was still using a 486, I was having some trouble with a game controller. I reached in back of the running machine to make sure the plug was firmly seated in the game port and **POP**!! The screen went blank, the fans stopped turning and I got this terrible sinking feeling. But luck was with me that day - all I had to do was unplug the sound card and put it back in again, then all was well. (Everything was securely fastened and properly aligned to begin with - so I still don't know exactly what went wrong.) Needless to say that was the very LAST time I touched any wires on a running machine.
Other tips along these same lines... (Score:1)
Overclocking is an important part of any computer upgrade, because it makes your chips go much faster. However, you have to be careful when you overclock because sometimes, overclocking a chip can cause it to work incorrectly or damage it.
I learned this lesson many years ago when I overclocked my 286 chip to 300 MHz. (That's 286 MHz, right?) Well at this point the chip stopped working.
Computer chips work on blue smoke. I know this because when the blue smoke left the 286, it didn't work no more.
"Latch-up" (Score:1)
This is indeed addressed in modern IC designs, though I don't know if it's implemented widely outside of CMOS. For CMOS circuits, you just place a fair number of "ohmic contacts" between the supply rails and substrate regions/wells. This ensures that even if a voltage spike forward-biases a junction that should never be forward-biased, it will be pulled back to the proper voltage levels in short order regardless of SCR effects.
OTOH, hot-swapping components that weren't designed to be hot-swapped is still usually a Bad Idea...
Another way to destroy your computer: (Score:1)
I've also done some really stupid things in my life like adjusting a potentiometer with a metal screwdriver on a monitor with the case off and the monitor on.
Apple - upgrade hell (Score:1)
Ever try installing ram in a 9500?
First you need a flathead to open the case, then you must remove every single pci card (not easy in a fully loaded Pro-tools system) and the processor daughterboard.
Then you have to unplug all the cables to the logic board (motherboard to the rest of us)and remove the fiddly little plastic assembly that holds the leds and power button (i think you need apple authorised fingers to do it properly).
Then you use a philips head screwdriver to unscrew the logicboard, and slimpy slide it out (harder than it sounds, (lots a little plastic clippy things))
Then you pop in the ram, and do it all backwards to re-assemble.
Remove the motherboard to upgrade the ram. Someone was thinking.......
Howto destroy a MB (Score:1)
fun with floppies (Score:1)
After powering off, I ended up clipping the melted cable and duct-taping the others it oozed on. I've got the floppy still running in another 486 box to this day. It's not the most reliable, but it still works. Quite amazing! The power supply still works, too, although I occasionaly smell smoke every now and then...
DEC Techs on a Mac (Score:1)
We had a failed HD in one Mac. The tech unhooked everything from the back of the Mac and replaced the HD. He then hooked the monitor up to the AUI port on the Ethernet Card.
It stated smoking. So he turned it off, then drove 3 hours back to his supplier. The next morning he drove back for 3 hours, replaced the NIC and then promply plugged the monitor right back into the AUI port again.
More Smoke. He got it right the third time. That made for 18 hours of driving time. All because he could not plug a monitor into the port with the picture of a monitor on it.
That reminds me of a joke:
Q: How long does it take for a DEC engineer to replace a lightbulb.
A: It depends on how many trips to his car until he runs out of spair bulbs.
He makes it sound so easy (Score:1)
In climates like here in Perth, leaving a fan disconnected (or if it stops) will do a lot more damage.
Over the years, I have destroyed two network cards -- one through overheating (the computer was in a room with bad ventilation and it was 40 degrees C outside. There was smoke comming out through the fan) and two by lightning, a motherboard (it was a long time ago, but I know a capacitor exploded), and a few other components.
Smoke? (Score:1)
There was a good reason though -- I was experimenting with making my own joystick with two potentiometers and a couple of microswitches. I had a load of wires plugged directly in to the little holes in the female joystick port on the SB card in my PC.
Made a little adjustment, plugged of the wires back into the wrong hole, and cay you say "short circuit"
110V220V (Score:1)
Had to open the PSU (naturally marked 'do not open') remove a few bits, until, right at the bottom, I found the fuse wich had blown then spent 15 mins trying to get a new one back in cos it wasn't designed to be replaceable. -- 'duh'!
ribbon cables (Score:1)
...I haven't had to match up the red wire with pin 1 in years!
Simplest and best way to destroy a computer (Score:1)
I have found that the best way to make any perfectly good computer unusable and worthless
surprised the article didn't mention that
Why would you want to destroy your computer? (Score:1)
RAM (Score:1)
I plugged the new SIMMS, sat them up, and repeatedly rebooted the PC until it found all its RAM.
I then put the computer on a little pedestal between two desks and jammed the desks against it so that it didn't move.
If the computer stayed where it was it would be fine, if the moved?
Don't tell the users, that the thing
dead? (Score:1)
Mike
--
dead? (Score:1)
Mike
--
Software-only destruction of Hard Drives (Score:1)
Tooless cases and torx screws... (Score:1)
Power Supplies (Score:1)
Thats funny (Score:1)
And that certainly wasn't the worst thing I did to that computer... soldering wires directly onto an edge-connector, cutting tracks on the motherboard.. it lasting a surprisingly long time considering.
The other Amiga, fortunately, had standard phillips screws.
destroying your computer (Score:1)
Power Connection to Motherboard (Score:1)
When connecting an older style, "AT" power supply to a motherboard, the two-part power connector offers a marvellous opportunity for destruction. Make sure at all costs to avoid the plug configuration shown below.
