most stupid thing you have done to your computer

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About 10 years ago, when 5,25" diskettes was the only way to distribute data, we have a laboratory work in the institute in Moscow. My friend, Andrey, wrote his program to 5,25" floppy. Andrey have a partner for lab, Misha, who had never saw this program, but ask Andrey for FDD to look at home. Misha was a big fun of beer. And he poured beer on.. floppy. Of cause, disk was damaged, smell as beer, was sticky, and Andrey was wary upset. But he disassembled the plastic pocket, and removed disk. Then he washed disk with warm water and shampoo. And finally, dry it by ..(don't know this word -- special mechanism for drying hair), and packed to another pocked.
They passed the lab!
 
Almost 10 years ago I talked my parents into buying a 387 math coprocessor, so we could run a cad program. Money was tight but I closed the deal by telling them I could install it myself. Had no idea. My hand slipped when I tried to push it in, and nearly every pin was bent. Spent an hour and a half with a pair of needlenose straightening them out, one by one. Oddly enough, the chip lasted for 2 1/2 years, for as long as we still needed it.

Tom Mc

Even a fool, when he remains silent, appears wise.
 
WELL I HAD TO FILE DOWN MY GOLDEN ORB TO FIT ON MY MOTHERBOARD SO I HAD FILE IT DOWN ALOT. IT TOOK 2 HOURS TO DO IT. WELL THE BP6 IS A GOOD BOARD BUT HAS A BAD DESIGN.

-- takes one to now one --
 
here's another small one:
When I just started working in a tech shop at fragile age of 15 (back in '94), they showed me how to put a computer together from basic components.
After they left me alone for a while, I built my first computer completely from scratch, but for the life of me couldn't make it work.
When my mentor came from lunch, it took him 20 seconds to find my rookie mistake and utter the dreaded words: "Black to Black, dummy!!!!"
(The power wires to the old baby-AT mobo (remember those) could be put in two different ways, one of which will likely fry the board... the right way puts the black (ground) wires on one of the connectors alongside the black wires from the other connector... only nobody told ME that🙁
 
I bought a nice new full tower case when they first became fashionable(!) - later deciding I needed extra watts (so new power supply). I unscrewed and removed the power supply and disconnected all the cables, then dropped it. I watched it as it plumetted through the machine, smashing a graphics card, sound card and lan card, the power supply broke in half when it hit the bottom of the case, and it ripped the hard drive cable out the connector so hard that several of the connector's pins broke. And I call myself a IT professional?

Only the motherboard, the CD-ROM, memory and floppy drive survived the ordeal. I couldn't even recover the data from the drive, and being careless had made no backups of my files.

I also spoilt another hard drive when a long screwdriver slipped, went into the gap between the drive and the PCB, and broke several legs off an important-looking chip. Funnily enough, it never worked again.
 
This one isn't so much stupid as it is odd. I bought an ultra-cheap Celeron 500 to replace my P133 that had died of old age and was just getting too expensive to keep replacing pieces of compared to just buying something better.

But, of course, I wanted the CD burner and the 8GB hard drive from the remains to go into the new system. The only problem is the new system, being one of those ultra-cheap unupgradable systems (even has a 2x AGP video chip on-board with no AGP card slot to upgrade with) it had no place to mount a second hard drive. Well, I suppose I could have left off one of the CD ROMs, but the burner is slow and the normal CD ROM can't burn, so I wanted them both in there.

So I took the HD bay out of the Celeron case. Then I took the HD/floppy bay out of the dead 133 full tower. (Which can hold 5 devices) Since there was no way in hell it would mount to anything in the Celeron's case, I just duct-taped it to the bottom of the case. I can't fit any full-sized ISA cards in there now, but I've got my extra 8 GB of HD space and it's all been good since.

Goddess forbid any tech who looks inside that case though. They'd either die laughing or bop me over the head for just not getting a bigger case or a proper HD mount for that case. But why spend money when duct tape fixes all? :)

- Sanity is purely based on point-of-view.
 
That is one hellava Power supply what is it made of ?
Lead ?!
😉


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-<font color=red><b>R.K.</b></font color=red>
 
My first computer - an AMIGA 500 had no fans, no noise and some games turned the power led off. So I paused a game and turned the monitor off. 2 days later I got a 512Kb memory upgrade. Of course the comp was still on when I installed it. Unfortunately the mem module was fried, but the computer still worked.
 
