Step-by-Step Computer Destruction

Unixrevolution writes "Dan's Data has an excellent article on how an enterprising user (or repair tech) can easily destroy their computer. Most of us don't destroy nearly enough hardware, so this should be helpful."

Comments

Wellll welll,

[panxerox]

IT's gonna love me when they come in on monday hehehe.

easier way

[I Want GNU!]

Post a link to it from Slashdot.

Or tell hackers that it is the most secure computer ever.

From the article:

[parkanoid]

Originally published in Australian Personal Computer Magazine, January 1998.

Last updated 20/02/03.

Very timely indeed.

Re:From the article:

[geekster]

Can't you just skip to the next article?

Re:From the article:

[canajin56]

There might not be something to complain about in the next article ;)

Re:From the article:

[1u3hr]

Very timely indeed.

Blast from the past:"If the computer is an 80486-based system, the Central Processing Unit (CPU) can be plugged into its socket in more than one way....Inserting Single Inline Memory Modules (SIMMs) should be relatively simple..."

Start by defraggling your hard disk

[millette]

Here are step by steps instructions for that: http://www.datadocktorn.nu/us_frag1.php
You should only have to do this once :)

Re:Start by defraggling your hard disk

[tsa]

Mod this up, I haven't laughed so hard about something nerdy in a long time!

Re:Start by defraggling your hard disk

[Anonymous Coward]

You have Fraggles on your disk?

Re:Start by defraggling your hard disk

[BrynM]

Since Jim Henson's death, the fraggles have reverted to their natural form, known as Gremlins. Henson's work in domesticating these beasts and making them successful actors was frowned upon by many animal rights groups, but came as a blessing to many engineers. Though foul play has been disproven, many engineers and aircraft designers still suspect that Henson was killed by an unnamed frog hired by animal rights activists.

Microsoft, the leading necromancers of the software industry and ironically the most plagued by Gremlins, have been developing a strategy to ressurect Henson, but have been plagued by failed attempts to add new features. It is hoped that IBM will take up the task of ressurecting Henson in the future, as the gremlin epidemic grows out of control.

Re:Start by defraggling your hard disk

[LiquidCoooled]

If you want a laugh, you should try searching for "Sex" on Wikipedia.
1000's of us geeks and intelligent folks get together and create a huge information source, able to cross reference facts and details from all aspects of life, able to produce page after page of details on numerous subjects, and still a simple search for "Sex" reveals nothing.
My missus and I were in histerics about this last night, all because I asked her to choose a subject.

I guess all the anti-hype about us techies is true.

I am aware that searching for other things brings up results, but that just tickled us.
[/offtopic]

Re:Start by defraggling your hard disk

[at_18]

The search is broken. Click on the "go" button and you will land on an article appropriately titles "Sex"

Re:Start by defraggling your hard disk

[LiquidCoooled]

I know it will bring up the category, but searching for other things works fine - just not for sex.
I'm assuming its to do with the index, it was simply the irony of it :)

Re:Start by defraggling your hard disk

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy forgot to take advantage of the impressively strong magnets found inside his hard drive, magnets that probably produce more magnetic force per area than his speaker magnet

http://www.datadocktorn.nu/images/defrag/6.jpg

under the head assembly he just took out -- two trapezoidal rare earth magnets. Strong enough to hurt you if you hold them close together.

The best way to remove them (as they are glued on to the carrier) is to get two pliers and bend the carrier (not the magnets - they will shatter) a small amount - the magnets should then slide off.

These things will hold a 50-page sheaf to the fridge.

Re:Start by defraggling your hard disk

[JesusPGT]

That may be true, but the speaker magnet probably reorients the databits more evenly, and is a more reliable defraggling. for super fast datamachine!

Re:Start by defraggling your hard disk

[eatdave13]

Heh... I bought a couple of those magnets on a website that tells you not to buy them because they'll hurt you. They're all kinds of fun.

I can't take them in my computer room. Monitors distort from over 3 feet away. On the plus side, I can mess with my roommate from the other room :P

They're also fun to try to take apart. Oh, wait, I mean impossible. I got them within 6 inches of eachother once when I was gesturing with them while talking, and they picked up a keyring and caught my finger. Luckily the keyring sacrificed itself to save my finger, it was almost bent in half. I got my finger out. Then one of my he-man friends wanted to try getting them apart. I gave them to him and looked around for my car keys so I could drive him to the hospital. He was eventually able to move them a couple millimeters by shearing them, but then the keyring popped out, and they caught the web between his thumb and index finger. Once he got the courage to pull it out from between them, we got to watch it turn black in under a minute :)

The magnets are still stuck together. I'm afraid to take any tools to them, since they're ceramic. Every once in a while some titan thinks he can get them apart. Unfortunately they've all walked away chastened but whole. I'm still waiting to have a finger stuck between 2 magnets instead of just 2 magnets :P

So That's How Its Done

[The Gardener]

And here I was using the arc welder.

The Gardener

Re:So That's How Its Done

[Anonymous Coward]

I always love it when major computer rags tell folks to vacuum their machines out.
Morrons why do they think service vacs have grounds built into the hose.
I flamed the writer of an Inquirer article on computer cleaning about this.
Did I get posted in the Inquirer as some flames do NO. The morron was telling people how to destroy their computers.
Vacuum out your machines please! I need more work!
Run that Hoover around on the carpet a little before vacuuming out your computer so as to build up more static. The more components I replace the more money I make.

Re:So That's How Its Done

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

I live (and work) near a railroad track. Works well enough, as long as you don't get caught. :)

Steps:

[TCM]

1. take hammer

2. apply to computer

Re:Steps:

[K_J_Raine]

You forgot step three: 3. Repeat as necessary

Re:Steps:

[MuParadigm]

This is not as much fun as flamethrower.

Re:Steps:

[Glyndwr]

3.???
4. Profit!

Re:Steps:

[Pig Hogger]

Nothing beats a speeding 4000 H.P. locomotive at 100 km/hour, pulling a 10,000 ton freight train.

Re:Steps:

[zulux]

You forgot step three: 3. Repeat as necessary

Thanks for putting a condition in the loop.

Some progrmmers have died a painfull death in their own shower:

1) Lather
2) Rinse
3) Repeat

Re:Steps:

[evilviper]

Some progrmmers have died a painfull death in their own shower:

1) Lather
2) Rinse
3) Repeat

That was a fairly funny joke the first 100,000 times I heard it...

Re:Steps:

[tadheckaman]

I thought it was a blond joke...

Re:Steps:

[usotsuki]

Huh? Only 62 mph?

Trains around here go faster than that. :)

-uso.

Re:Steps:

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of you who would like a demonstration of the above hammer/computer method, please see this.

