Abused, But Working Hardware Stories? 1352
RPI Geek writes "Everyone's heard the stories about people who, knowingly or unknowingly, abuse their computers. Personally, I've had a faulty power supply literally burn a hole through the motherboard, with the only ill effects being a dead PCI slot and USB ports. I'm curious as to what kind of abuse fellow /.ers have done or seen done to electronics while the hardware still worked afterwards. Soldered a broken keyboard PCB back together so that it worked fine? Taken sticks of RAM out of a running computer to see when it would notice? Overclocked a 386... to 386MHz? I'm interested in hearing any stories about abused-but-working hardware."
I think now's the time to know . . . (Score:5, Funny)
My cup-holder stopped working months ago... (Score:5, Funny)
But the rest of the box seems to be OK.
Ran Windows XP (Score:5, Funny)
Well... (Score:5, Funny)
my cd-rom (Score:4, Funny)
I've hung (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So far I have attempted the following: (Score:5, Funny)
Shorted a running NIC with a dropped screw... (Score:5, Funny)
Home Run (Score:5, Funny)
-Rylfaeth
Re:So far I have attempted the following: (Score:3, Funny)
The Humanity! (Score:2, Funny)
Serious computer abuse ... (Score:5, Funny)
Launching into space, then crashing on Mars with just some air bags for cushions. THAT IS ABUSE! And yet they made it work!
My worst (Score:5, Funny)
This is why drugs and hardware support do not mix.
The machine continued to work fine and works to this day.
Work related stress (Score:5, Funny)
And you know what? The damn thing still worked after it dried off. The LED display was cracked but functional (was replaced later), and it needed a new plastic handle (that, oddly enough, holds the top of the case together). But the fucking thing could still read a bar code. We were all so freaking amazed that everyone burst out laughing.
But the funniest part? The guy who smashed the shit out of the scanner? He still works for us.
Pen kills LCD... (Score:5, Funny)
I did it...
It was dark...
I closed the Lid...
rather forcefully...
I can still hear the *CRACK*
ooohh t3h p4!n !!!
Re:I think now's the time to know . . . (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The Humanity! (Score:3, Funny)
I showed him everything it did etc etc....I had been using it for a good 15 mins.
Why dont you have a go?.....so he sits down and just touches the mouse. instant BSOD...I guess some people have no luck
Inside out MIDI interface (Score:4, Funny)
I carefully etched the board by hand and manually drilled all the holes, only to discover to my horror that I'd printed the board upside down. So, rather than waste time doing the board over, I bent the pins of all the chips 180 degrees and mounted them upside down! Worked like a charm!
Peeing on laptops (Score:4, Funny)
Dog pees on laptop photo [funnyjunk.com]
Cat pees on laptop story and discussion [macrumors.com] Keep pets away from your laptops!
insert coin ! (Score:3, Funny)
The computer was still working perfectly, but it was making pocket change noises whenever moved.
The coins stayed there until the case was opened for a HD upgrade.
Re:Blown speakers (Score:2, Funny)
I moved away a bit - and turned on the power.
B A N G !!!!
The noise was truly incredible. There wasn't much left of the capacitor. I reckon it would have made a truly amazing electric firework. Didn't even blow any fuses.
They Don't Call it a Thoroughbred for Nothin' (Score:4, Funny)
I knew one day it would die, and I was really just curious about how spectacularly it would go. Would it explode in a giant ball of flame, or maybe shoot lightning from the floppy drive? One day it did have a massive aneurism, but it did not die in the way I had hoped - the case became extraordinarily hot, the machine restarted and displayed an error on post stating something about the corrupt 64k base memory, and, when I restarted it again, I smelt a terrible scent coming from inside the case, then nothing.
After letting the room cool down for a bit, I tried to get it going again but the thing would not start. Instead it just beeped at me, kind of painfully.
The motherboard was fried, all the other internal components survived. After investing in a new mobo, a case with 8 fans, a water cooling kit, and some cables that are supposed to cool the whole thing down, I now have the Beast operating at 2.7 GHz stable and a much cooler workspace. It's also quieter - I did not expect the water cooler to run silently.
Of course, the fish miss having that big tank to swim in and all...
