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Baked Apple
Aaron Steele writes "Okay, I work at an Apple Authorized Retailer and we just had a lady come in to see if we could fix her PowerBook G4. She walks in the store and comes up to me, 'Sir, I've got a baked Apple.' The top of the screen was a little brown and warped. The lady opened up the machine and the screen was all cracked, and there was not a single key left on the keyboard. It turns out she had the machine in the oven for 20 minutes, baking at 400 degrees. No joke. And what's even more amazing. The machine still works. Ethernet, Modem, USB, it all works. Plug in an external monitor and keyboard and it's good as new ... almost." Am I the only one for whom this conjures up images of Shrinky Dinks?
I'm more amazed that no one asked her why she did it... Do we look down on non-computer people so much that we don't even bother to ask anymore why they do stupid things?
-some weird story. Glad I got to see the pics with the correct URL. WHY did this lady do this?
--here's my tough as nails apple story. We run on solar here. The first year though I didn't have a proper buried power cable, my AC feed from the inverters was literally just an extension cord on top of the ground. Was running a mac 6400 tower at the time, through a surge protector/power strip (no, too dumb to send in warranty card when I got the surge, duh on me). Anywho, one day there's a thunderstorm, being reasonably cautious I unplugged everything. Storm goes away, cool, plug all the stuff back in. About 5 minutes later ZAP! Rogue lightning bolt hits I guess the ground nearby or the cord directly. Pooter goes POP, everything shuts down. I mean it was loud, a very close by hit.
I am steamed, think oh crap no pooter. Reset breaker, hit power button, CHIME, that nice boot up chord! Amazing! thing boots but ran sorta screwy. Just-screwy. surfing was a tad slower, would get occassional screen freezes, etc, but as it was at the time my "best" computer I just kept using it. Next day I open the case, WOW, the mobo is all crispy! I mean fried city, and the thing is still working. Hard to describe except it looked -lightning hit. there's burnt stuff all over. I cleaned it as good as possible and put it back together. Used it for a few more months in crippled mode, then upgraded an old quadra to use instead, then I bought a used pb 1400, then I just parted the 6400 out, kept the drives and those great built in speakers.
tough boxes for sure
Used to feature an Apple ][ recovered from a fire -- totally melted and still working.
There was also a story about a library in a village in Papua New Guinea that was flooded, and the Macs in the library were filled with mud. They hosed em off, dried them out, and they worked.
Finally there's an old BMUG article about "hanging your disks out to dry" after their shareware library was flooded. They opened the floppy disks, washed the disks gently with detergent, air dried them, and put them back in new cases. Voila they were readable.
I used the same trick on a floppy disk soaked with spilled coffee (far worse than flood water I imagine). No data loss.