I didn't fry anything computer related but I did make a $30,000 laser into the most expensive source of room filling blue light ever. Good thing I stood back, the thing was shooting sparks all over the place. It is amazing what 20,000 volts at 20 amps can do.
I once did a hot swap of a video card. toasted the slot/board/card all in one little spark.
Had a customer purchase new HD. Said he knew exactly how to put it in. Back the next day. He'd hooked up the small 12v power wire from the PS (fan wire, or case number display wire) to the LED out pins on the HD. OOps.
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Who needs a life, I have Internet!
Jim & Sue's Free Files | Jim's Modems
When I was just starting out I had to replace a power supply in a full tower case. The connectors on the power switch were pretty tight so I grabed a pair of needle nose to take them off. Suddenly the roow was filled with the brightest light I have ever seen. I had shorted the terminals with the pliers and it ended up welding them close. My bench partner said the expression on my face was the funniest thing he had ever seen.
How come MY keyboard does'nt have a ANY key?
Hello,
I was in a rush one day and was installing a new hard drive in my system it had old files w/2partitions I didn't need so I fdisked the drive then formatted right from windows 98 dos box... Then proceded to restore backup tape.. all was fine until the next day when the system booted and fdisk took effect https://forums.windrivers.com/images.../2004/08/1.gif I was a little pissed but that's what happens when you goto fast and skip small steps like rebooting after fdisk..
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Wadda you mean I lost all my information !! It has been making that noise for 2 months and working fine..
New Drive, Old Drive, & GHOST. I say no more
You had a backup right sir ???
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. " " I Live Like
. 0 0 A Bird...
.---ooO-(_)-Ooo---
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Allways Crashing into Windows
...working in the lab, i was looking at a SCSI HD that was in a small external box. I leaned over it to tak a look at the connections on the power supply... when i leanover, a bit of wire loom touched the power supply, and anoter tester turned the box on... sparks, and 3 holes in my shirt later... it started to work again.
Open case and a can of coke too close to the edge.
This one was not mine but a fellow tech's.
He had just finished replacing a warranty part in a Compaq Presario (POS's if you ask me.) and put it all back together. The customer picked it up, took it home, and proceeded to take it downstairs to his computer room. He watched it slide out of it's case and tumble down the stairs. Apparently the tech hadn't remembered to put the screws back in the case. The customer was happy when he received his brand new machine.
It doesn't end there. A week later the same tech replaced another warranty part in another Presario. This time one of our salesman was delivering it to the customer. When he started down the stairs, lo and behold it started to slide out of the case. Luckily the salesman was fairly nimble and caught it before it slid all the way out. The tech no longer works for our store. We can't afford him.
Pulled a good one today at work (luckily, the computer was already checked in for surge damage):
Now, this one isn't 100% my fault - but I shoulda fixed this boo-boo earlier. Another tech was working on the system and found the PS was shot - he temporarily hung another one in the system to get it to boot for surge damage assessment. It's an AT power supply type, and we're all familiar with the switches they use - here's the killer.
The tech also hung the switch loose into the case - amazingly the switch didn't touch metal and ground itself (that was my job apparently). I pick up the cable by the black insulation and while moving the switch to where I could click it to turn off the system - one of the voltage out connectors on the switch hits the hung power supply, grounds itself, and the sparks flew!
I'm half-amazed I didn't get electricuted! I suppose the fact that I was only touching the insulated part of the wire to the switch and nothing else saved my *** from becoming bacon.
Amusingly enough, the system survived...for the most part. The on-board video (GAG) took a crap, but I'm not sure if it was just the cable to the VGA plug or the on-board chip that took a dump. That was the only thing that took damage, apart from the store's test AT power supply.
Oh! This is off-topic, but I find this unbelievable:
My boss (the owner of the store) insists that PC-Chips (in all their integrated glory) motherboards are just as good, if not better than, Abit or Asus or Tyan motherboards. Of course, I've lost count how many of those PC-Chips boards we've RMA'd now...
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CUSTOMER.EXE cannot find file BRAIN.DLL - program will continue to talk anyway
well once i was repairing a friends computer.(friends gotta love em)when i noticed that when i picked it up to move it i heard something that sounded like loose skrews??...sure enough the day before he had the whole thing in pieces..HE HE do it yourselfer ..well come to find out. he had dropped some skrews and one landed in the PSU. i didnt know it at the time but found the other loose ones eveywhere in the case.
well wouldnt you know it(THOUGHT I HAD EM ALL NO MORE SOUNDS??) well i plugrd it in booted into windows. went to slide top back on case KERRRR POWWWWW!! blue sparks every where!!!!!! it took the PSU with it ...installed new one and right in to windows it went no other problems!!(LUCKY)!!
