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Your Most Damage-Resistant Hardware?
questamor writes "After reading the recent Slashdot article linking to drivesavers and their list of damaged hardware that was still recoverable, I'm curious about the worst things slashdot readers have done to their hardware and still had it work. So far I've been lucky, and in more than a decade of owning computers I've hotplugged almost everything except a CPU (sometimes accidentally, sometimes through laziness) and never knowingly broken anything. What have you all done to your machines? I imagine there are many stories of dropped, drowned, stolen and generally abused machines still working and doing their thing; or at least, able to be brought back to a working state"
Everything you list is pretty harmless. Well, except the drive dropping, although when they're off, the head employs a locking device.
Drives are meant to receive power and signal independently. You can even give it the 5V line before the 12V, or the other way around, it'll be fine. Just don't UNplug it while it's on, as that will likely crash your OS (but not damage the drive.) And you don't want to plug the signal cable in after it's powered up, unless it's SATA.
You can also safely power it up without a signal cable if you want to test noise or something.
sh
"[A] high IQ is like a Jeep; you will still get stuck, just farther from help!" --Just d' FAQs, c.g.a
No, that is completely harmless. It would even been alright for you to power it up after noticing this problem without rebooting the box (although the OS would likely not detect it.)
I've tried doing IDE hotswap experiments with ancient hardware, and never fried any of it, but there were some arcs, so I'd reccomend against it on modern hardware.
sh
"[A] high IQ is like a Jeep; you will still get stuck, just farther from help!" --Just d' FAQs, c.g.a
On the other hand, I owned a Winbook and that thing would fall apart if you were to breath in it's general direction from the other side of a football field. NEVER BUY WINBOOK. Junk junk junk junk. I could give you examples. I WILL give you examples:
And that's just a TASTE of what they put me through...
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
There is a reason not to do it, but it's trivial. The grounding wire on the power plug is a whole lot better than the grounding wire on the 40pin ribbon. By taking out the power first, there is still some electricity in it that then goes thru the ribbon.
Only dead fish swim with the stream...
I used to clean my keyb+mouse with rubbing alchohol the hard way. But recently I started using the dishwasher. I just stop about 5mins after dry cycle and wipe it off. works great 5 years later.
EOU
I think he was noting their resilliance as a people in the face of thousands of years of persecution.
And they're not a race, but that's another story...
You just contradicted yourself completely. Before you moderate this flamebait hear me out.
I've been working at my college as a laptop service technician for 3 years and I've had incredibly intimate experience with 3 models of IBM thinkpads. The 390, the i1422 and the i1300.
All three have had serious design flaws that made them break in predictable particular ways due from normal use.
- The 390's battery latches broke like popcorn, and the hinges would break the covers into smithereens.
-
The 1400's would get white dots on the LCD from the LCD bezels being so flimsily made that slight presure on the outside of the closed laptop would squash it down onto two upraised areas on the keyboard bezel.
- The current model my college has is the i1300. The hinges. Oh dear god the left hinges....For some inexplicable reason they made the LEFT hinges in these things out of pot metal, while the right hinge is good material and breaks about 1/2000th as often (Yes we have ~1700 machines on campus). Normal use will cause the left hinge to give out well within a year (the lease is 3 years). And if the hinge starts loosening up (the metal splitting) without being seen to it will eventually break the hinge cap, the upper and lower covers, both LCD bezels AND the LCD itself ($800 that IBM gets to eat, becaues it's a warranty issue).
Oh and each new model we get has more and more of its components integrated into the motherboard. Currently if any one of the following parts becomes broken/inoperable the $700 motherboard has to be replaced: power port (can't count the number of times a trip over the power cord has cost the student $100 deductable and the college $600 to replace it)- headphone jack
- microphone jack
- bios (corrupted etc)
- CMOS battery holder
You ask why the college has to pay for what should be covered under insurance? Because these things are so fragile that our 2nd insurance carrier dropped us like a rabid hamster! So don't even begin to say they still make them solid! I know better, I have to fix the damn things. Not to mention the hd in the stupid things has a transfer rate of 2.0MB/s (1/3rd the speed of my ipod's drive!)Question everything
Large electrolytic capacitors are often just insurance against bad power coming in from the supplies. In the case of an expansion card, that would be the mainboard. Since the mainboard has its own caps, and the power supply has several as well, only factors like load and distance could cause problems for the card. If the rest of your system is working properly, and there isn't anything near the device that would introduce noise, you should be fine. Breaking off caps is something that will have no effect 90% of the time, but then you'll move the device somewhere slightly different and suddenly it flakes out all the time.
Probably just had blank PCB space at the end of it. Many 1st gen. products are refined right before production starts, leaving unused PCB space.
The OEM Apple Geforce 4 TI cards have about 4 inches of blank green board at the end to prevent rattling and movement during shipment, net effect, really long graphics card, could be cut off.