M
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Stupid 80287 tricks (Score:4, Funny)
pepsi in cpu cooler (Score:2, Funny)
after the warranty had expired, i decided to crack it open and see what, if anything, i could do to fix it. i discovered some brown, sticky, carmelized residue on the mobo (around and under the cpu/heatsink which happened to be directly connected to the intake fan (apparently they combine the functionality of an intake and cpu fan into one device in laptop world). i tried to clean it all up with alcohol and cotton swabs. i think i got most of it up, but it still wouldn't function at full speed afterwards. a few months after that my gf's niece spilled coke on the display and it died. it's now currently housed on a lan at my mom's house performing it's role as DNS & mysqld server (wasn't every portable anymore since it necessitated a monitor, so i promoted it to server status)
Re:my cd-rom (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Home Run (Score:2, Funny)
Does totalling a car count? (Samsung X05 laptop) (Score:2, Funny)
Her Samsung x05 laptop surprisingly refused to do anything after this.
I took it apart last night, removed snapped off bits of plastic, screws and other conducting stuff from the middle...
The LCD screen shows solid white (however all works fine on an external monitor) and, from inspecting the LCD panel, I reckon that either a connector or cable is damaged, that's all.
The car (a Peugeot 206 cc - like a baby slk with a metal folding roof) is completely written off, there's not a straight bit of the car left and my friend had to be cut out of it. She did tell the rescue people that they only had to push a button to open the roof, so at least she's got a sense of humour still. She's got a broken hand and a fractured skull.
I think that the laptop surviving that is pretty good
Cheers,
Nick.
Burn baby burn... said the Turbo-Switch. (Score:3, Funny)
The Turbo-Switch was totally fried. Will never move again. Molten plastic filled out its interior. I figured a rather high current must have moved through it. That was a scary situation, but after removing all unused wiring to the frontpanel the box ran fine.
Seperate incident:
He had plugged a stoneage transistorradio into the line-in of the oh-so-good noname 16bit soundcard. I figured later that the impendance of the two devices were not compatible. The chip on the soundcard was fried and smelt rather funny too. It did not make any sound.
After I replaced the soundcard with a new one, all went fine. For about 6 years thereafter... then he sold it.
Re:Ran Windows XP (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Fried egg P200 style (Score:2, Funny)
Re:So far I have attempted the following: (Score:5, Funny)
Can you push it back in again? I've been finding Google a bit unreliable in the last few days.
Re:HP48 (Score:5, Funny)
The monitor (Score:3, Funny)
It got the monitor too, huh? Wow... I must have missed that particular strain of CIH. Lucky for me! Sorry to hear that, though.
Re:Pen kills LCD... (Score:3, Funny)
I did basically the same thing with a brand new HP PAvilion ze5385us, three weeks after I bought it.
Only difference is, it was the CORD from a set of mini-jack headphones I had plugged in that shattered the screen, got caught in the middle right corner of the screen, and shattered the ENTIRE screen.
650 bucks and 11 days later it was chuggin along flawlessly, but it certainly has made sure *I* never rush
-- vranash
Drooling directly onto Pentium 100mhz MoBo (Score:5, Funny)
Back around 94 I had a friend who ordered a motherboard and a Pentium 100mhz processor when they had just come out. We were all very impressed--a hundred mhz! On Monday morning at school, we were all waiting anxiously to hear how the setup went over the weekend, and to see if Linux installed smoothly -- I think Red Hat had just come out, and we were anxious to compare it to AIX running on our two mini-fridge-sized RS6000's.
He walks in, looking rather sheepish. We ask him what happened, and he says it was a dud motherboard. Tough luck. Later, he and I go off-campus for lunch, and he reveals the truth.
"I hooked everything up, and booted it up. It was humming perfectly. I was standing there, staring at it with the case off -- one hundred megahertz! And then... (he pauses a while here)... I drooled on it. Right onto the Pentium. Motherboard and P100 both totally fried."
It was so sad, and yet so freakin funny. He replaced the parts, and his computer was the envy of us all for about 6 months until my friend Paul got Linux running on a 486 laptop. But I'll never forget my friend who straight dr00led all over his radical P100. :)
- benRe:Oh, loads of war stories... (Score:2, Funny)
Boot Therapy (Score:5, Funny)
The labs in question were fairly ugly even for that time, being a swath of 486/33 computers on a 10-base-2 (can't remember) network; kick-ass at one point, but slim-pickings when entry level machines were P166s. The printers were hefty old (Okijet?) dot-matrix printers used for printing out assignments and such. They were connected to the PCs via a 4-port LPT switch box, so one printer per 4 computers.
