Your Most Damage-Resistant Hardware? 945
questamor writes "After reading the recent Slashdot article linking to drivesavers and their list of damaged hardware that was still recoverable, I'm curious about the worst things slashdot readers have done to their hardware and still had it work. So far I've been lucky, and in more than a decade of owning computers I've hotplugged almost everything except a CPU (sometimes accidentally, sometimes through laziness) and never knowingly broken anything. What have you all done to your machines? I imagine there are many stories of dropped, drowned, stolen and generally abused machines still working and doing their thing; or at least, able to be brought back to a working state"
Re:loads of stuff (Score:2, Informative)
Everything you list is pretty harmless. Well, except the drive dropping, although when they're off, the head employs a locking device.
Drives are meant to receive power and signal independently. You can even give it the 5V line before the 12V, or the other way around, it'll be fine. Just don't UNplug it while it's on, as that will likely crash your OS (but not damage the drive.) And you don't want to plug the signal cable in after it's powered up, unless it's SATA.
You can also safely power it up without a signal cable if you want to test noise or something.
sh
Re:loads of stuff (Score:2, Informative)
No, that is completely harmless. It would even been alright for you to power it up after noticing this problem without rebooting the box (although the OS would likely not detect it.)
I've tried doing IDE hotswap experiments with ancient hardware, and never fried any of it, but there were some arcs, so I'd reccomend against it on modern hardware.
sh
Re:My Dell Laptop has never been abused... (Score:3, Informative)
On the other hand, I owned a Winbook and that thing would fall apart if you were to breath in it's general direction from the other side of a football field. NEVER BUY WINBOOK. Junk junk junk junk. I could give you examples. I WILL give you examples:
And that's just a TASTE of what they put me through...
Re:loads of stuff (Score:5, Informative)
Keyboard/Mouse In dishwasher (Score:2, Informative)
Re:TI PEB and the 4-sided diskette (Score:2, Informative)
And they're not a race, but that's another story...
Re:Good Idea! (Score:4, Informative)
You just contradicted yourself completely. Before you moderate this flamebait hear me out.
I've been working at my college as a laptop service technician for 3 years and I've had incredibly intimate experience with 3 models of IBM thinkpads. The 390, the i1422 and the i1300.
All three have had serious design flaws that made them break in predictable particular ways due from normal use.
Re:Hacksawed Video Card (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hacksawed Video Card (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Hacksawed Video Card (Score:1, Informative)