I've got two stupid things. Here's number one:

Back in the day when I was upgrading my 286/16 to a 386/33, I just spent $800 on a new EISA mobo and and chip. While installing the mobo, one of the plastic standoffs wouldn't go through the mobo so I pulled out my trusty pair of pliers to get a grip on it and pulled ---- OOPS ---- the pliers slipped off and put a NICE scrape on the mobo (I could see one broken trace). I was nearly crying but decided to plug it in and see if it still worked. I got a floppy controller error and figured, HMMMM, maybe I can fix this since the floppy isn't so picky on timing. I couldn't get the trace repaired so I pulled out a nice thin piece of wire and jumpered from the break to the floppy controller chip.
Thing worked fine for years after that!

Second stupid thing:

I just moved back to the USA from Germany this past September and mailed my 800MHz Slot-A system back. Anyone who owns a SLOT-A system should remove the chip before mailing their system anywhere!
I received my system at my new place and heard a rumbling inside (NOT good). I opened it up and the Athlon had snapped out of the slot and had tumbled around inside. After swapping the various pieces around in my daughter's K-2 system, I found that my 3-month old WinFast GeForce 256 DDR (A few components are scraped off of it) was the only thing destroyed. (I couldn't test the Athlon for obvious reasons).

Wait the story gets better.

I borrow her TNT card and throw it into my system and turn the thing on. NOTHING. I work on this damn problem for at least 6 hours - swapping memory, cables, power supplies and CANNOT get this system booted. I finally give up and decide to file a claim with the postal service. The next day I walk over and pick up the system and see my problem.

Any guesses?


That damn 115/230 switch on the back. I flip the switch, plug it all back up - turn it on and works like a champ.

P.S. The postal service did pay for my new video card (GeForce 2 GTS).
 
I plugged a two prong power connector into the board where I was trying to stick some other led cable.. can't remember. But it shorted the little power cord and melted the insulation. First I smelled the burning rubber then I saw the smoking fumes come billowing out of the seams. I was worried it was the Hard drive, so wheww!. I don't think it hurt the motherboard, it worked anyways.
 
several things in chronological order:

1. Our families first computer. My older brother is the only one who knows anything about computers at this point but when day while he's at wrestling practive or something I decide I'm going to install a game (dark queen of kryn or something). So I install the game...to c:\...well I see all these extra files in the base directory and I think, crap, those aren't supposed to be there. So I delete them all. command.com, io.sys...all of them. My brother had a family talk about how never to touch computers again.

2. I had this Pentium 200mhz for about a year and decided I was gonna start messing with the hardware. Well after I rearrange things I can't get the damn thing to boot up. I try everything (so I think) and eventually get really pissed take out all the components and destroy the case/mobo/cpu. Well I buy a new system and have the same problem. Then I turned around the plug on the CD-ROM....and i tworked.

3. My friends computer...hell why not experiment. I take some DIMM RAM and you know how there's those little notches on the RAM. Well they wouldn't fit in his system, so I take out a file to make the notches a little bigger. I think, I am the computer GURU now, baby. Didn't boot, but didn't hurt it either. Then I install another hard drive. Since he has a cheapo computer there aren'y any extra HD trays. SO I ducktape it to the bottom of his other hard drive. Works fine.

happy gaming!
 
i had changed a old AT case to put in my new ATX system...
it was finished...and the system was running...i was fooling around at the back...pressing on the metal with a screwdriver...because it did not look as i wanted...
about 3 sec later i took my hand out of the case..or the case out of my hand...i saw my hand full of blood...went to the bath...holding it under water for a few minutes...then i lost consciouness...while going down i finished off a few things in the bathroom...
but the computer was unharmed...so it was the most stupid thing the computer did to me and the bathroom *gg*

i mounted the heatsink of a friends K7 classic upside down...
the holding clamps shortened out parts of the system...
caused bios checksum errors and other fun (no boot) *g*..but again: no damage
 
Hmmm, you mean on top of flashing the BIOS on my "E"(some crappy no name board) with one from a Soyo board... Also, once I plugged the power switch in backward on the MB. When I turned the thing on, my Voodoo 3 made a big spark and a popping noise and smelled burnt. Fixed the prob and started back up and it still worked perfectly.
 