The typical printer complaint was "I can't print", this could usually be fixed by jiggling the switch on the switch-box, or sometimes by turning the printer on and off (sometimes in rapid succession). The majority of the printer problems were of this type, and relatively easy to fix.
Sometimes, however, a printer would get in its head the idea that it wasn't going to print and throw all manner of tantrums instead of working properly. This was a Troublesome Printer, prone to all kinds of ill-mannered behavior and outbursts.
A Troublesome Printer was usually treated with Boot Therapy, outlined below, but other methods included:
-Picking it up, then dropping it
-Taking it out back and working it over with the Reset Stick (a baseball bat)
-Screaming and cursing at it with the most foul obscenities imaginable, sometimes including a dash of voodoo magic
-Showing the printer the Reclamation Pile, an assortment of leftover parts from other failed printers (like taking a delinquent child to prison to show them where they might end up one day)
-Boot Therapy, elaborated below
Boot Therapy was the most successful treatment for delinquent printers. It was a robust yet simple method which could be quickly executed, not unlike a sudden backhand-slap across the face. Completing a Boot Therapy session required very little time, only a few seconds, and I'm proud to say it had a 100% success rate.
The actual method of Boot Therapy is very simple, simply put: kick the printer. The sudden Percussive Therapy* shocks the Troublesome Printer back into a state of readiness, allowing ink and paper to merge within its confines once more. The subtleties of Boot Therapy, which make or break it as a successful form of treatment, are contained entirely in *how* you kick it.
Boot Therapy is much too complicated to describe herein, more like PHD dissertation material, but I shall endeavor to list the kind of factors that need be considered when employing this kind of treatment:
-Force of the kick
-Approach angle
-Footwear (soft-soled runners work better then steel-toed boots, they don't leave a brui--er.. mark)
-Crash impulse duration
-Where the kick is directed
-Does the printer know you're going to kick it? (this is very important, as most will attempt to block you)
-Is the printer on?
-By far the most important: ** Are there any faculty members present in the immediate area? ** (they tend to frown on such progressive treatments as Boot Therapy using such harsh invective and "Criminal" and "Insane", if only they knew what they were up against)
-And a plethora of other second- and third-order effects.
So there you have it, a brief description of the cutting edge world of Boot Therapy. The printers in question continued to work well, despite being kicked repeatedly, except one, which needed Therapy several times a week. They always seemed to keep working well, especially on my watch, but I think they were replaced a few years later with cheap Mexican Printers
Disclaimer:
-Yes, I actually did do this for real.
-No, I never got caught.
-Yes, it does (or did, rather) actually work (though maybe not 100% of the time).
-No printer damage was ever attributed to a faulty application of Boot Therapy
-Don't do this for real, especially on those new-fangled $50 Inkjet printers, all plastic and such. The printers I treated had steel in them.
*-I'm aware of the Babylon5 reference to Percussive Therapy or some such; Boot Therapy was pioneered slightly before that, I think.
Re:So far I have attempted the following: (Score:2, Funny)
It's a shame that bad grammar doesn't at least hurt a little.
Re:BeBox loses half its brain and keeps going (Score:5, Funny)
Did you check if is_computer_on_fire() returned true?
Re:Blown speakers (Score:2, Funny)
He proceeded to plug a 20V AC adapter into a 6 port KVM. All I heard was the sound of capacitor ricocheting off the top of the case (it left a dent!) and seeing the database server suddenly display funky stuff on its screen.
He fried two mother boards, blown video (well, black and white) and the ide channels.
To this day I still mutter vague warnings of bodily harm whenever he approaches the rack.
The Etherkiller (Score:2, Funny)
Re:So far I have attempted the following: (Score:3, Funny)
Ticking... did you get the zip drive model?
Coke on motherboard (Score:5, Funny)
So, I get it all assembled in the case, and it being around christmas (this was a present to myself), it was very hot that day (remember this is Australia), so had a glass of Coke to keep me fresh.
I rested the coke on the PC case, as I was assembling the machine. And, no prizes for guessing, I knocked the coke all over my brand new motherboard! Oh I was shattered to see Coke fizzing and spreading all over my dream motherboard, and into the pins under the RAM sockets! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
In a sorry attempt to do something about it, I quickly whipped the board out of the case, shook it dry, and used a whole roll of paper towels mopping up all that cose, as well as a very slightly damp cloth to clear it fully.
And after about half a day of drying, it went back in the case, completed the assembly, prayed like I've never prayed before, and brought the power up.