Re:Steps:

[muzzmac]

3. ??? = Patent hammer.
4. Profit!

Re:Steps:

[Anonymous Coward]

Freight trains?

Re:Steps:

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow.

People still waste their mod points on that crap?

Re:Steps:

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing except some metal shit laying on tracks. Dumbass.

Re:Steps:

[child_of_mercy]

australian trains are slow and sad.

heavily unionised workforce slowly throttling the life out of their own indsutry.

Re:Steps:

[usotsuki]

Such can be the nature of unions...we had one that was like a mini-mafia here in Niagara Falls.

-uso.

Re:Steps:

[ar1550]

*Real* programmers don't shower!

Re:Steps:

[Anonymous Coward]

But you forgot

4. ???
5. profit !

Re:Steps:

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it an official Spaceballs flamethrower?

I can do it easier

[The-Bus]

Spend time destroying a power supply? I just take it to the daycare and let some 3 year olds have at it. They're at it with eating utensils, watering the motherboard, putting peanut butter sandwiches in the disk drives, throwing the sound card -- it akes about 10 minutes for the damn thing to be obliterated.

Sure, you lose a few lives when the cute little tots start putting forks inside the power supply, but that's the price you pay for progress.

Re:I can do it easier

[RealityMogul]

My son wasn't very ambitious, he only killed a floppy drive - by putting quarters into it of course.

Oh wait, and there was the CD-ROM incident. Did you know a CD-ROM can hold 3 discs?

Oh, almost forgot about the attempts at drawing pictures on the monitor - with a metal spoon.

Hmmm, and that time I left Explorer open to the C: drive when I went to the bathroom.

And I can't forget the time he filled the case with CDs by sliding them into a little gap between the actual drive and the plastic bay cover above it.

Destruction? In my house it's easy

[ralphart]

...I just turn the computer over to my wife...

Reminds me of...

[awx]

...Notlikethis :D

Re:Reminds me of...

[inode_buddha]

my best-ever. A mouthful of beer and a sudden sneeze into an opened-up and running 486 deskdop was all it took to destroy my old RH 5.2 box.

FWIW yes, I recovered all my stuff into a new machine, and promptly burned it all onto CD.

Supplies

[Luigi30]

All you need to destroy a computer is a supply of the following:

1 Ball-Peen Hammer
10 Gallons of Water
1 Toaster
50 Liters of Liquid Nitrogen

Etc...

Saw this link to the side of the page....

[TyrranzzX]

No telling how YOU might be a PSYCHOPATH!!!

http://www.dansdata.com/psycho.htm

Looove it!
I prefer the sledgehammer method, you may however want something more radical, like a shotgun, 9mm, or my personal favorite, use it as a noisemaker and tie it to the back of the couple's wedding limo.

Re:Saw this link to the side of the page....

[blibbleblobble]

Full list of articles

b.t.w. that PC-destruction article is as old as the hills.

Slow News Day I see

[nurb432]

Destroy PC = Apply Hammer. Deposit in dumpster.

Or if you live in the country: apply 12 gage, then trash can @ curb.

Re:Slow News Day I see

[Anonymous Coward]

PC = new ExpensiveEquipment();
PC.EraseData();
PC.ApplyHa mmer(Mainboard);
PC.ApplyHammer(FloppyDrive);
PC .RemoveRam(); //always good for something
&PC = new CarFrontBumper(100mph); //Hold on, not sure what this will do.
delete PC();

Re:Slow News Day I see

[DuSTman31]

Destroy PC = Apply Hammer. Deposit in dumpster.

Are you casting aspersions on the reliability of AMDs new line of processors?

Meh

[JayBlalock]

That's nothing. Anyone who's worked tech support before has heard (or, heh heh, DONE) worse. I'd be REALLY impressed if he could give us directions on destroying an IBM Model M keyboard. I've had mine for a decade and still haven't managed to even dent it.

Re:Meh

[JanneM]

Spill coffee in it, repeatedly, over a period of five years. :(

Re:Meh

[realdpk]

Do like I did...

Spill juice on it, and then try to dry it out quickly by turning on the wall heater (similar to a space heater) in your apartment and lean the keyboard up against it. Make sure not to check on it periodically. In about 5 minutes it should be pretty well melted and half of the keys useless.

At least I found a cheap replacement on eBay... heh.

Re:Meh

[R2.0]

I guess you didn't have the model with drain holes.

Yes, IBM saw us coming.

Re:Meh

[JanneM]

Not drain holes that was the problem in the end. It was the disassembling, cleaning and assembling that killed it, I think.

Re:Meh

[Jucius Maximus]

"I'd be REALLY impressed if he could give us directions on destroying an IBM Model M keyboard. I've had mine for a decade and still haven't managed to even dent it."

The only time I've seen a non-working model-M was one that got constant 10h/day use in the lab since it was manufactured in 1984. The keys were simply pressed so often that the connections wore out and some keys just didn't work anymore.

But still, the model M has got to be one of the most indestructable PC peripherals in existence. The one I am typing on right now has always served me well. And I can use it to make fun of my brother since it's older than he is ;-)

Re:Meh

[flonker]

Small table, just barely large enough to hold my 17" monitor. So, I grab a plank of wood, put it under the monitor, and put the keyboard on the end that sticks out.

One night, my roommate and I got drunk. I went to bed and passed out. He wanted to use the computer a bit. He ended up passing out on the keyboard, which fell to the floor. The monitor got catapulted, and somehow landed on top of the keyboard. One of the keys popped off, and the plastic broke. Other than that, I'm still typing on it.

Re:Meh

[Seraphim_72]

I personally dont get it - but if you need a model M we are currently tossing them at work .... if you would like one let me know

seraphim_72@yahoo.com

Re:Meh

[legojenn]

I love my model M keyboard. It's great telling my roommate to hit the Windows key when she needs to do something.

Re:Meh

[Kashif Shaikh]

I have an IBM M-model keyboard...anyone want it? It's really bad for your fingers...if I try using it more than 3-days on-and-off or a day continously my arm and fingers begin to ache and thereafter go numb.

The keyboard maybe built like a rock, but it's like walking bare-foot on rock for many days. Not good.

Kashif

Re:Meh

[dre80]

Actually, I witnessed the destruction of such a keyboard once... The guy wanted to use the board as an interface for custom game controls. To extract the board he ended up having to melt his way through the casing with a soldering iron (don't try this at home, kids). Not a pretty sight, but he did end up getting in.

Re:Meh

[Daniel Rutter]

I'd be REALLY impressed if he could give us directions on destroying an IBM Model M keyboard

Word.

