What's your biggest Hardware Goof...?

BlueWeasel · Post by **BlueWeasel** » Wed Jan 17, 2001 1:03 am

Nothing as major as some of the above, but still a goof. . .

I was playing around with the jumpers on my Asus P5AB MB w/K6-3+ 450mhz processor, and I accidentally got the I/0 voltage and the CPU voltage backwards. In other words, I gave my RAM and other cards 2.4v and in turn gave my K6-3 a hefty 3.3v.

While I would have liked to overclock this chip, I think 3.3v is a little out of spec. I messed up the chip, but I called TC Computers and told them EXACTLY what I did. The tech guy just laughed, and promptly send me a new chip. Go figure. . .

Jester · Post by **Jester** » Wed Jan 17, 2001 2:28 am

Right before I left for college I had just bought a new cd (forget which band) and wanted to listen to it while I washed the dishes. I had a portable boom box to play it in and was looking around for a place to set it. The only place I could find without a bunch of junk in it was right in front of the case for my dad's P166. I set it there, washed the dishes then got on his computer only to be greeted by a BSOD. I rebooted and could actually hear the head banging off the surface of the drive. Ouch! Apparantly the bass from the boom box made the head crash into the platter. Luckily WD replaced it for free under warranty!

Gand1 · Post by **Gand1** » Thu Jan 18, 2001 1:51 pm

Hmmm... got a couple myself...

1. Installing a new LVD drive in my system. Because it is LVD I needed an adapter that Red Dawn thoughfully gave me. Plug it all in, everything is fine and running and so I go to move a cable out of the way. By the way the LVD adapter back has no protection on it. I move a cable an POOF! The adapter touches the drive and the system shuts down. Crap!!! I had to completely unload any power from the power supply before it would even turn on again! Nothing fried, Whew...

2. Customer calls to tell me he has no room left on his hard drive. Ok, I show up and do some routine cleanup maintenance on his system. Hmmm... 400megs in the temp folders... delete! Customer calls back in an hour an says, where are my files from the past year, I stored them all in a folder called temp! Ooops, all gone...

Frost · Post by **Frost** » Thu Jan 18, 2001 3:24 pm

Ok this was about a year and a half ago when athlons @ 800 were REAL expensive. ($350) I superglued/thrmalpasted my alpha directly to the core cuz I had no other way of doing it. AND was being VERY stupid. Anyways, power on system runs for awhile then crashes after about 5mins of windows. I go oh-no this is NOT a good cooler. So I did the freezer method to get the sink off. BAD idea pulled part of the chip with it!

I could see the actual stuffs inside!

I'm sure some of you guys remember this!

The next dumbest thing... Hmmm. I have also killed a GeForce DDR about 6 months ago, about 1353533floppys. DAMN those floppys! I have killed the hard-drive in my moms computer 2 times now!

I killed a k6-2 chip and mobo, and a BH6. Thats all I can remember for now.

Frost.

Snatchface · Post by **Snatchface** » Thu Jan 18, 2001 7:10 pm

As some here may know, I was the one who won the nVidia contest for naming their "new" board the G-Force. As my prize they sent me a card for free when they first came out. It took them a while to get it to me and the guy there said it was because they wanted to get me the latest version (a load of BS i thought).

I turned right around and sold it since I was not really interested in bleeding edge technology, and happy with my V3. I asked a competitive price for a new 32mb SDR G-force ($185 at that time) and shipped it still shrinkwrapped. I get an email a few days later...turns out that it was a 64 MB DDR Quadro that was not yet available for several months. D'OH! Could have easily doubled the price. Whatta dumbass.

Ladies Man · Post by **Ladies Man** » Thu Jan 18, 2001 7:12 pm

hummm

I've been lucky.... I've only fried a floppy... The power cord came out and on boot it said no floppy. so i plugged it back in with it still running..... big spark system rebooted floppy dead

oh well

I ran my k6-2 350@500 3.1 volts for awhile
stable too

VidmanII · Post by **VidmanII** » Thu Jan 18, 2001 7:13 pm

As I was building my first slot one rig < P2 300 SL2W8 > I installed the cpu without first putting the cpu mounting bracket around the slot. I powered up the system and the damn cpu flew off the slot...!!!! but because the cpu fan was still plugged into the header, it was flopping around inside the bottom of the case like a rat in a cheese factory. I'm trying to grab it and power down the system at the same time...