Hi there... i am quite stupid to
About 1,5 moth ago i gave a friend of mine 2500 dollars to buy my self a new pc... I gave the money to him cause he owns his own pc shop.. i could get the the best pc around and only had to pay the taxes.. Nothing more...
The thing is i still havent got the computer..
And it is orderd for $ 2238 ..

The thing is that already payed for the pc parts and i get it for the price i payed for it.
Now all the parts pricess are droped for 1/3...
I payed 2238 for
amd t bird 1000 mhz
asus a7v mobo
asus v7700 32 mb drr geforce 2
128 mb 133 mhz sdram ( i know have to upgrade it atleast to 256 )
soundblaster live 5.1 oem version..
copermine cooler 1 ghz (forgot the name)
ATX big tower 300 watt
Lg 17 inch flatscreen.
mouse keyboard ect. ect.
Who`s the fool now.... And still aint got it...
Mabe next moth
 
I've done a million stupid things, but here is a fun one.
I work for a computer service company. Someone brought a monitor in for a warrenty exchange because the customer reported that it smoked. Well in this buisness "The customer is always right" doesn't work. Whatever they say is wrong with it USUALLY isn't. So the secratry (who knows nothing about computes) said "plug it in to see what it wrong." (In my defence I was new at this point) So I plugged it in to verify the problem. And all of a sudden all this smoke started pouring out of the vents on top. I raced over to unplug it and everyone had to leave the service room for like 30 mins because it stunk so much. Needless to say, when anyone brings in a monitor under warrenty I take their word for it and just exchange it.
 
This just happened recently. I was building my brothers A7V system and for some reason I couldn't even get to the EZ installation menu to format and partition the drive. The dang thing just kept locking up. However, I noticed that if I let it set (off) for several hours it would run a little longer so it seemed like the CPU may have been getting too hot. Well...I go into the BIOS to take a peek at the hardware monitor and to my horror I see that the CPU was showing like 180deg F!!! I cursed and shut it down immediately. I removed the CPU w/ HS, removed the Heatsink and found that there was a SECOND layer of tape over the conductive paste! I've built 3 systems before this one and don't recall having to remove two pieces of tape?! Moral of the story is don't limit yourself to past experiences, but treat every build like it's your first...
 
How are yall overclocking these processors so much? What fans/how many fans/what MB are you using? I'm intending to overclock an 800 duron to 1ghz, but if I can do more...
 
Uckfay. That was supposed to go in another topic. Oopsie.. 😀

The stupidest thing I've done to my computer? Well, I've installed Windows... does that count? 😀
 
i have a k6-2 400 that i wanted to hit 600 (yea in my dreams!) i put a 72w peltier on it with no insulation.
but it gets even better.
i forgot to disable the suspend function.
can anyone say condensation?
believe it or not after drying the chip and socket off and sanding the discolored pins with 800 grit sandpaper the machine still runs.
 
I was doing some things in the computer and when I went to turn it on nothing happened. I realized the cable to the hdd was off. I started to plug it in and well lets just say DONT DO THAT UNLESS ITS OFF.

You Dont Want To Be The Last to Know Anything.
 
I plugged in the power lead to the back of my PSU but forgot to check what the voltage setting was. All hell broke loose when I flicked the power socket switch. The sparks were pretty huge especially as I was about 10 cm from the PSU. Lit up the back of my compuer like a torch and popped loudly. Blew the PSU up but the mobo and everything else was fine!! Shop Keeper felt sorry and sent me another (this time preset voltage and no way to alter it!!)
 
Well its actualy my friend done and not me, ( you can see my stupid things trough out this thread)

He plugged all 4 his HDs to his SOYO mb,120 pentium
one hd 1.7 gb, 3x120 mb ,those days that kind of space was alot, So he plugged everything into its place except one HD power connector, so he carrefully inserted it but it did show some resistence,as my friend being a VERY big strong person, he said, "If force doesn't work use more force!"
so he managed to stick that sucker up in there,i'll show how the connector was
let imagine that this is a power plug for a HD:
5v Gnd Gnd 12v
RED BLACK BLACK YELLOW
| | | | <-Power
O O O O
So he connected / / /
/ / /
O O O O
| | | | <-HD
5 G G 12

Imagine what happened...
all 4 drives burned, and the mother board too.
one of those drives was mine... 🙁

Oh and there was smoke and stuff! cool 😛



<b>-----------------------</b>
-<font color=red><b>R.K.</b></font color=red>
 
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