Re:Meh

[JayBlalock]

Jeez, even when I'm trying to be funny, I get modded up as Interesting. No wonder my karma's so good. ;-) Although, in the 'done worse' category, here's one from the place I used to work. Guy on one of the full-body computer contracts had a seriously annoying customer with some sort of mobo problem. They spent 90 minutes on the phone disassembling the computer. Then, JUST as they get to the point they can fix the problem, the customer declares that he's tired of working on it and wants someone sent out. ALL the hard work was past, and this rendered the hour and an half they'd spent a complete waste. Tech tried to explain this, customer refused to listen, and started getting abusive. So the tech lost it. He told the customer, fine, we'll have someone sent out. But we need to make sure all the computer components are kept safe in the meantime. So he instructed the customer to take every removed board and wire, and place each one in its own individual zip-loc bag for safekeeping. He didn't work there much longer.

CD-Rs

[T-Kir]

Although I haven't RTFA yet, I find the best way to get rid of data on CD-R's isn't to erase it (which can take as long as a full writing session) but stick it in the microwave for about 5 seconds (just before the lighting effect happens).

If you do this though, best ventilate the area afterwards!!

Re:CD-Rs

[Minna Kirai]

I find the best way to get rid of data on CD-R's isn't to erase it

Good, because a CD-R cannot be erased.
Maybe you're thinking of the more advanced CD-RW media.

Re:CD-Rs

[MuParadigm]

Whether it's a CD-R or CD-RW, I really think sufficient microwaving can "erase" it.

No one actually said anything about being able to re-use it.

Re:CD-Rs

[dj_paulgibbs]

Create a multisession disk, don't close the CD, et voila!

I've had up to about 40 rewrites with it until this disk died :)

Re:CD-Rs

[Anonymous Coward]

101101010101010101010 OR 111111111111111111111 = 111111111111111111111

Erased enough for me.

Maybe not the best analogy...

Re:CD-Rs

[TheTomcat]

stick it in the microwave for about 5 seconds (just before the lighting effect happens)

The 70's called. They want their microwave back.

I've never seen a microwave so low-powered that it takes longer than 5 seconds to blast a CD.

S

Re:CD-Rs

[Josh Booth]

My microwave has settings for "Dinner Plate", "Popcorn", "Soup", "Muffin", "Potato", and others, but I don't see the "Compact Disc" setting. Should I go out and look for a new microwave because mine is outdated or is this like the vaporware that Slashdot always is talking about?

Re:CD-Rs

[Nakarti]

A much better way involves a dremel, a 1/2" sanding drum tip, and something to knock the CD off at 20,000+rpm
From about 5 feet off a concrete floor.

Preparation: DO NOT let anyone, or any part of yourself, be in the planar area of the disc surface. And bring a broom.

Re:CD-Rs

[Chacham]

You can do the lightening effect, take it out and wait a few seconds, then scratch off the data layer into little flakes.

Re:CD-Rs

[Araneas]

Ferric chloride circuit board etchant will also do the trick. Kinda cool watching the metallic layer being slowly eaten away.

Re:CD-Rs

[donbrock]

Another quick way is to stick duct tape to the top side and then rip it off. If it's one of those of those really cheap CDs, the metalic recording material will rip right off.

Give it to my bosses son for a weekend!

[Angry White Guy]

Three damned days with a new $3000.00 Dell laptop and it's buggered so bad it won't connect to the Internet.

Give him a week and you'll need a soldering iron to put it back together.

Re:Give it to my bosses son for a weekend!

[Anonymous Coward]

My bosses son took an axe to some of our stock, and btw, if he finds cigarettes sitting around, he tears the pack into pieces and stomps them into the ground.

Anyone top that? Anyone?

At school...

[RainbowSix]

At Carnegie Mellon University there is a stairwell called Architect's Leap, and a common pasttime is to Leap old monitors by dropping them from the top story. It is usually fairly effective and equally satisfying.

Re:At school...

[in7ane]

I was considering where to a a PHd - this definitely settles it in favor of CMU!

This stairway anywhere near the Maths department?

Re:At school...

[ae]

At the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden we have Macintosh Tetris, typically performed in the Sing Sing building (yes, it's named after the New York prison), which is similar, but requires more precision and a larger number of machines.

Re:At school...

[iotaborg]

It's the stair case in Wean Hall, which is the huge concrete fortress on campus (largest concrete structure in the world iirc), home of the CS, physics, and math department

Re:At school...

[Spock_NPA]

Which one? There are several stairways in Wean. I don't remember seeing any that had a big enough gap in the center to let you throw a monitor down though..

Re:At school...

[Anonymous Coward]

So.... you're the bastard that dropped that monitor on my head ...

Re:At school...

[yakovlev]

It's the staircase closest to Doherty, on the side of the building that faces Porter Hall.

Re:At school...

[Ellen Ripley]

At Carnegie Mellon University there is a stairwell called Architect's Leap, and a common pasttime is to Leap old monitors by dropping them from the top story. It is usually fairly effective and equally satisfying.

Theorizing that one could smash monitors within his own stairwell, Dr. RainbowSix dropped monitors into the Architect's Leap accelerator... and graduated.

Re:Destruction? In my house it's easy

[ralphart]

...Just kidding, dear!

Memories...

[lateralus]

When I was 5 I decided that the floppy drive of our C64 was thirsty and promptly poured a half liter glass of Coca-Cola into it.

Children are a joy.

Re:Memories...

[wampus]

You were probobly right. I had two C64 drives die of thirst... something to do with mounting the power supply under the CPU on the thing.

Re:Memories...

[yoshi_mon]

Heh.

Back in the day when I worked for this little sub shop we had one video game. They would normally swap them out every now and then and so we never got too annoyed with them but this one time they brought in some horrable one.

We bashed on it and told the kids that came in to play it to beat the crap out of it but the sucker refused to die. So, I took it upon myself to dump a large (32 oz. if I remember correctly) of Coke into it's air vents on the top of the machine. It took a while, but that did the trick all right.

The owners of the shop of course asked us all about what happened and we said, of course, "Those damn kids! We told them not to put their drinks up there." The top of the cabinet in question had no less than a 30 degree angle and so placeing a drink up there was pretty much out of the question. I wonder if they knew I was lying? ;)

Cruft

[wideBlueSkies]

I don't get it.

Overtighten you screws, pour cola on your mainboard, chew something and create crumbs....

Why is this news? This kind of stuff stopped being funny sometime in 1995. So even if it WAS published in 98, it was cruft then too.

Tomorrow we'll talk about how to properly destroy an old stereo amplifier.

wbs.

Re:Cruft

[Doomrat]

The worst thing is people replying with stuff like "HAMMERZ!!! lOL!!!!!!! NO CHAINSAWS!!! LMFAO!!!11". Geeks can be the stupidest people...