This configuration, with the black wires towards the centre, will cause the computer to work perfectly. Reversing the two plugs so that the red wires are towards the centre will, gratifyingly, destroy the motherboard.
If only I had know that when I was putting together my new Linux box
My favorite... (Score:1)
Oddly enough, it didn't do much, after that...
-r13
Static is your friend... (Score:1)
It seems that on many (most?) PC motherboards, one side of the speaker connector is constantly at +5V relative to the chassis, not 0 as you might expect. I once managed to destroy a speaker by mis-connecting it across the +5 side of the speaker header and one of the ground pins for one of the LEDs, and leaving it that way for a while before realizing there wasn't any sound.
Destroying stuff is fun! (Score:1)
Monitors have rights, too.
Apple logo (Score:1)
Smoke.. Fire.. Pop.. (Score:1)
Why would you want to destroy your computer? (Score:1)
Static is your friend... (Score:1)
"more human than human, that's our moto" -BladeRunner
Simplest and best way to destroy a computer.... (Score:1)
Destroying stuff is fun! (Score:1)
(That's Anti Destroying Computers (Unless It Has Linux Installed) Prevention For America.)
Yep, Just another waste of time organization that has a bunch of single-minded people with little to no thought in their head besides selfish ideas.
Just another weird rant by a weird guy.
---
Jon Berube
PovRayMan
---
Destroying stuff is fun! (Score:1)
---
Jon Berube
PovRayMan
---
My turn to chime in... (Score:1)
The worst I've done is fried an LED display, trying to screw it back into place while the computer was on, after adjusting it to show some strange Mhz amount.
But I didn't learn my lesson quickly enough, as later that very same day, I was screwing something back into the case, again with the computer on (how else?). The screw jumped out from under the screwdriver, and landed on top of the modem... one coruscating electrical bolt later, my computer had rebooted. Fortunately, nothing got fried. Needless to say, I've been very careful since. :-)
Thats funny (Score:1)
First of all the guy mentions all these weird screws. Personally, I've opended up a whole bunch of computer cases (Apple, Commodore, Gateway, Sony, Packard Bell, Compaq, and a few others) and all of the screws are flat head.
Second, on an old gateway 486 my roommate put the power supply cables in wrong and turned it on. Nothing happen. He simply switch the cables and it worked fine. Maybe it was a good motherboard.
Thats funny (Score:1)
Personally, I think companies go through phases which they change their screws. People complain about weird ones and they switch back.
destroying your computer (Score:1)
1) User's don't need the help, they know all this already
2) If the users had this, they wouldn't read it anyway
Another tale of the clueless user.... (Score:1)
destroying your computer (Score:1)
destroying your computer (Score:1)
One Liquid they forgot to mention... (Score:1)
Right Nate?
Kas
--
Games with Voltage-Switches (Score:1)
Well, 110V arn't 220V, are they?
How to destroy a Sparc (Score:1)
and it only had a Com Terminal as there was no video card.
One day a guy I know gave me one he had lying around cool, me thinks. I put it in, put a monitor on it and fired up the machine.
Of course, nothing worked. I eventually got so frustrated that I stabbed it with a screw driver.
BANG !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Fried the card, but the sparc was ok.
phew!!!!!!!
Found out later that the reason the "spare" monitor was lying around, was cos it was broken too.
Another way to destroy your computer: (Score:1)
Why would you want to destroy your computer? (Score:1)
Why would you want to destroy your computer? (Score:1)
incomplete article (Score:1)
tell some of the important do's and donts to keep an intact computer. They don't even metion the hazard of urionation, and defication directly on the power suppy, or processor. Don't forget hitting your machine repetedly with large hard objects, and then proceeding spray arisal air freshioners all over glowing oblects when you start to smell burning silicon... I tell you, there are some things that really should be added...
Craters (Score:1)
A friend of mine showed me the most brilliant thing I have ever seen!
And old 486 motherboard had shorted out somewhere and burnt a gaping hole through the board itself. The funny thing is, that it'd only damaged half of the RAM in the machine, two SIMM's worked fine and the other two were screwed.... go figure!!!..
Plugging the motherboard cables the wrong way. (Score:1)
This wound up not only destroying the motherboard and power supply, but also destroying all of the devices she had in there (HD controller, video card, sound card, etc - it was an old 486).
Then, of course, she yelled at me for breaking her computer. Denial is always the first step...
fun with eproms! (Score:1)
Gee, I never knew they lit up!
destroying your computer (Score:1)
Please please, if you don't know what your doing, don't open up your computer, or even look at it wrong. (Don't understimate the look, I, as a good techie, only have to open the case to fix computers, they're scared of me) looks are powerful.
ribbon cables (Score:1)
Destroying stuff is fun! (Score:1)
Hey whats your problem with linux?! Linux can beat windows 98 (or any other microsoft product) any day! If you think windows is better than linux than you got problems! Even if it has windows on it you should not hurt the computer! it is like killing some one bacasue they cew a specific type of gum. Poor computers! P.A.C.K (people against computer killers) Iamsleepy
Another tale of the clueless user.... (Score:1)
:)
Steven
"Television is the retina of the mind's eye."
-From "Minds Eye", on the Tempest 2K soundtrack.
One Liquid they forgot to mention... (Score:1)
Josh
hmm... (Score:1)
heh