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BURN BABY BURN!!
Best one I ever saw was a kid that had just gotten his new computer (built by us). He gets it home and decides he wants to see what the insides look like. So he takes te cover off and looks around, but notices a wire dangling inside that wasn't hooked up to anything. So he hooks it up to the only thing he could find. Turns computer on and wonders where all the smoke is coming from. Calls us, and we tell him to bring it in and don't turn it on anymore. Once he got it here, we popped the case and found the problem: he had hooked the little front panel LED power wire into the SPDIF connector on his nice shiny new rewriter. I've never seen the entire back panel of any drive completely melted until that day. A new rewriter, CDROM, PS, and motherboard later, he was back in business.
Here are a few.
Did you know that socket 3 CPUs can go in, in any direction. My old cow-orker found that one out the hard way. POOFFF!
A lady brought in a computer that was beat all to s**t. I asked what happened. It turns out that the case was one of the designs were the face comes off and the screws are on the front rather than the back. She was not aware of this and took a crow-bar and tryed to force the case off backwards. It pulled off the backings of all the cards and the motherboard. I don't know about you, but I would have atleast lied and said that it was vandlized or something.
One time the other Tech and I went to lunch and when we got back I sat down to resume troubleshooting the system I had been working on. One thing: I had left the system on when I left and it had gone to sleep. Deep sleep including the fans and all. So, I proceded to remove cards to find the root of the lock ups. The first card I removed let out a small blue arc and the system woke up and procceded to beep. Never did get that one working again.
A lady called up and said that her laptop keyboard was sticking. I said, "well it probley needs cleaning" She replayed, "Oh, ok" and hung up. The next day she came in with her freshly washed laptop (strait out of the dishwasher) and wanted to know why it didn't work any more.
Cliff Coleman
In a similar vein to Milenko, this was a customer screw up... Customer brought comp in,
HimL You just worked on it a damnit, the sound doesn't work after you fixed it.
Us: Ok, we'll look at it...
Us: Ummm, sir, Why did you plug this cable in here?
Him: Because you morons left it unplugged.
Us: Ummm... There's a good reason we don't plug the Floppy drive power connector into your Sound card Auxilliary port...
Him: oh...
Darnit, 5 coronas make make typing hard...
Beer good...
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What's this button d--
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Machine:
[B]Since i like hearing about other ppls computer related misery, I figured I'd start a thread that can turn out to be a funny as hell read.
Off the top of my head, The only thing i really ever screwed up that i can remember is I had an old 200 meg SCSI harddrive, and the Adapter plug on the back of it for the power broke off when i was putting it back in my machine (I was always messing with the thing , was about 15). So I took out my trusty soldering iron and soldered the connector back on.
When i turned the computer on I had Unleashed the pent up smoke demons inside the Hard Drive. It was completely fried. All my hard work was gone! (mostly porn and a duke nukem 3d).
While building a computer for a church and in the side office,everybody had to stop by and get a look at the new wonder tool. After 20 mintues of this they all left. That's right left leaving their little kids alone in my care while they went and prayed. Didn't asked me, or nothing just dumb the babies anyplace. One smart lady place her little one right by the open case. Asked to move her baby,Why my little one won't hurt nothing. Yea,right. I told them I was not there to baby sit and to please take their kids with them. I was luckly to make it out alive. Long story short..I was paid cash to to the job,when the little angles got done with the computer,I build the computer at the house and then took it to the church. But i did learn a good lesson that day.
This is somewhat a long story, I'll try keeping it short. Back on my Compaq Prolinea 4/25s 25mhz, 16mb ram, 240mb HD, I had a nice US Robotics 14.4 modem. After a lightning storm the modem seemed to not work anymore. I shipped it back, got it replaced, and had it again within 2 weeks. Everything was going well until about a week later. The stupid modem was screwed again, do not know why, but it kept making the carrier "click" noise. It wouldn't respond to windows, and I had Telix at the time, in Telix the corner said: "Offline" then "Online" for each click. I don't know where I came up with the idea of taking the modem out and putting it back in while the computer was running, but SERIOUSLY, this fixed it! Dial'd out no problems when I did that.. clicking stopped. Well one morning I turned on my computer and being a little sleeply I didn't quite put it in the ISA slot properly, sort of a row of pins over, and I saw some blue sparks and the magical smoke https://forums.windrivers.com/images.../2000/04/1.gif Board & modem now fried. Had them replaced on warranty though!