Re:Cruft

[Anonymous Coward]

Stereo amps? Don't talk to me about destroying old stereo amps. My mother destroyed mine yesterday. Tidied my room and decided to leave piles of books on the air vent. :-(

Re:Cruft

[nacturation]

The worst thing is people replying with stuff like "HAMMERZ!!! lOL!!!!!!! NO CHAINSAWS!!! LMFAO!!!11". Geeks can be the stupidest people...

Even worse is the lame-asses who respond with "LOLOLOLOL". What the hell is that? "Laughing Out Loud Out Loud Out Loud Out Loud Out Loud"???

My Favorite way

[windowshater13]

10 years ago in high school the CS teacher gave us a Garella Bannana Printer. We tied it to the bumper of my car (with a printer cable). The i prosceded to run over speed bumps. After the printer was in pieces, we presented it as a sacrafice. We made an alter to the GODs of Unix. It was around our DEC work station. Just wanted to put my 2 cents in

Re:My Favorite way

[LePrince]

10 years ago in high school the CS teacher[...]

You had a CounterStrike teacher ???

;-)

Where have I seen this before?

[Seth Finklestein]

This article looks familiar. Perhaps it's because Slashdot linked to it 4 1/2 years ago.

Nice work, "editors."

Re:Where have I seen this before?

[Idealius]

Ouch.

Re:Where have I seen this before?

[boredMDer]

4.5 years ago? What are you, kidding? Dupes are posted here that were posted in the same day, and you expect them to remember 4.5 years ago?

Re:Where have I seen this before?

[Anonymous Coward]

Newsflash! Slashdot reprints article.

Re:Where have I seen this before?

[Dark Lord Seth]

Jesus, where'd you get the memory skills to remember something so insignificant from 4,5 years ago? I can barely remember what I did yesterday, let alone what I read on the net 4,5 years ago.

PS,
Nice nickname!

Re:Where have I seen this before?

[Anonymous Coward]

This article looks familiar. Perhaps it's because Slashdot linked to it 4 1/2 years ago.

OK apart from cudos for remembering something for more than a day (it seems that there are people who DO learn from history), I just find it interesting (in a sad sense) how the comments seemed to be much more "civilized" 4.5 years ago. Oh how times change...

OK, OK, I know... The death of the net is imminent, film at 11

Anonymous Cowards Unite

(karmatagcollector)

Re:Where have I seen this before?

[jeffy124]

It gets better....

CmdrTaco posted both of them! That's worse than the usual timothy and michael not reading each other's post and duplicating within days of each other!

Re:Where have I seen this before?

[Pyrometer]

4 and a half years ago? Man you have high standards!
The editors have a hard enough job trying to keep dupes from aprearing on the same front page for news that is not for nerds and that doesn't matter!

Re:Where have I seen this before?

[Seth Finklestein]

I e-mailed him about this. Here's his reply.

From: Rob Malda <malda@slashdot.org>
To: Seth Finklestein <sethf@sethf.com>
Subj: RE: Duplicate post

Shut up, Seth. I don't care about what you think.

--- Original Message ---

The article "Step-by-Step Computer Destruction" is a duplicate. Please remove it. Also please fire Michael Sims.

Not only does Malda deny responsibility for his own behavior, he also top posted! It's behavior like this that makes me boycott Slashdot every day.

Re:Where have I seen this before?

[Seth Finklestein]

It's not hard. The editors can simply collect every URL that they've ever linked in a table I call 'used_urls.' When they attempt to approve a story, the URLs are checked against the 'used_urls' table. If any are duplicates, further confirmation is requested before the story can be posted.

For my regular contract rate of $275 per hour plus expenses, I'd be happy to code this up for Slashdot.

Re:Where have I seen this before?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's behavior like this that makes me boycott Slashdot every day.

You do know that boycotting a website usually involves not visiting it, right?

Re:Where have I seen this before?

[Seth Finklestein]

No, I "boycott" Slashdot by not supporting its advertisers. Every page view costs Slashdot six cents. If I visit Slashdot 100 times a day for 10 years, that's more than $21,000 in costs.

Now tell me how "not visiting" Slashdot hurts it as a business..

Re:Where have I seen this before?

[lostchicken]

Um...it wouldn't look familiar to you, judging by your user ID. (not that I was around either, just saying.)

Re:Where have I seen this before?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, they have to buy A BUNCH of computer time to run this website.

Re:Where have I seen this before?

[shepd]

>Every page view costs Slashdot six cents.

Please explain how you ever came up with that figure.

Me thinks you need to shift the decimal point two places left.

Re:Where have I seen this before?

[Seth Finklestein]

Once again, I speak from experience.

My web host charges about $9 per month, and I get 150 hits per month. That works out to roughly 6 cents per hit.

I only assume that Slashdot uses an equally economic web service.

Re:Where have I seen this before?

[shepd]

>Once again, I speak from experience.

Experience of running a site that has gigabytes of traffic daily?

>My web host charges about $9 per month, and I get 150 hits per month. That works out to roughly 6 cents per hit.

That's great, but...

I actually pay $10 CDN per 10 GB. I host my own stuff (like slashdot). So, a hit costs me $0.005 CDN. I expect slashdot, using more bandwidth than myself, gets a better rate.

It is unfortunate that your weservice is so expensive.

To cost slashdot $21,000, you would need to download over 21 TB of data from them. That means, if each hit costs 50 kb, you need to hit slashdot at least (and that's assuming they pay my rate, which is wrong to assume) 4,200,000 times a year. That's 11,507 times a day. Trust me, they'd ban your subnet before you got as far as 300 times a day.

>I only assume that Slashdot uses an equally economic web service.

I certainly hope not!

Re:Where have I seen this before?

[schnits0r]

4.5 years ago? What are you, kidding? Dupes are posted here that were posted in the same day, and you expect them to remember 4.5 years ago?

Re:Where have I seen this before?

[Anonymous Coward]

It took a whole three hours for this dup? Man! What are you guys thinking? Taco could have done it in 5 minutes!

Re:Where have I seen this before?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try, only not everyone:

a) keeps the same user ID
b) creates a login the first day, week, month, or even YEAR they visit slashdot.

Re:Where have I seen this before?

[gid]

I don't know if I remember seeing this on slashdot before, but I definitly remember seeing this quite a long time ago... And it was lame then. Now it's just dumb. OMG if you switch a low current psu wire with a high one on your mobo connector your board will fry, who woulda thunk it?

I just totally fail to see the humor, and I'm usually pretty easy to get to laugh. It's not even clever nor gives you good tips of what to AVOID, which is what you'd expect, oh well.