"131027Kb memory OK"
HOLY SHIT IT FUCKING WORKS!!!!!!
Still does, too.
One Time... (Score:4, Funny)
The CPU was shattered, the ram was all cracked, and my drives were blown open with bent platters. Well an electron microscope and some JB Weld was all I needed to fix the CPU. I took the hard drive into the cleanroom in the back of my trailer and used the vice grips to bend it back. And the ram, I stuck together with some duct tape. Its amazing, I put it all back in the case, AND IT ALL WORKED! Damn they sure do make these things well these days! Well okay so I did lose a few pr0n pics that I had open before the computer blew, but I guess thats the price you pay for a simple mistake....
PC Molestification (Score:2, Funny)
Re:My TV (Score:2, Funny)
I got mad, unscrewed the backing of our TV, and pissed all on the inside..
I suppose that explains why your nick is MrP-.... :-)
Re:HP48 (Score:5, Funny)
That's not fair! We Europeans are only less free cause we do not yet have a EU PATRIOT act to protect us.
Re:Work related stress (Score:3, Funny)
No shit! Who's gonna fire him? Somebody with a death wish? Does the word "postal" mean anything to you? Job security through insanity.
Abuse can make it work too! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:So far I have attempted the following: (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah, 12v can bite.
I also got shocked by a TV tube (36000v, if I'm not mistaken) - wasn't as bad as the camera.
my friends computer was literally screwed (Score:3, Funny)
Took a licken but kept on ticken... (Score:5, Funny)
Another case had a printer that had been inhabited by a mouse for nearly a year, and it workd right up until Mr. Mouse had relieved himself on a high voltage component... the interesting part was upon receipt of the printer for repair, it was discovered the prior urination and defacation had rotted the electronics to the point the parts nearly fell off the board, nonetheless it had worked up to the final shocking excretion by the now defunct rodent.
Marie
Re:So far I have attempted the following: (Score:2, Funny)
Install Windows - Ultimate Abuse (Score:2, Funny)
Re:So far I have attempted the following: (Score:5, Funny)
That won't do much unless you find some way to lower your resistance a lot (like the darwin award mentioned above). What is dangerous is that a car battery can sustain a large current for a long time.
(A quick shock to the hart is not as bad as keeping it from beating for several seconds). But you still need the low resistance to actually let it flow.
Jeroen
this probably doesn't count, but... (Score:2, Funny)
Some years ago I was removing a 1 gig quantum scsi drive from my case, and in the process I managed to scratch a surface-mounted component off of the drive's exposed circuit board. Just for fun I tried to use the drive and sure enough it was non-functional. At this point, I was in a bad frame of mind, so I attempted to solder the tiny component back onto the PCB with a rather large soldering iron. Even if I had a clue how to solder things - this still would not have been a very good idea - needless to say that didn't work out too well - I only succeeded in making black burn marks on the PCB.
I finally realized the truth: the drive was dead - I killed it but it was not within my power to revive it. Or wasn't it? I cleaned up the burn marks on the PCB so they were less noticeable and sent it in for warranty repair - and received a working drive a few weeks later! Actually it had some bad blocks, but I didn't have enough balls to send it in for service again!! The bad blocks were at the end of the disk, so I used the good part of the disk as /tmp and swap.
I know that was dishonest - but getting a working drive back in the mail just felt great. I still feel good about it to this day. For those of you who want to scold me for abusing warranty -- please don't bother -- I am reformed! No really!
My friends know this story -- when they are having hardware trouble I tell them 'ok just stay calm -- I will be at your place in 20 minutes with my soldering iron' ;)
I'm sorry, Dave (Score:5, Funny)
Did that. Eventually it just sang "Daisy" really slow and shut down.
Re:My TV (Score:4, Funny)
My buddie and I had a prank on a guy in high school. I took a VCR tape and open it up placed a bunch of stapes, nails and whatever else I could find inside (stapes fit perfectly on the tape) I wrote on the lable that it was some crazy porn.
Well I forgot the tape at home. I come home and my parents are waiting for me - They were pissed and wanted to know what was on the tape. I told them it was a joke, and whated to know why they were so pissed... "Becouse our VCR is broken now"
Mind you this was one of those expencive Sony Milti-system VCR's.
Testing Joysticks back then (Score:5, Funny)
Their test routine was as follows:
First several rounds of Decathlon (fast wiggling of joystick back and forth)
Then it was held by its cord and swung around for a few minutes.
