Comment My run-ins with electronic destruction (Score 3, Interesting) 1352
Hmm, let's see what I can find in the back of my head at this hour....
1. Back doing some PC tech stuff in a class I took a couple years ago back in high school, we had a couple P1 and 386/486 mobos around, so the teacher would have us use those, god forbid we touch the P3(smart guy haha ;))! So we would do voltage readings with multimeters on the ISA/EISA ports and on the PSU pins with a back probe while it was on and connected to a HD/CD. So after we finished, me and my partner got curious and started tripping pins with the back probe wire we had. Eventually we found out how to trip the PSU and shut it off due to a short we found across the ISA socket. We kept doing this over and over, moved on to removing RAM while it was one and pulling the power on the IDE devices and stuff. We didn't blow anything up that time but everything seemed to work fine after.
2. This wasn't me but another group in my electronics class in HS. We were doing more voltage testing on PSUs in our basic electronics class this time, and 2 smart guys decided to take paper clips and metal wires and stick them inside the AT PSUs while they were on. An explosion, lotsa sparks, tripped circuit breakers, and a pissed teacher later we found that the PSU had still worked, just 2 of the IDE power plug didn't work.
3. My friend had purchased a little 1.53GHz P4 CPU, and bought a very cheap motherboard, some offbrand name. Well as he was driving around crazily like usual, the the CPU unit was in his trunk upside down so the CPU/heatsink was hanging. You all know how heavy those P4 heatsinks are! So the heatsink clip breaks off the motherboard, and goes crashing around for another 10 min till he gets to my house. When he brings it over, he notices that his computer keeps shutting down, we open it up, look inside, and the CPU was burning hot besides the fact the heatsink was off. We saw the heatsink did plenty of damage and knocked dings all over the case but didn't touch any chipsets luckily. Our solution was simple......duct tape! Yes he had that heatsink somehow strapped down tightly with duct tape. Don't ask me how he did it, but I was afraid the tape would somehow catch fire. Sure enough he gave it to me recently after he upgraded for a server. I took the heatsink off and to my suprise the CPU came out too! The thermal grease basically glued it to the heatsink, so I had to take a flat head screwdriver and pry it off. It went flying a bit, bent a pin or two, I fixed them, put it back together, and walla it worked!
4. Someone at my dad's office who worked in the field somehow dropped one of those rugged outdoor special laptops off a 2 story building. It went flying to the ground with a thud landing LCD screen open flat onto the ground. As you can imagine the guy was pretty much ghost white. They rushed down to check it out, turns out that the thing survived! Perfectly, there was no damage to any components, just the RF wireless network access antena was a flimsy aluminum strip, it bent in half, but still worked!
5. At a small buisness I had worked for a while, had a server in the back storage room that backed up their tax files (it was some tax/investment buisness). There was no AC back there so they left the side window open that just opened 6" to a tall cinder block wall. So they never go back there, and it rains a couple times. I come back and turn on the server monitor, it makes a this LOUD screeching noise as it warms up. I quickly turn it off and run out of the room(wouldn't you?). I told my boss and he just says, "Oh, we left the window open over the weekend, some of the rain musta got on the monitor, it's ok right?" I just shook my head lol. So we got a broom, and went back, we poked the monitor power switch with the end of the broomstick from outside the door, then as it turned on we flipped and hid around the other side of the wall. As it warmed up the screeching quieted, then we noticed smoke comming up from the monitor, but we realized it was water vapor when it didn't smell like it. The thing still worked fine though, still is there to this day, makes that horrible screeching noise every time we turn it on. Hopefully it doesn't explode one day, I've kind of quite working there so I hope I'm safe =).
6. I think one of the craziest experiences I've had with a PC was building a really cheap one once for some guy. He didn't pay me crap, so I charged him $20 for one of my old cases, I thought it still worked right anyway. So I get the boards in, CPU, RAM, HD, CDs, and I fire the thing up. POST comes up and everything looks good. Then I start smelling smoke and the fans are billowing out smoke! The damn case speaker wires caught on fire(I found out later)!! I quickly ripped the cord outa the wall and ripped the other accessories out and ran it out back. I opened up the case and noticed the speaker wires were charred and some melted plastic was aroudn the case and board with burn marks. I guess it was a fault motherboard because I don't think a PC speaker would cause that, I had clearly checked and double checked which pins I'd plugged the case interfaces to on the motherboard. Well it turns out the motherboard didn't work but the CPU/RAM still did. I took the cheap board back to the store and got a replacement, this time I had to buy a new case, what was I gunna tell the guy, I blew up his computer? So in the end, I got it working, I made about $20 off this stupid thing, and we all lived happily ever after. =P
I probably have some other crazy stories I can't remember, but I guess I'll tell my children about them one day hehe.