Re:Where have I seen this before?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good catch, but you're not Seth. See sethf.com for details. The real Seth is #90154, who also spells his lastname Finkelstein.

Re:Where have I seen this before?

[Rich0]

Every page view costs Slashdot six cents.

Please explain how you ever came up with that figure.

He blocks the ads. The ads would have generated 6 cents worth of revenue. According to RIAA math, he has cost Slashdot 6 cents per page view.

Very incomplete...

[AchilleTalon]

no reference on HOW TO use a magnet to erase some useful data on chips.

Defenestrate

[Sphere1952]

It's one of my favorite words.

Re:Defenestrate

[KlausB]

> It's one of my favorite words.

Then you should check out "The defenestration of Ermintrude Inch", a short story by A.C. Clarke.

A classic on social interaction for geeks.

It is included in his book "Tales from the White Hart".

Have fun !

You can also repair a mouse this way.

[tcd004]

Just follow these easy step-by-step instructions.

tcd004

Re:You can also repair a mouse this way.

[Anonymous Coward]

or this way:

http://www.theparticle.com/hardware/hpmouse/index. html

damm

[sjwt]

"Originally published in Australian Personal Computer Magazine, January 1998"

hehehe, just threw out ny old APC's too

Monitor

[tsa]

I destroyed a monitor once by giving it an X screen at a far too high frequency. You should try it once, it makes beautiful sounds while it dies...

Re:Monitor

[evilviper]

Although nothing was destoryed, and it's not really funny, this reminds me of my first experience with SiS videocards under Unix...

As it turns out, when you don't have the right driver, the videocard fades the picture to white. After seeing it a dozen times, the coolness is tempered by pure anger and frustration, but the first time, it looks incredibly cool. You type startx, and it looks like (instead of X just flashing on) your display is going to fade to white and then fade back-in to X. It's like SiS figured out how to turn your computer from a boring montonous experience, into a high-budget movie, where instead of sharp contrasts, and flashes from one thing to the next, you have fading, and smooth transitions. Would be quite nice if things actually worked that way.

Re:Monitor

[mczak]

Must have been a very old monitor. This "too high frequencies can destroy monitors" is more urban myth than anything else nowadays. You can destroy your 20 year old 12" vga monitor, perhaps even very early multisync monitors, but I'm confident it won't work on any monitor built in the last 10 years or so - they'll just switch off, giving you that "hsync out of range" (or similar) message.

Re:Monitor

[el-spectre]

I did one about 4 years ago... misread the model # and put in the wrong frequency... the screen faded over the course of a day, then I had an interesting looking bright white 'spike' on the screen (I had unplugged the monitor at this point) which lasted a few hours before the screen died...

My own story...

[Courageous]

I was working on my home computer, had it dissassembled in various parts, was doing some testing. Wife called. Handled phone call. Hung up. Now where was I?

*power up*

*puff of smoke*

Oh, yes. The part where I was supposed to put the heatsink on the cpu.

*cry*

C//

Re:My own story...

[Anonymous Coward]

I did the same thing with a Pentium 233MMX. The machine was not booting so I took everything down to the MB, video card, memory and a hard drive. This was not exactly bare-bones, but some MBs won't boot without video, an attached IDE device or memory. They won't even POST in some cases. It still wasn't booting so I replaced the CPU with a known working one. I didn't attach the fan because it was only for a quick test. As soon as I popped it in and powered on, fully intending to turn it off after three or four seconds, the phone rang. Two minutes later I smelled something odd. No smoke though. Oh s****! I immediately powered off the machine.

The stupid part? I tried to remove the CPU with my fingers. I managed to lever the processor out and hold it for maybe two seconds before the smell of burnt skin and that wonderful, searing sensation reached my brain. The burn hole on my fingertips was the worst pain I've ever felt.

Re:My own story...

[Ciggy]

Have the PSU go wrong and 240V will boldly go where 240 volts shouldn't - onto the circuit board, set fire to a chip or two and burn a nice little hole in the PCB, along with lots of nice, toxic fumes.

What he missed

[Orion Blastar]

Using an ink pen to remove those SIMM/DIMM memory chips, nothing like breaking off the tip of an inkpen and spilling the ink on the motherboard. Never use anything like a small slotted screwdriver or pliers.

Oh yeah, be sure to clean the CPU and CPU socket with a used toothbrush. Nothing beats the scraping of a used toothbrush to ruin a CPU and CPU socket.

Also make sure that you leave the PCI and ISA cards in partway, don't push down on them just slide them in and then power on the system. Don't even bother putting a screw to hold them in place. Be sure to jerk the case around before you put it back in place.

Also should by some miricle you get the system bootable, always hit Reset or power off before shutting down the OS, so you can kill the hard drive too. Act like the whole computer is your personal game console and just power off right in the middle of running an important program with lots of files open.

Nah...

[Faust7]

Anyone with so much aggression that they wish to utterly destroy their computer won't have the patience required for the methodical destruction this article describes. :-)

so old

[Alien54]

I guess it was time for someone to put the site out of it's misery. Easiest way? Link it from SlashDot.

reminds me of a description I saw once:

• It makes the cutest little "poof" sound when it goes up in smoke

another one bites the dust

Speaking of Destroying Hardware

[canajin56]

A friend of mine had a trident VC that belonged to a friend that had stopped working (The VC had stopped, not the friend) and he also had a trident. He figures the bios is blown, so he pulls his bios out and puts it in this other card. Sure enough, the card works fine now. "Alright, he just needs to order a new bios chip" and he puts it back in his card. Puts the card in his PC, turns it on, and...*BOOM!"

He put the chip in backwards, and it actually exploded. I got hit in the cheek with a chunk of microchip.

Re:Speaking of Destroying Hardware

[kd5ujz]

I find this hard to believe.At most the chip should have had 12V, but it probably had 5V applied to any given pin. the chip should have burned out, with out any damage that could be seen or heard.

Re:Speaking of Destroying Hardware

[canajin56]

Yeah, I didn't believe it either. The only thing I can think of is if there was too much water, or something else that expands rapidly when heated, in the plastic, and a rapidly toggling flip-flop heated it up and exploded the chip like popcorn.

Re:Speaking of Destroying Hardware

[flu1d]

A fellow classmate of mine had a 486sx when I was in College and I had an extra 486dx that I said I'd give to him. The day after I gave him the chip he brought back his computer saying "after I installed the new chip it just wouldn't work". I opened the box, tried to pull the chip but it seemed like it didn't want to come out so I carefully pryed the chip off the ZIF socket. Sure enough he had managed to insert the chip back into the socket the wrong way and the affect was the chip melting the plastic of the ZIF socket around it. The sad thing was... he was a fellow classmate in basic hardware installation. He works in sales now.