Then it got dropped on concrete several times. Then they poured lemonade over it.
If it was still funcitoning, it was good. OK, I think the ergonomic factor and Extras like AutoFire and such got tested too.
In an April(fools) issue they supposedly did that with a printer.
Now I'd like to see them swing a 200$ Thrustmaster HOTAS Stick on its cord...
Re:Build Your Own Exploding Computer (Score:1, Funny)
Re:It blew up (Score:1, Funny)
Well, as you already guessed, without even noticing, I had flipped that tiny switch from 220 to 120, and BANG! A nice loud voice, nice puff of smoke, but no visible flames.
Our conversation stopped dead, I almost had a heart attack, and the incident brought many visitors to our room. I've earned quite a reputation here with my little mishaps. I still get blamed for the collapse of our dish drying cabinet (ie. approximately 50+ broken coffee cups etc.), even though I have eye witnesses that state I wasn't even near the place when it happened.
On the good side: Even though the computer was running during the incident, the only broken part was the power supply. No damage on hardware or data loss. Yay! The victim was quite pissed at first, but since no irrevocable damage was done, our social relationship stayed good.
Re:My cup-holder stopped working months ago... (Score:2, Funny)
Burning mouse (Score:2, Funny)
And yes, the mouse still works.
Re:Blown speakers (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Pen kills LCD... (Score:2, Funny)
i wonder where that place is ... or maybe u have some sort of 7 dimensional screen there?
Compressed air + computer + spark != good (Score:2, Funny)
Re:So far I have attempted the following: (Score:4, Funny)
ATA is also kind of hot swappable;
Words to strike fear in the heart of a tech if I've ever seen them....
Too much epoxy (Score:2, Funny)
Ages ago I worked in a 2 story datacenter, where the first floor was full of equipment and all of us operators really avoided going down there most times.
So one night facilties had a crew pouring pink epoxy into cracks in the second floor concrete slab to "seal" them and prevent dust from being generated.
So this one crack is taking an awefully large amount of epoxy to seal. Perhaps that could be construed as a sign of trouble? Nah. Instead the security guard, who had just made his rounds through the first floor machine room, was a much better sign of trouble when he ran in yelling for them to stop immediately!
So we all went downstairs to find pink epoxy-sickles (epoxy-tites?) hanging from a sagging ceiling tile, and dripping into...
...a still working Liebert power distribution unit which was feeding a mainframe with 440 volt goodness. Almost as impressive as the epoxy-sickles was the 5 foot diameter puddle of epoxy on the floor under the PDU, and the equally sized puddle on the concrete slab under the raised floor under the pdu.
The only thing more impressive than the sight of a PDU with pink epoxy oozeing over live circuit breakers and such was the unbelievable shade of red the facilities manager turned when he was screaming at the crew about their newly unemployed status.
Re:Nothing (Score:2, Funny)
I was absolutely horrified the next morning when i woke up to see that i didnt actually leave the phone on the table, but i had dropped it into a glass of water.
I took the battery off and left it sitting on my desk for a few days and figured it couldnt hurt to see if it would still work, to my delight it did and lasted me another year or so
Re:My TV (Score:2, Funny)
PC Load Letter? PC Load Letter?1?!?!?!? (Score:2, Funny)
We gave that printer the beatdown it deserved - and Lumberg never noticed!
Fixed internals of a broken hard drive (Score:2, Funny)
With the hard drive open, I booted the laptop and watched the hard drive spin up and the heads zip back and forth. After watching this for a while, and witnessing the heads making a clicking sound as they hit one end of the unit, I decided that the problem had something to do with the rubber bumper at that end losing its elasticity.
This was a long time ago so I can't remember exactly what I did to remedy this, but one way or another I took some corrective action. I think I might have just rotated the bumper so that a more "fresh" section of rubber was exposed to the head mechanism.
I then rebooted the laptop and... voila! The hard drive worked again! So I closed up the hard drive and called it fixed.
I must say that I was completely surprised that I was able to successfully repair a hard drive. I had thought that opening the unit in a non-cleanroom environment would only put the nails in the coffin of the already dead drive, so I was astonished that I was actually able to fix it.
I must note, however, that there were a few bad sectors found when I did a check of the disk with Norton, but I didn't lose any data that I ever noticed.
I'm not sure if this is a better or worse story than the time I replaced the broken rubber belt on a cassette deck with the ring of rubber at the base of a condom... that one got applause from the folks in the dorm.
