What's the Hardiest Hardware You've Seen?

mrsev asks: "I work in a lab and so have lots of strange equipment around me. Recently I found an old 256Mb USB Flash Disk, that I had been looking for 6 months. This would not be amazing but for the fact that it was frozen in a block of ice in one of our -80C freezers (-112F). It must have fallen from my top pocket when I was reaching in. After chiping it out and a quick thaw and dry ... it worked!! All my data was intact and there were no problems. I am now looking for a victim to test in our liquid nitrogen storage facility. My question is what is the strangest hardware survival you have seen."

Mind sharing?

[gabraham]

Would mrsev mind sharing the brand and model of his Flash disk? I wouldn't knowing what to look for in the store if/when I need a Flash disk later.

Hardiest hardware

[wowbagger]

The winner and still champion [nasa.gov]

Re:Fire Fire Fire

[Bronster]

did that at computer camp once... it was build and repair a PC class

So, we jammed it in--backwards...

He told us to wait for him to check everything out, but I was impatient. I plugged it in, turned it on

You know, you really are a prime fucking luser.

The guy was actually a bit of a jerk--he was like, "you know, I have half a mind to bill you for that!".

Too bloody right - he should have. You broke his equipment through stupidity and negligence. You were on a course to _learn_ shit, not break it.

First, it was a mistake--accidents happen.

Actually, they're usually caused by fuckheads who think they know better, and go ahead and do something they have been explicitly instructed not to do.

Well, he never did [bill you for your stupidity], but he was a bit of a jackass.

I'd say he was a very nice person who was well within his rights to bill you for breaking his equipment through your own hubris and inability to follow simple instructions.

It's posts like this that make me glad slashdot has a way of up-or-down scoring people.

*plonk*

iBook ran over by 250+ lb man on his bike

[jasonbowen]

I ran over my future wife's iBook on my bike. Long story short: I was coming to a stop and started swinging my backpack around and discovered the zipper was failing. As I watched my front wheel plow over the top of that white plastic case I knew for sure I'd be buying her a new computer. The only real evidence of the mishap was a scuffed up corner and the tire mark, which washed away before I returned it to her.

Re:Classic Marantz ad from the 1970s

[sporktoast]

I think the most interesting thing about this ad is the footnote: "* Mr. Espina's notarized statement is on file with the Marantz Company." It seems so ... quaintly earnest. That was back when we had truth-in-advertising laws that still came with the threat of enforcement.

These days that ad would probably be a hyperbolic "Extreme Marantz!" depiction of someone using it to put out a grease fire, plunge a toilet, jack up a car to fix a flat tire, and finally pound some nails before finally turning it on to find is still works great. There'd be some "professional driver on a closed test track" microscopic fine print at the bottom of the page.

But that wouldn't stop some poor shmoes from trying one or more of the depicted alternate uses. Nor the rest of us from making fun of those shmoes. I mean, c'mon, it's just an ad. It's only supposed to make the product look *cool*, right.

Re:IBM System 32.

[vlm]

A collector would likely have paid alot for that machine. I know I would have given you maybe $100 for it depending on media and docs, and I'm relatively poor and cheap as far as collectors go.

Search ebay to see what a classic pdp-8 goes for now, generally more than a good used car is worth. Admittedly a pdp-8 is a little more popular, but I'm sure you could have gotten a heck of a lot of "beer money", or at least someone would have hauled it away for free, saving you the effort.