Re:Speaking of Destroying Hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I didn't believe it either. The only thing I can think of is if there was too much water, or something else that expands rapidly when heated, in the plastic, and a rapidly toggling flip-flop heated it up and exploded the chip like popcorn.

IIRC, most arc welders run around 20.0 volts. They just deliver a LOT of current.

If the current's there, things can get hot fast!

Unplug the fans.

[miradu2000]

My favorite way is to unplug all the fans from the computer, and watch the temperature rise -before smoke comes from inside.. muhahaha. This works better on a 100+ degree day when the heat cannot dissapate that well.

destroying an imac with a sledgehammer (video)

[htmlboy]

i had the opportunity to take a sledgehammer to a burned-out imac for work this summer. the footage was used in a commercial for the dorm cable channel reminding students that they can get help for their computers before they get aggravated enough to take a sledgehammer to them. but the full video's kind of boring (and a big download), so here's the footage of the smashing:

http://tuxedo.housing.uiuc.edu/~ckuehn/imac.mov

if anyone's curious, it felt pretty good.

Re:destroying an imac with a sledgehammer (video)

[geekoid]

you smashed an iMac with a sledgehammer? you are aware there is phospherous in the tube, right? and that people die from it, right?

In the US, about a dozen people a year die from incidents that involve dropping/damaging a monitor.

Re:destroying an imac with a sledgehammer (video)

[htmlboy]

yes, i'm aware of the dangerous internals of a crt. note that i'm not pictured in the video. that's because i was wearing a whole lot of protective gear and didn't look like much the (female) protagonist.

Re:destroying an imac with a sledgehammer (video)

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realise that violence against an iMac is tantamount to gay-bashing, don't you?

Re:destroying an imac with a sledgehammer (video)

[Anonymous Coward]

And either a mac lover or a gay guy would make a comment like that.

Which reminds me...

[AtariDatacenter]

If you have an uncooperative vendor who doesn't want to replace a marginal part, I find that a stun gun provides a great deal of benefit. One small application to the device in question, and you've gone from a marginal device, to dead one, with an automatic RMA in your hands.

Jumper cable connecters

[Felinoid]

any place you should be using a plug especally into a streight edge connecter (like old ISA bords) use a jumper cable. There is a very good chance the jumper will slip off the power and on to a naboring data connection sending full power into a system that can't handle it for the breaf moment the jumper is connected to both... ZAP.

C'mon, guys!

[Otter]

Not only is this an ancient, ancient dupe but no one has linked to Datadocktor'n's great tutorials on how to defraggle your motherdisc (with steel wool) and upgrade your graphics card, again with steel wool.

And in the "Not kidding" department there are the ads in the Boston subways for some tech certification school that features a woman in a fleece top and a red fleece hat (like Meg on Family Guy) working on a motherboard. Apparently they misunderstood what the "Red Hat" in RHCE stands for, but I'm glad that's not my system she's working on.

This mentions little meaningful about hard drives

[StandardCell]

Out of all the computer hardware you probably have to destroy, old hard drives top the list for security and privacy reasons. Although taking apart the hard drive is good, it's time consuming and difficult if you have a lot of computers to dispose of. A better solution would be to subject it to the magnetic field of a degaussing coil. The magnetic field of course is strongest along an axis that passes through the center of the coil, so making small circles and passing the HD through it should be enough to kill it. This is also handy for the paranoid who are afraid to have their data found to have a smaller version wrapped around a hard drive attached to an alarm mechanism.

Some software exists to destroy computers, already

[Anonymous Coward]

and I believe this software is called Microsoft Windows.

I just found a funny thing, too!

[Bob Cat - NYMPHS]

It's got these dancing hamsters on it. It's really funny. I'm going to mail it to everyone I know. I bet they never saw it before, since it's new to me. I'm so glad I got this interweb thing last week.

5 years from now, I will discover Zero Wing. When I do, I will send it to you.

Why Not...

[evilmuffins]

If they wanted to destroy some computers, why not just put windows on, and then install Bonzi Buddy?

Re:Why Not...

[Diotallevi]

dont forget installing aol, gator, dialers from various (ahem) web pages, spyware, instant msgr's etc

That's not all they drop...

[jDinK]

A few years back I remember seeing things like a whole ham thrown down there. Then one day I think there were several old monitors. You never know what to expect.

PCI not so easy to ruin

[pantherace]

I have both intentionally and unintentionally hot-swapped PCI cards in not-rated-for-hot-swap motherboards. Result: like as not the damned things work once plugged in, and not a single one ruined. (this for current stuff all the way back to 1997 era stuff)

AGP on the other hand... zap zap zap (ruined a GF2 that way, it wasn't quite all the way in)

slow agonizing method

[Mabelyne]

Purchase a litre of Muriatic Acid, take the cap off, set it beside running computer. It's a very slow and agonizing death!

Re:Destruction? In my house it's easy

[whiteranger99x]

...I just turn the computer over to my wife...

You better be careful about what you say about said wife, she may end up breaking it alright...square on your head! Women scare me like that :P

Re:This mentions little meaningful about hard driv

[Anonymous Coward]

An interesting bit of trivia. I replaced a hard drive in an AS-400 yesterday. The platters in the drive are made of Glass. Yes, real true glass. Just a short drop onto the counter and I could shake the drive and hear the remains of the platters tinkling around inside

Destruction?In my house it's easy-Martial bliss

[Anonymous Coward]

" ...I just turn the computer over to my wife..."

And she'll turn the kitchen over to you.

Slashdotted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it isn't, but I can't load the page :(

Here's the Google cache:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

(Too few characters per line. Too few characters per line. Too few characters per line. )
(Too few characters per line. Too few characters per line. Too few characters per line. )

Damn you Thom!!!

[JamesTRexx]

[computers] are totally defenseless, all we need are more people with hammers. -Thom Yorke (Radiohead) [computers] are totally defenseless, all we need are more sysadmins with guns. -me (to defend the servers of course ;-))

Re:Damn you Thom!!!

[JamesTRexx]

*note to self* Next time, hit the damned preview button!

Re:Destruction? In my house it's easy

[jmbauer]

I told my husband back when we were engaged that he wasn't going to get a domestic goddess. But I have turned into 24/7 tech support ...

I suppose you're right

[T-Kir]

Oh, I wondered why Nero wouldn't erase my CD-R Media :-P

Yes I see your point, maybe I should have written 'recordable CD/DVD orientated media' instead of me using a bastardisation of the CD-R term.

