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Antisocial Hardware?

Posted by Cliff on from the it-really-shouldn't-do-that dept.

87C751 asks: "Over the weekend, I happened upon a deal: 10/100 PCI NICs for $1.99. I bought two and installed one in my Linux box. The box came up to POST, and the new NIC started looking for a DHCP server (which I thought was cute, if useless). Once that timed out, boot sequence continued to the message "NTLDR not found"! In an attempt to do a PXE net boot, the new NIC had -rewritten my boot sector!- Granted, a few minutes with a GRUB boot floppy set things right again, but why in the world is J. Random piece of hardware arrogant enough to frob my disc? Has anyone else been bitten by antisocial hardware?"

10 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Antisocial... by fredrikj · · Score: 4, Funny

    If by 'antisocial' you'd mean hardware that detracts you from a social life, then, yes, I have plenty of antisocial hardware.

  2. Beware the cheap NIC by Pathwalker · · Score: 4, Funny

    Once I picked up a couple of really cheap no-brand 10/100 cards that had the same MAC address.

    No way to change it either - I guess someone missed the point that MACs are supposed to be unique.

  3. Evil Memory by riclewis · · Score: 5, Funny
    There was a 128MB stick of SDRAM I had once that killed every motherboard I ever put it in. Lost three before I figured it out, and after that I kept it around just to kill old boards.

    Anybody want some cheap RAM?

    1. Re:Evil Memory by SecretAsianMan · · Score: 4, Funny
      There was a 128MB stick of SDRAM I had once that killed every motherboard I ever put it in. Lost three before I figured it out, and after that I kept it around just to kill old boards.

      Hello?! Those don't go in your PCI slots!

      --

      Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.

    2. Re:Evil Memory by slaker · · Score: 2, Funny

      I have a Duron 850 that kills motherboards AND memory. We could start a club!

      --
      -- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
    3. Re:Evil Memory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      If you put your Duron 850 on a board with his ram, who would survive! HARDWARE CAGE MATCH LIVE ON PAY PER VIEW!

    4. Re:Evil Memory by shfted! · · Score: 2, Funny

      Sell it on Ebay as possessed!

      --
      He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
  4. ARGH! by MarvinMouse · · Score: 3, Funny

    I am understand by obscure acronyms!

    GRUB, NIC, SIB, USA, NOB, FSCK, .... !

    Will someone please think of the children!

    --
    ~ kjrose
  5. X-Cable by jsse · · Score: 5, Funny

    Once I got severe electric shock when plugging a parallel cable to a pretty old computer. I believe I saw a flash of lighting between the plug and the socket before I was bounced back.

    The cable has 'changed' internally but no one could tell until one tries to plug it into a live computer - and gets the same shocking experience I had. I didn't throw it away, but mark it with 'X' instead. It becomes 'X-Cable' as in 'X-Men' - it's now possessing super-power after the disaster.

    Spare parallel cable? Sure!

  6. TV special by valkraider · · Score: 4, Funny

    I can see it now. FOX joins hands with TechTV to start an entirely new line of reality shows:

    "WHEN GOOD MEMORY GOES BAD"

    "World's scariest hardware installs!"

    "Who wants to install a million NICs?"

    "American CPU idle"

    "Overclocking Island"

    "The weakest SCSI device"

    and of course, their obligatory sequals, and finally:

    "The Torvalds'" ("TOVE!!!!!!!!!!!!")