Oh man, I'll never forget that.

Coco · Post by **Coco** » Thu Jan 18, 2001 8:40 pm

hmmm... I think it's the time when I had super black smoke coming out of my computer...

It happened like this... I have one of those Hard-Drive removable case with a key to lock/unlock the tray, so in order to not lose the key, I place it with my internal speaker so that the magnet will hold it there... then I powered up the computer, not knowing that the key is short-circuiting my system, and bam! Super stink black smoke just filled up the corner of my room(my case is open), so I quickly scream like a schoolgirl and pulled the plug. Still don't know what caused it... the computer won't boot again... then I see the key... removed it, powered up the computer, everything was perfect again! Nothing was dead! Anyway, I learned that I should remove any metal stuff within the case from now on...

Let this be a lesson to all of you... never ever short circuit your computer system...

Darkheart · Post by **Darkheart** » Fri Jan 19, 2001 5:36 am

Biggest kicker I've seen so far is Snatch's man, I bet you wish you had kept that card. It seems amazing how lucky some of us goofers are.

Darkheart

Demrok · Post by **Demrok** » Fri Jan 19, 2001 2:11 pm

#1 stupidest thing ever....was puttin my new 33.6 into my P100 at the time (long ago)

stupip me didn't support the mobo enough while puttin it in and caused a hiarline fracture across my mobo...ah well, got a new P233MMX which was a hell of a lot better ! :up

#2 being a cowboy and not unplugging the Power cord from the PS, and trying to put in a PCI card (modem i think) at the same second I was putting the card in the computer turned on from contact with the spirit energy in the modem.... and for some reason my case has antitheft on it and likes to give you a shock sometimes...so...my computer turned on and I got a shock. hasn't happened to me again though !

#3 Putting a Cyrix 266 into an older socket 7 board and when I turned the power on, was greeted by a briliant blue flash from the side of the ZIF socket...scared the crap outta me...but the board was fine...CPU however met the garbage can, in pieces i might add ! used mah crowbar ta smash it !

d_b · Post by **d_b** » Fri Jan 19, 2001 9:18 pm

It just happened...put together a cheap system for a friend, powered it up and saw a little bit of smoke rolling out of it. Turns out I accidently had the cpu fan wire over the apg slot. When I put the vid card in it also shoved the wire in with it. No more video card and no more cpu fan. I guess I am lucky thats all that got fried.

Delta · Post by **Delta** » Sat Jan 20, 2001 11:50 am

a while back with my old TX chipset mobo -i thought i'd give getting usb working a shot, so i got me a usb header and went to plug it in. I turned the system off and looked at the pins, there was 8 -my header had 10 -i figured the extra 2 were the earths for each port, so i plugged it on leaving what i thought was earth not connected <b>wrong!</b>

i booted the system with the usb ports not touching the case and then built up the courage to tap them on the case to see if i'd got it right. <b>BANG!</b> big blue spark from the usb ports to the case and off went the comp -the tracks for the usb ports were completely destroyed and my mobo became half crippled meaning i had no mouse

i ran that board for 4 months or so until it finally gave up!

CaterpillarAssassin · Post by **CaterpillarAssassin** » Sun Jan 21, 2001 9:35 pm

I've never made a mistake...EVER.

No but really, I did the exact same thing as Bio. I touched the thingy going across that bigger thing in the monitor when trying to "tweak" the colors and whatnot from an article I found. Needless to say, I've never opened the monitor since

Alex00 · Post by **Alex00** » Sun Jan 21, 2001 10:42 pm

VidmanII that has to be 1 of the funniest things i've ever heard to bad you don't have that on video

Stryker · Post by **Stryker** » Mon Jan 22, 2001 12:46 am

There's some good ones, Snatch i would have stabbed myself, Vidman ROTFLMAO that's priceless

The one that i cannot seem to forget was when i was building a new P233 64meg sok7 job for someone, not thinking i started to screw in cards with power still running when i dropped a screw straight on to the mobo..i will never forget the sound/sizzle & spark effects.
It hosed most of the system except the CD drives, everything else was dead, i got a safety cut out switch installed after that one..