Abused, But Working Hardware Stories?

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."

HP48

[sb_huey]

I had an hp-48g in 8th grade. I used to play basketball before school with the 48 in my pocket (without the soft-cover, no less) and it would usually fall out of my pocket during play (onto hard asphault) about twice a week. In addition, I once dropped it into a puddle about 6 inches deep when I was getting out of the car (again, without the soft cover).Yet, the calculator still works perfectly, even if it has a few nicks (no majorly visible dents or anything though).

I guess this is a true testament to the quality of pre-Carly HP hardware.

let see

[geekoid]

I de-solder the legs off of sipps to use the chip in a simm
I solder a simm to get it to work in as a sip.

Replaced the gridge chip.

My forst computer I own had to be put together from scratch. By scratch, I mean soldering compnent to a PCB board.

Replace the board on several hard drives

Used laplink and wrote the data onto the disk I was getting data off of.(instead of the new drive). Deleted everything. Microsoft said the files couldn't be recovered. I recovered them.

I've used gallon milk caps as a mother board stand.

replced several capacitors on motherboards.

Soldered a pin back onto a cpu

and much more.

And yes, everything worked when I was done.

Re:Blown speakers

[Bob Cat - NYMPHS]

It was a filter capacitor.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Unintentional, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

that's because they don't get hot enough to need them!

Re:So far I have attempted the following:

[Barny]

Serial ATA is hot plugable, to have it hot swappable, you must remember to either flush the write cache to disk, or disable it completely (as is done with flash media).

I know floppy drives are hot swappable (tested).

Not sure about cd-roms, of course, testing them through an adapter that has provision for ide detection while the os is running is considered cheating ;)

Re:Home Run

[geekoid]

they used to. Most virus going around to day are really anoying, but not to destructive. Years ago some viruse would wipe you boot sector, delete files, format you disk etc . . .
Don't miss those days much.

Re:Thermal Paste

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.techspot.com/gallery/showphoto.php/phot o/396/password/0/sort/1/cat/501/page/2

Re:I cut off half an add-in card to make it fit!

[Kris_J]

The one I had was a SCSI card with an ISA sound card onboard.

One of these? [embeddedlogic.com] Funky little slot hack. Anyone got a link to a bit more info about the technology?

Re:So far I have attempted the following:

[ZeNTuRe]

It is amperage what kills, not voltage.

Fried Airport Base Station Recovered

[Slur]

I kept my Airport Base Station beneath a planter in my living room. One day I watered the plant and dripped some water on the base station. Fried immediately, the lovely smell of magic blue smoke - or so I thought.

I opened it and noticed the two main capacitors had bulging tops. Turns out the original Airport Base Station had poorly rated capacitors, and they were prone to dying. The bulging top is a clear sign of failure. A website explained which capacitors make appropriate replacements. For the 5 dollars it would cost I figured it was worth a try.

Turned out it was a good gamble. After soldering in the new capacitors the bloody thing worked again.

There are probably a few busted Airport Base Stations floating around out there - and well worth recovering. The older graphite model is the one with the poorly rated capacitors. Even if the base station itself can't be fixed it contains a Lucent wireless PCMCIA card which may be perfectly usable.

Liquids do not destroy Electronics!

[Karmic Debt]

I was working as a technician at a large NW newspaper. It was common that reporters were spill coffee onto their laptops. A fellow technician was about to trash a nice HP Omnibook because this had happened when I stopped him. I urged him not to throw it away as I believed strongly that it is a wives tale that liquids destroy electronics. I qualified that piezzo buzzers, speakers and any other mechanical parts (like the keyboard) are an exception, and that the dc-to-dc converter that runs the screen could fry since it may be as high as 300 volts, but the screen clearly worked. Anyway, he got so angry at my insistence that he started screaming at me. "I have been repairing electronics for 10 years, blah, blah, blah ..". "Water destroys Electronics, blah, blah, blah". When he was finished screaming at me, he threw the laptop away and left. I promptly grabbed the laptop, cleaned all of the boards with alcohol and replaced the keyboard. He came in the next morning to a nice little Omni-Book running on his desk. BTW: I know liquid causes corrosion, that was discussed as well ...

Re:Not plugging in CPU fan

[Anonymous Coward]

A T H L O N : ATHLON

How many years have AMD been making them and idiots like you still insist on adding a's and g's to the damn name.

Re:Mega-spark RAM

[Anonymous Coward]

That guy is/was an idiot, and you're too if you think ESD is a myth. ESD can cause anything from no effect through intermittent problems to complete failure, depending on your luck mostly. Obviously older hardware with comparably huge transistors stand less of a chance to die from ESD, but even those are not immune. Don't even think about trying something similar with current hardware.

Re:So far I have attempted the following:

[nojayuk]

My point-n-shoot camera's viewfinder got dirty. I opened it to clean it out, and touched the capacitor for the flash light (12v). It knocked me unconcious and burned my hand.

Yeah, 12v can bite.

