New way to arrange your IDE cables

I had to share this with you all. One of my customers (quite computer literate, built his own box) had problems, blue screens etc. He spent a week trying to sort it himself and was at the clutching at straws state of desperation before he phoned me. My initial guess over the phone from the symptoms he described was dodgy RAM, so I went along to see him. Twenty minutes with GoldMem (thanks to Michael Tulacek for a sweet memory test utility, was linked from Windrivers front page for those that want it)was enough to decide which of his three DIMMs was on the blink. Next stage was to look for the lack of hard disk.
This is what I found:
CDROM and CDRW as master and slave on one IDE cable. Other end of cable plugged into second hard disk!
Other IDE cable plugged into hard disk at one end, remaining two connectors plugged into both primary AND secondary IDE ports on motherboard!
It took me several minutes to stop laughing and recover myself sufficiently to let him know that this one was a definite candidate for Tech Tales ... he's taken it in good spirit though :)
In his defence, I should add that it was a very cramped desktop case, he was tired and out of ideas and a bit spliffed too ... he's usually much more competent than this tale would seem to imply.

What time at night was he trying to do this? Usually for me around 1:30 am is where I start to realize that I become dangerous around electricity...

[quote]Originally posted by Jeff the Brit:
<strong>... My initial guess over the phone from the symptoms he described was dodgy RAM, so I went along to see him. Twenty minutes with GoldMem (thanks to Michael Tulacek for a sweet memory test utility, was linked from Windrivers front page for those that want it)was enough to decide which of his three DIMMs was on the blink... .</strong><hr></blockquote>

Jeff. The Windrivers link to Goldmem is locked down to members. Would you post the link or PM it my way?
Thanx.
:)

[quote]Originally posted by techguy13:
<strong>

Jeff. The Windrivers link to Goldmem is locked down to members. Would you post the link or PM it my way?
Thanx.
:) </strong><hr></blockquote>

Ditto

CD :rolleyes:

Get it straight from the man himself <a href="http://www.goldmemory.cz" target="_blank">here.</a>

[quote]Originally posted by Jeff the Brit:
<strong>Get it straight from the man himself <a href="http://www.goldmemory.cz" target="_blank">here.</a></strong><hr></blockquote>

Thank-you Jeff the Brit.

:) :cool:

Well if spliffed means the same thing to you as it does to me - I understand how the cables got that way. I have a rule - me smokey me drinky - me no work on computey.

The Easiest money I have ever made was almost the same thing.. I built a system for this guy as a favor to another friend.. Bench tested it for 2 days no problem..... 2 weeks later he called me up and said that the computer been down for the last 2 weeks and I need to come out and FIX IT AT 2400... ACK so I told him it will be 100$ an hour.. Turned out he tried to upgrade to a new hard.. ( don't know what was wrong with the old?? ) and installed the hd cable backwards.. 2 min. then hand out 100$ please// :D