Either way, If you open the microwave and put in your 'recordable CD/DVD orientated media' into the said microwave. Close the door, set to maximum power and set the timer for 5 seconds (based around a 700watt microwave) then turn on microwave. When done, open microwave and the media should be unreadable (even if you couldn't erase your CD-R/RW, DVD/-/+/R/RAM, CD/DVD-ROM or any unmentioned media in Nero or your burning software of choice).

I might have missed some details in my instructions for you, or that incorrect usage of grammar and spelling might have occurred... or that (God forbid) I might have used technical terminology incorrectly. But I hope that I got my point across.

Just in case someone asks, I'm in a half playful, half sarcastic mood at the moment. Hence the tone of my post.

Re:I suppose you're right

[Anonymous Coward]

are you sure you're not making this up as you go along?

Re:I suppose you're right

[Rogerborg]

Ah ha, but I'll be sober in the morning, and you'll still be a cunt.

Re:I suppose you're right

[Anonymous Coward]

Either way, If you open the microwave and put in your 'recordable CD/DVD orientated media' into the said microwave. Close the door, set to maximum power and set the timer for 5 seconds (based around a 700watt microwave) then turn on microwave. When done, open microwave and the media should be unreadable

FWIW, This _is_ the US-military and NSA-approved way of destroying the things. For all the fuss they make about hard drives thoug, I don't know why they don't just toss them into a pot of molten iron. It worked for t1000 after all. :-)

Etherkiller

[mraymer]

http://www.fiftythree.org/etherkiller/

I think this would bring down a network quicker than the worst Slashdotting. My favorite is the powered hub, but I think the hard drive killer is nice, too.

Re:Etherkiller

[uarch]

You sir are an evil, evil man.

I love it

Re:Etherkiller

[BigBadBri]

The bnckiller reminds me of the time when the sales department complained that they couldn't see the server anymore.

Being a BNC network, I got my trusty terminator and went down to check, only to get a not very amusing electric shock as soon as I touched the first T piece.

It turned out that one of the machines had a dodgy power supply that was sending 115 volts through its chassis and thence through the BNC segment.

Ouch!

Static discharge rare?

[fpp]

"Unfortunately, static discharge damage is actually a fairly rare cause of computer problems."

OK, what is this guy smoking? Static discharge is certainly NOT a rare cause of computer problems, especially in dry areas. The problem is that it's rarely blamed for hardware problems, because there's no way to tell why a board just "died".

I work as a production engineer on a high tech assembly line, and our service calls due to "dead" boards dropped by 55% after we instituted tight anti-static measures on both the assembly line and in the service department.

Anti-static precautions are not taken very seriously in some computer industries, especially the "mom and pop" stores which sell individual components. I can't tell you how many so-called computer "experts" I've seen handle RAM with their bare hands, and with no anti-static bag.

Re:Static discharge rare?

[Alien Being]

Bah. Mosfrn elecfonics a,e all made with spe*&cial circuits to protec(R)t aga(C)inst high levels of ESD. I have a Van dYer Graaaf generator sitting 8 inches away from the expo(C)sed mo&#1(C)56;bo in my pc.

Re:Destruction? In my house it's easy

[s.d.]

...Just kidding, dear!

You managed to meet, and then marry, a woman who reads Slashdot?!

Re:How to destroy hardware:

[whatch durrin]

With such an impeccable record, you may be able to market yourself as a Test Engineer for the Chinese manufacturers.

Funny, I've never had that much trouble.

But but but...

[Safrax]

what about the volters? You know, those nifty little cables that have a wall jack on one end and a plug of your choice on the other end. It's very satisfying to plug one of those into some random ethernet port and watch the ensuing chaos.

Moderators, HELLO!!!

[Mjlner]

How can the parent be "Offtopic"???

IT's gonna love me when they come in on monday hehehe.

It should be modded "Funny"!

Software thet destroys

[slasher guy]

Wasn't there some guy from IBM that created a (software) program that could destroy your harddrive? That's 1 part done, without even getting out any fysical tools.

stupid article

[erc]

I guess Rob doesn't have anything else to do but drive traffic to his friend's sites. This was probably one of the most inane articles I've ever seen on Slashdot.

Re:Destruction? In my house it's easy

[Apiakun]

Which begs the question: was she the only one?

Wonky 486

[91degrees]

Does putting it in at an angle break it?

I'm sure I must have tried putting a 486 into the socket in the wrong orientation. I tried all sorts of other things to try and break that chip and motherboard (unsurprisingly, graphics go a little bit quirky when you take video RAM chips out while the machine's running, but removing a SIMM or the CPU causes the machine to freeze). As far as I know, the chip still works.

Fastest way to destory your old computer.

[CEHT]

Someone I knew bought a new Pentium 4 a few months ago, after he transferred all his files over to the new machine he decided to put his old computer (case open) at the parking lot on a shopping cart. It was a Pentium II with 256 SDRam and 20GB HDD.

The same night, it rained. Go figure!

Re:Fastest way to destory your old computer.

[Creepy Crawler]

Ehh, thats nothing.

Somebody at the college was throwing out a Sparc 10 and it was left at least 2 nights out. Both nights it rained.

I found it, cleaned as much water I could out of it, and then sealed it in a de-humidifing bag (with those silica bags) for 4 days.

To this day, it's a great dhcp/mrtg box. With a 9gig 50pin scsi to boot.

Just one question...

[bob@dB.org]

is this you?

Re:Just one question...

[Seth Finklestein]

No. I just have a remarkably similar name, and I hate Michael Sims.

Use a KVM - hose 2 for the price of 1!

[doodleboy]

About the most expensive distruction of computer equipment I've ever accomplished was to realize I'd wired the KVM between my workstation and server wrong and swapped all the cables with both computers running. I honestly had no idea this could be bad, not even when neither machine would respond to the keyboard or mouse. No problem, I thought, I'll reboot. So I did and and both halted with keyboard / mouse errors.

D'oh!

ahhh yes.... back in the old days.....

[AlbertSiegel]

A friend had a great idea while I was out of the room for a moment. He decided he could make the Atari 800 computer work faster and better by moving around the ROM boards.... the computer never worked again...

Another day... he thought if he plugged the AC adaptor from the Atari 2600 into the headset outlet on the TV it would make it louder... and it did for that nice POP sound you can only get when you fry something... the TV never had sound again through either the built in speakers or headset...

I wont even tell you what he did with AV cables, TV, and a video game console to cause a small fire... to this day I still don't know how he did it.....

He managed to fry the AC adaptor on every printer in the computer lab.. I was very angry as this was the only lab out of 5 that had Apple computers.

oh god!!! and what he did to that Macintosh LC!! That new LC!!! I want to cry.......

Mike!! I will get you one day!!