The flash capacitor is about 4kV, not 12V. The whining noise after you fire it is the inverter pumping the cap back up for the next shot. It's also not current-limited, delivering all power it can to the flashtube in a few milliseconds. The TV EHT supply you mention later *is* current limited hence it gives less of a perceived shock even though the voltage is much higher.

I've taken belts from a camera's flash cap before now; they made my arm muscles spasm and throw the camera across the room.

Re:ISA is Hot-Swappable!

[jamesh]

It works provided you don't try and insert it on an angle and connect two pins that shouldn't be connected together. Probably more a problem with PCI though.

Also remember with PCI that there is often some current present if the power is connected to the computer, even if it's off, for things like Wake On Lan.

And for a bit of nostalgia, some small 8 bit ISA cards came without backplates, things like internal scsi controllers. They could easily be inserted backwards with disasterous results.

Mod parent down

[Anonymous Coward]

Ouch, this is so much a troll... Read here, [deskeng.com] or here [varbusiness.com] for the original...

Re:rain cooled motherboards

[NicM]

A lot of PCBs are washed after production (not with water though afaik). There are some components that don't like it but generally so long as they aren't powered up when wet, it isn't done too often or for too long and the water is pretty clean (and not salt), most electronics can handle it. I have no idea what water would do to the insides of a hard disc though.

Some are alright even when wet with power :-). I've had several friends who have had mobile phones completely soaked through. Always take the battery out, leave for a couple of days to dry and they usually work fine... :-)

Where I work we've done similar bodges to some of the stuff already mentioned, soldering pins onto CPUs, replacing dodgy power connectors on laptop mboards (most are >2 layers so can make it touch and go), etc. Since we've got the kit we usually try to bodge anything broken... if it still doesn't work we haven't lost anything :-).

Re:I think now's the time to know . . .

[Curunir_wolf]

I still use the IBM clackety-clack keyboards almost exclusively (AT-style, though). Best keyboard ever made, IMHO. And I do just fine without the extra "Windows keys", thank you very much.

No problem when they start getting dirty, I just pop it in the dishwasher for a cycle. Comes out nice and clean. Leave it out to dry for a couple of days and it works fine.

I've tried that with other keyboards, too, but most of them don't survive it.

Expanding RAM without soldering

[mao_de]

Not very thrilling but:

In 1987 i wanted to grade up my Atari 260ST to an unbelievible RAM-size of 1 MB. There was printed a guide in a german magazine, which showed step by step how to put 512 kB in 16 Chips on top of the already mounted ones.

I was a little bit anxious because of the soldering. I frightened, the heat could kill the built in RAM or other chips of my beloved Atari. So i first bent the adress and data pins of the new RAM chips, so the got (i thought) good contact to their counterparts on the board. I put double sided sticky band on the built in chips and pressed the new chips onto them. Then i soldered some (2?) signal-pins to cables and the cables to the board.

I switched on, my monitor kept black. I switched off and drew the chips from their mounts, then tried to bend it better (i thought). After switching on, the monitor still was black.

I said "shit the dog on it" (a german proverb) to myself and soldered all pins of all chips.
It worked instantly.

Oh those blessed days of indestroyable hardware!

Re:So far I have attempted the following:

[jeffasselin]

And that's why it's very important to be careful with CRTs. CRTs can carry between 8000 and 25000 volts...

Re:So far I have attempted the following:

[fshalor]

Really... Come on over. I've got a PS that'll knock you dead in nothing flat at about 10-20 miilivolts. Of course, it's about 300 amps. But then agian, it's the volts right...

The main difference is you wont be as quickly dead with lower voltage. Or you wont be jolted quite as much.

I've been bitten by low ampreage 220, 80 (don't ask) 24, 12, and 460. Just a jolt.

1 amp would kill ya in the wrong place. IE, if you grabbed the connectors with both hands and send the amps through your trunk.

Re:So far I have attempted the following:

[girmann]

Unfotunately, you assume one very wrong thing...

Your skin has a "break down voltage", much like a diode has. Past a certain voltage, your skin no longer provides much resistance (I don't have the exact values) and so as voltage increases, your "hand to ground" resistance decreases. This causes the current to increase exponentially, not linearly.

So you are absolutely not safe in touching 240V.

Girmann

WRONG

[the_twisted_pair]

So it's pretty hard to hurt yourself with DC.

NO. Sorry to shout, but I had to play safety-nazi on this one having seen the aftermath. It's actually easier to do yourself serious damage with DC than AC, and HV DC is very scary indeed. First off, as noted above there's a point around 600V where, despite the skin's apparently high resistance, it gives in like a diode breakdown and the current punches through the hard, horny outer dermis that is so resistive. Inside you are a nice squishy bag of saline solution, with very little resistance... Think about the old demo of cooking wieners with two nails and wall current.

Second major issue is that DC causes sustained muscle contraction so you grip involuntarily. AC changes direction, causing muscle contractions in sympathy with line frequency which gives you some chance of letting go/pushing clear. DC gives you no such option, and the effect is noticeable at quite low currents. Very, very dangerous.