1. Back doing some PC tech stuff in a class I took a couple years ago back in high school, we had a couple P1 and 386/486 mobos around, so the teacher would have us use those, god forbid we touch the P3(smart guy haha
2. This wasn't me but another group in my electronics class in HS. We were doing more voltage testing on PSUs in our basic electronics class this time, and 2 smart guys decided to take paper clips and metal wires and stick them inside the AT PSUs while they were on. An explosion, lotsa sparks, tripped circuit breakers, and a pissed teacher later we found that the PSU had still worked, just 2 of the IDE power plug didn't work.
3. My friend had purchased a little 1.53GHz P4 CPU, and bought a very cheap motherboard, some offbrand name. Well as he was driving around crazily like usual, the the CPU unit was in his trunk upside down so the CPU/heatsink was hanging. You all know how heavy those P4 heatsinks are! So the heatsink clip breaks off the motherboard, and goes crashing around for another 10 min till he gets to my house. When he brings it over, he notices that his computer keeps shutting down, we open it up, look inside, and the CPU was burning hot besides the fact the heatsink was off. We saw the heatsink did plenty of damage and knocked dings all over the case but didn't touch any chipsets luckily. Our solution was simple......duct tape! Yes he had that heatsink somehow strapped down tightly with duct tape. Don't ask me how he did it, but I was afraid the tape would somehow catch fire. Sure enough he gave it to me recently after he upgraded for a server. I took the heatsink off and to my suprise the CPU came out too! The thermal grease basically glued it to the heatsink, so I had to take a flat head screwdriver and pry it off. It went flying a bit, bent a pin or two, I fixed them, put it back together, and walla it worked!
4. Someone at my dad's office who worked in the field somehow dropped one of those rugged outdoor special laptops off a 2 story building. It went flying to the ground with a thud landing LCD screen open flat onto the ground. As you can imagine the guy was pretty much ghost white. They rushed down to check it out, turns out that the thing survived! Perfectly, there was no damage to any components, just the RF wireless network access antena was a flimsy aluminum strip, it bent in half, but still worked!
5. At a small buisness I had worked for a while, had a server in the back storage room that backed up their tax files (it was some tax/investment buisness). There was no AC back there so they left the side window open that just opened 6" to a tall cinder block wall. So they never go back there, and it rains a couple times. I come back and turn on the server monitor, it makes a this LOUD screeching noise as it warms up. I quickly turn it off and run out of the room(wouldn't you?). I told my boss and he just says, "Oh, we left the window open over the weekend, some of the rain musta got on the monitor, it's ok right?" I just shook my head lol. So we got a broom, and went back, we poked the monitor power switch with the end of the broomstick from outside the door, then as it turned on we flipped and hid around the other side of the wall. As it warmed up the screeching quieted, then we noticed smoke comming up from the monitor, but we realized it was water vapor when it didn't smell like it. The thing still worked fine though, still is there to this day, makes that horrible screeching noise every time we turn it on. Hopefully it doesn't explode one day, I've kind of quite working there so I hope I'm safe =).
6. I think one of the craziest experiences I've had with a PC was building a really cheap one once for some guy. He didn't pay me crap, so I charged him $20 for one of my old cases, I thought it still worked right anyway. So I get the boards in, CPU, RAM, HD, CDs, and I fire the thing up. POST comes up and everything looks good. Then I start smelling smoke and the fans are billowing out smoke! The damn case speaker wires caught on fire(I found out later)!! I quickly ripped the cord outa the wall and ripped the other accessories out and ran it out back. I opened up the case and noticed the speaker wires were charred and some melted plastic was aroudn the case and board with burn marks. I guess it was a fault motherboard because I don't think a PC speaker would cause that, I had clearly checked and double checked which pins I'd plugged the case interfaces to on the motherboard. Well it turns out the motherboard didn't work but the CPU/RAM still did. I took the cheap board back to the store and got a replacement, this time I had to buy a new case, what was I gunna tell the guy, I blew up his computer? So in the end, I got it working, I made about $20 off this stupid thing, and we all lived happily ever after. =P
I probably have some other crazy stories I can't remember, but I guess I'll tell my children about them one day hehe.
