Bad luck / studpidity kills hardware
 

Well in my time I have blown up, and fried many a machine. A number of these stories make for interesting reading, but I'll share the first time it occured, I was about 11.

My first major incident was trying to upgrade my humble 40mb HD in my 386, this HD have served my family for a few years now, but with games requiring more and more room, the humble games partion of 15mb just wasn't cutting it anymore. I had a brainwave, scoring myself a old 20mb HD from my schools computer teacher.

So I eagerly ran home, went to my PC, poped the hood, found the relevant cables and plugged them in.
What hadn't I done ?????
Thats right, I hadn't turned the damn thing off! Well I quickly realised my mistake as I heard the sound of shorting wires and witnessed a number of components on my sound card go 'pop' and acrid smoke drift off into the room. My first lesson in computer upgrades and repairs.

Power down first!
(Wasn't I in strive when my parents found out I had fried the family computer )

this sux

first mobo:
lala hs off cpu, some AS, mount it back
:wtf: my computer starts to smell (damn, you could smell it 10meters away from it!)

don't ask me how, but the northbridge (!) was fried:wtf:
it was a sy-5ehm, and I heard someone else's nb came very hot!

A friend of my came over for a lan, but when he arrived, his pc wasn't working. I opened the damned machine, to check what's wrong, and I pulled just everything out, and installed it from scratch outside the case. When I booted, everyting worked fine, for 5 sec... then I smelled something burning.

I forgot to put on the CPU heatsink :)

smoking Athlon TB 1ghz (which was the top notch atm :) )
luckily the shopkeeper just gave him a new cpu, because there were no marks on the fried cpu :D

I went to the Dipro market and bought me 2 32MB SDRAM uh things.
rushed home.
opened up PC.
inserted RAM-thingies. turned on PC....Blackness on the screen. just nothing.

it appeared that the RAM was faulty and had fried 2 of the 3 RAM Banks in my PC leaving me limited to 32 MB of RAM instead of the hoped 128... :(

well, this aint a stupidity kill or bad luck

connect new Maxtor HD, boot up system, start formatting in Windows. After 5% disk starts making weird noises, format in windows starts speeding up.. and finishes after 5seconds.. "error in formatting disk"

hmm.. disconnect drive, connect it to another system, BIOS does no longer find it and the drives makes weird noises from the start.

one Maxtor 120gb DOA
thank god for the 3 year warranty, this one went way too quickly :)

as you may know on the backside of a palomino cpu there are some tiny chips

well, when i tried to attach te dragon orb 3 i trashed one of those chips

alsow once i fried a mobo because there wass some tension one my case, reason i forgot to solder an wire from my baybus

greetz

fried a XP2000+.
a few GF4Ti4600's, a R9700Pro, a Ti4200 and one Ti500.

always badluck, except the Geforce that had a torn off ram-module :p

and they always send me a new card, don't think they test them :^D

buy new 256 ram,
plug it in,

boot

smoke everywhere,


the ram wasn't plugged in correctly ( it was dark in my room )
but I got a new one while the burningmarks were pretty visible!

from then on when I change something, I'll at least put on the light ;)

Must be something that runs in the family, JMke also burned something ... while doing a cpu change ... in the dark.

SuperOrb killed my brandnew Duron700 once :)
it was pretty dark too

Luckily I only had once bad luck, not so long ago.

I was setting up my vapo on a Athlon Xp 1800+ AGOIA with a EPOX 8kha+. I got myself a 340W Chieftec power supply from someone on the forums. Everything was brandnew.
Well, it was time to boot up, vapo goes to -15 after some time.
Smoke comes out of powersupply, really bad smell and then a big nothing.
After checking and rechecking, the powersupply was faulty.
It fried my cpu and motherboard.
Powersupply was under warranty so no probs, cpu obviously lost warranty and I'm still waiting for the mobo to get it back from Wallabie ;)

now that's bad luck :p

Personal, nothing (guess I'm carefull).
Did manage to pull out a PCI card with the power on. I didn't realize it untill I placed it back, then the PC shut down. No harm done eventually.

professional:
Testing CPU mobo or RAM, whatever, assemble quick system on box with anti static bag over it (basic testbed).
Buzy assebling when someone calls me for something trivial (I'm apparently the only one with at least half a brain).
Comming back, continuing and burning something up.
I placed the cooler but they called my before I fastned it. Forgot to afterwards. New rule, click the cooler on or put it next to the mobo.

Something more effective. Run likewise testbed overnight for memtest.
Come back the next day, and the whole store smells, you know "that smell".
Epox used to place MOSFETS on the bottom of their boards. They got hot. REALLY hot when insulated by a cardboard box and ASbag.
Burnt a hole in the cardboard of about 15CM diameter. Mobo wasn't in much better shape.
Socket melted at one side and the cooler came loose, scratch a duron 1G.
Funny thing, board was still "running" that next day. Wasn't doing much, just power. Oh and the RAM worked.

i think i won't let you test my hardware freestyler :p:D

owke, all on the shops hardware. Both fortunate as unfortunate.

i luckily haven't killed anything yet so far
not rushing and remembering you don't have the money to buy new stuff really prevents you from killing your hardware :)

the only thing i ever killed was a calculator ......
i just went to sit on my chair and suddenly "what the **** is under my *** ???"
oh, a broken calculator :p

The only thing I remember destroying, was when I was about 11 years old or so. I thought I was a computer scientist or so, and I Was going to take out the Hd and put it back. I got it out, and put it back.

I Turned the pc on, and sparks came out. Woops, I mut have had put a cable wrong. The HD was b0rk3d.

[quote]Originally posted by The_Loserkid i just went to sit on my chair and suddenly "what the **** is under my *** ???"QUOTE]

lolz

Yea, if we go into alternative area's.
Busted a gameboy by hitting it on my knee, got tired of loosing.

Who said games make you agressive???

LCD screen was busted, the liquid actually started to poor out.

once my bro pulled out a hose of my WC when he was mad
my compu all messed up with cooling fluid
only my VGA-card was broken

killing hardware is not leet

except if you did some really crazy stuff with it

You mean like boiling it in a frying pan ???

exactly:D :grin:

greetz

laceration
 

I was installing a zalman copper flower h/s with a 120mm fan so I turned the machine on and a molex connector hit the fan and a blade broke off and hit my forehead and cut me. I crazyglued it back on and it works fine with no vibration.

For private use I've only killed a leadtek ti4600 when I was installing a Zalman **** sandwich on it.

@ work I've killed numerous components A 9800se, a herc 9700pro, a duron 1300 (I chipped it), a couple of memory modules, a harddrive (it somehow crashed......into the ground ;) )

Nothing that we did lose money over actually, everything got replaced. :)

Hmm, I bought 2 cheapo logitech keyboards, with the idea of modding one later. The modding was never done, but I did tear it apart.
Now I could use a new KB, So I'm reasembling it. After some fiddling I see how it should fit.
Now there's only one problem, it's been too long since I wrecked it and I lost the damn screws to keep it together...

glue / silicone

just make sure it works before you finish the job ... ;)

stupididty kills hardware
 

I dont count dropping hard drives, last week in one night with a few friends I dropped a 30gbhdd and a 60gbhdd in the same night...ok I was trashed. Now they are paperweights.:^D

remember me never to let you hold any HD again :p
you should wear a warning sign

When rigging up home made power cables, don't confuse the 5V and 12V wires. Result: 3 dead HD's.

yea yea.. warning sign: hazardous voltages outside :p

My Maxtor 160gig was DOA:(
Still waiting for a new one !

that's offtopic Thommy :p