Google for more info, but DC is not remotely 'safe'. If you must play with HV DC - anything over 50v basically, let alone valve (tube) amps - treat it like it will bite. Keep one hand behind your back, let someone watch within reach of the breaker, and use current limiting whenever possible.

Re:Blown speakers

[bawb]

Everyone knows that each electrical component is built with a certain amount of smoke inside of it that makes it work. Let the smoke out, and the thing won't work anymore

It's not just any kind of smoke, but a special kind of smoke developed by several top-secret fabs both here and abroad. The correct techincal term is Magic Smoke [webster-dictionary.org], or Blue Smoke .

Re:So far I have attempted the following:

[MarsDefenseMinister]

The electricity wasn't going through you to ground. It was going through you because you were touching something else that was plugged in on the opposite polarity.

A lot of equipment has a wire to care the hot side inside the box, but the grounded side is the box itself. Sort of like a car. Obviously, if you reverse the plug in the outlet (one side of the 120VAC is actually ground, and one side carries 120VAC) then your case is going to carry the 120VAC. The equipment doesn't notice, because the rectifier can turn that into DC too. But your equipment case was hot.

If you had another device that was plugged in properly (your guitar?) (effects box) and you were touching that at the same time, current would flow right across your body.

Keyboard stories...

[WebCowboy]

My former neighbour spilled cherry kool-aid into the keyboard of his desktop PC. I lent him a spare keyboard until he could get a replacement, but he decided to try to fix it. He removed the small circuit board from the keyboard (the one that attaches to the cord) and put the rest of the keyboard in the dishwasher.

After going through the energy-saver cycle it was a good as new--including the remaining circuit boards that he washed (basically just copper traces and such). I guess as log as you don't use detergent or the lower rack/too high temp it works pretty well...

Another keyboard-related incident: A friend's P133 stopped responding to the keyboard. Other keyboards wouldn't work either and the original keyboard would work on my PC, so I figured it was either the keyboard connector or the keyboard controller chip. Re-soldering the joints on the connector did not work, so I used tin-snips to cut all the pins from the keyboard controller chip and soldered a chip salvaged from an old 486/40MHz in its place (onto what remained of the pins from the old chip). Worked like a charm...

Seems keyboards and related circuitry are quite resiliant. I guess they were engineered with the anticipation of many different sorts of incidents. Not only that, the technology is quite mature. From my observation, it looks like identical, pin-for-pin compatible controller chips were used on all AT and early ATX boards from the 286 all the way up to PII's (even in the same style DIP case. I suspect even today the same exact circuitry is used--just integrated into another chip or on a smaller surface-mount package.

Re:I think now's the time to know . . .

[Mister Transistor]

I used to use those keyboards for years. I loved the tactile feedback they provided, even if they were loud. I'd look for them at Hamfests for $5.00 since no one wanted them after the Keytronics Revolution (Compaq, HP, etc. all used KT OEM's).

I used to work in the PC Repair business years ago (I still do, I guess...) but I did back in the early 80's when they were new and expensive. We'd repair PC's including things that were considered disposable, like the security-screw sealed IBM Power Supplies (we fixed 'em with NO schematics, mind you!), Floppy Disk drives, etc. We tried pinching every dime out the business by attempting to fix EVERYTHING down to component level.

Well, we finally met our match with IBM keyboards. They are desinged to use a Hall-effect sensor which looks at the magnetic disturbance created by a little lever which smacks down on the sensor(s) when you hit a key. The toggle lever is held in place by a spring, loaded in such a way that it allows the lever to detent in two positions. The back of the keyboard is a piece of epoxy circuit board curved to fit the contour of the keyboard. That is sandwiched together with the frame of the keyboard (that holds all the keys in). Well, we tried taking one or two apart, and as you said springs popped out everywhere, not from 1 key but all of them!

We later found out they were assembled by robot with a special jig in Boca Raton, and there was no human way to hold down 102 springs while pressing together the frame parts, holding 102 keys in place and keeping everythings from flying across the room!

Re:Cell phone abuse

[Politburo]

I'm surprised that worked. Most cell phone companies put stickers in the phone that will change color if it comes in contact with water, and most cell phone contracts do not cover water damage.

Re:So far I have attempted the following:

[randyest]

As has been thoroughly explained by several replies, this parent post is dangerously wrong. Moderators who modded this nonsense up to +5, and those who leave it there, are very possibly contributing to someone getting seriously injured or killed.

Please fix the moderation on this misinformation.

Re:I think now's the time to know . . .

[Kenshin]

It's your opinion that you use a better keyboard.

I've got a Microsoft Internet Keyboard that's served me well for about 4 years, even when clogged to the gills with cat hair. I've got the extra buttons mapped to stuff I need, and the Windows key is actually fairly useful, despite all the naysaying:

Win+L: Lock Station
Win+M: Minimise All Windows (Win+Shift+M to undo)
Win+D: Hide All Windows (Win+D again to undo)
Win+E: Open Explorer
Win+F: Open "Find File" Dialog
Win+R: Open "Run" Dialog