Re:mmmmm computer oven (Score:1, Funny)
It was for looks - I was bored - had a retro-industrial feel.
One day a very non-tech supervisor with limited computer skills asked me what it was. I told her it gave my monitor the ability to display millions of colors without having to install a card in the cpu.
She said cool and walked away.
You know you're a retard when... (Score:2, Funny)
frankennotebook (Score:3, Funny)
First, I updraged the drive from 200megs to 1gig.
Then I bought the expansion bay which was really a box with 2 isa slots in it. I put a 16550 board in one of the slots so I could use a 14.4 modem. That left one slot which I filled with a new isa video board so I could get more than 16 colors in windows.
That left no slots for a sound card. And I still had no way to get a cdrom. So I split the case on the expansion bay and got a riser board from a packard bell slim desktop case. I plugged the riser board into one of the slots, then plugged the video board and sound card with cdrom controller into another slot. Then put the cdrom drive in a separate case with an old 386sx motherboard to appease the power supply. Then I ran a ribbon cable from the controller on the sound card to the cdrom drive in the separate case. If I turned it all on at once, it worked just fine.
Re:So far I have attempted the following: (Score:1, Funny)
Apparently the current caused his heart to fibrillate.....Sad story, but it makes your point.
Smoked the serial port on a Dell Lattitude D600 (Score:1, Funny)
Laptop versus cup of water (Score:2, Funny)
One day she was drinking some water out of this cup while using her laptop. At some point, a housemate popped in for a visit, saw the cup, and not able to tell it was full of water, proceeded to turn it upside down like a snowglobe to watch the floating glittery substance move around the cup. Over her laptop's keyboard. DOH!
She calls me in a fit of panic and I call my ultra-savy with electronics Dad. Instructions are turn laptop off, turn upside down over paper towels and let it dry for a day or so.
Afterwards she turned it on and it still worked! But here's the funny part-- it started acting up months later. To us it seemed like it wasn't related to the original water incident. Basically it would randomly lock up. Reinstalling windows didn't seem to help. Compaq had us send in the laptop.
Days go by and we get a call from Compaq. "Uhm, we're very sorry to have to tell you this, but your laptop burst into flames while operating on our test bench!" Wow that could have been bad! Subsequently they sent us a new one under warranty and she's kept her friend away from her fancy glittery glasses
New MasterCard ad... (Score:1, Funny)
2. Going to the store to buy a new one... 10$
3. Making the front page of Slashdot [slashdot.org] telling how you were proud to have an half-working motherboard after burning it up and asking if other people did similar stuff... priceless.
Re:I think now's the time to know . . . (Score:4, Funny)
The heavy metal frame makes for excellent bruising.
(These "I'm better than you because I use an ancient keyboard" comments have to come out every once in a while, don't they?)
opened hard disk (Score:1, Funny)
i set it up on top of the case, hooked it up, uploaded a buncha mp3s onto it & set it to play constant (to keep the hdd active, i didnt want it going to sleep at night)
it worked fine for the 1st week, then about 1/2 way through the 2nd week it started losing files here & there, but was mostly still working.
by the 3rd week there was not a single file on the disk that was readable, however the FAT was still intact. shortly after that, someone saw it sitting there running & just *had* to hock a lugie onto the spinning disk, which of course, terminated our experiment.
Re:Smmmmmmokin! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:HP48 (Score:3, Funny)
Bad Hardware Tricked Me into FreeBSD (Score:1, Funny)
Re:You mean you fingers hit the wrong keys? (Score:4, Funny)
We had an old RS/6000 that was apparently home to a mouse for a while. It had squeezed in through the hole in the back left by a missing Microchannel slot cover. No, we didn't find a dead mouse inside, but we found lots of "evidence".
My GF body slammed my box! (Score:1, Funny)
GF rage, a little known danger of playing a lot of Counter Strike.
DVD Drive open/close button issues (Score:1, Funny)
The kicker was that the open-close button on the front of the drive didn't work real well either, I had to really pound on that thing in order for it to work. At this point, I was pretty sure that there was some strange hardware issue, and thus I was looking at buying a new $100 drive.
In frustration, I unplugged everything and pulled the drive out, took off the plastic face-plate, and with my trusty needle-nose pliers, ripped the open-close button off of the bare circut-board. I gently plugged everything back in, and lo-and-behold, it works fine now!
I need to use some sort of software to get the drive to eject, but hey, it works!
My first 32 bit machine (Score:2, Funny)