She was hardly enterprising, but...

[phillymjs]

...an end user at my last job was quite adept at spilling coffee on her running laptop, amazingly without killing it. Yet she never clued into the fact that maybe the spot on her desk where she kept putting her coffee mug was not the optimal location.

After the third time I had to disassemble and clean that laptop, I considered purchasing a sippy cup for her.

~Philly

redhackt style

[MADbull]

you could just do it like this:D http://redhackt.net:81/randpics/crashed_movie/inde x.php

Confessional : how I killed MY computer.

[tinrobot]

One of the many part time jobs I have is reviewing graphics hardware and software for magazines. So, one day nVidia sent me a shiny new graphics card.

I shut down the computer, popped the top and pulled out the old AGP card.

I plugged in the nVidia card. Didn't seem to fit. I decided to try and wiggle the card into the slot.

** sparks **

** poof **

I guess I should have UNPLUGGED the power supply. Seems as though there's always current running through the motherboard even though the computer is off...

Killed the motherboard and the nVidia card. Had to explain to nVidia why I killed their newest card. Thank goodness the CPUs and memory survived.

I now buy power supplies with little switches on the back and turn the computer off there before opening the box. Still don't unplug them, I like to live on the edge.

The Stupid Redneck Way

[gothicpoet]

Unzip and let loose a yellow stream into the ventillation on the back.

Who needs an electric fence to get a shock?

Re:The Stupid Redneck Way

[ncc74656]

Unzip and let loose a yellow stream into the ventillation on the back.

Make sure you say, "Hey everybody...watch this!" before you do so.

Re:The Stupid Redneck Way

[gothicpoet]

Troll? Heck, how can I be a troll when I post a humorous reply to a humorous posting?

Something seems amiss here...

Re:The Stupid Redneck Way

[gothicpoet]

To Quote from the FAQ ::

Troll -- A Troll is similar to Flamebait, but slightly more refined. This is a prank comment intended to provoke indignant (or just confused) responses. A Troll might mix up vital facts or otherwise distort reality, to make other readers react with helpful "corrections." Trolling is the online equivalent of intentionally dialing wrong numbers just to waste other people's time.

I think someone's not moderating correctly... The posting which was modded "Troll" does not mix up facts, distort reality, or seek to provoke indignant responses.

I grew up in a small town in Indiana... I reserve the right to make the occassional redneck joke. In this case the joke was on topic.

Re:The Stupid Redneck Way

[MainframeKiller]

Unzip and let loose a yellow stream into the ventillation on the back.

I use gunzip you insensitive clod!

Defenestration and the department of big words

[SolemnDragon]

My brother, bless his wicked little heart, works for a university. And one of his first things to do on the job was to fill out the paperwork regarding how they were going to get rid of the old computers, to be included in the req (that's requisition) forms for the new equipment. (Wreck forms, that's where we're heading with this.) He wrote down that they intended to weed out the old computers through a strategic defenestration program. It almost got signed! At the last possible moment, the page was sent to the department of large words and syllables (also know as, "Hey! you work for the English department, don't you?? GEt in here! What does this mean??") The UNfunny part was him almost getting his first written warning on his first week at the job. The FUNNY part, well... it's not the first time that he's had to go to his union rep and say, er- you don't understand, we're not trying to get me out of this one. I really did this!

Nor, in retrospect, was it his last...

He figures any meeting that begins with the words, "Do you realise that i almost SIGNED this??" means he hasn't lost his job (yet)....

Re:Defenestration and the department of big words

[Sphere1952]

Nice kid. :)

I've only defenestrated one computer, and it was rather busted anyway. (No, I did not defenestrate the monitor.)

Re:Defenestration and the department of big words

[McPLUR]

Definition of defnestration from dictionary.com

"defenestration

n. [mythically from a traditional Czech
assasination method, via SF fandom] 1. Proper karmic retribution for
an incorrigible punster. "Oh, ghod, that was _awful_!" "Quick!
Defenestrate him!" 2. The act of exiting a window system in order
to get better response time from a full-screen program. This comes
from the dictionary meaning of `defenestrate', which is to throw
something out a window. 3. The act of discarding something under
the assumption that it will improve matters. "I don't have any disk
space left." "Well, why don't you defenestrate that 100 megs worth
of old core dumps?" 4. Under a GUI, the act of dragging something
out of a window (onto the screen). "Next, defenestrate the MugWump
icon." 5. The act of completely removing Micro$oft Windows from a
PC in favor of a better OS (typically Linux)."

Is dictionary.com run by /.?

Re:Defenestration and the department of big words

[boneshintai]

Did you miss the citation on that particular definition?

Source: Jargon File 4.2.0

Peripheral plugs

[Tychoma]

One of our users managed to plug her monitor back in the wrong way round.

I guess that no one had told her that it's impossible to get D style plugs in upside down, so she just went ahead & did it.

How about this destruction?

[Anonymous Coward]

A step by step guide - with pictures:

http://www.theparticle.com/hardware/index.html

I discovered a good way as well,

[KillaMarcilla]

One good way to permanently disable your motherboard is to screw it down onto the case directly, without any risers. Not only does this put a significant amount of stress on the motherboard, but it shorts out every piece of metal on the back of it *shakes head and sighs*

Forgot about attaching the fan

[duckpoopy]

To ensure optimal heat transfer, bend the clips on your heat sink/fan so that it is as tight as possible. This will ensure crushing the raised core of Duron/Athlon CPUs.

Umm...

[G33kDragon]

Wow. What a genious. The guy just solved the global employment problem tech's have been facing. It's simple:

1) rm -Rf the sarcastic remarks in this article.

2) Republish it to the mass public in a book entitled 'Fixing Computers for Dummies'.

3) Start an in-home PC repair corporation.

4) Retire.

:)

broken cooler clips

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

back in my former employer we had a socket 7 mobo with a cyrix CPU and the small platic hook in the socket where the CPU cooler was supposed to be attached broke.

since it was now impossbile to correctly attach a cooler in the machine, here came the big idea: spread thermal compund over the chip, put a cooler over it and glue it to the socket with epoxy. well instead of glueing the cooler by it's sides he spread glue between the chip and the heatsink...

Re:broken cooler clips

[Merlynnus]

Thermal compound? Ha! Ha! I say! Ha!

I've got a socket 7 mobo w/ a Cyrix K6-2/333 where the small plastic hook in the socket where the CPU cooler was supposed to be attached broke. (Obviously a poor design)

No problem, get the crazy glue out, and glue the cooler to the cpu. Insert CPU/cooler unit into socket and ignite^H^H^H^H^H^H power on.

Frankly, it's been working in this condition for the past seven years, without any problems!

Thermal paste, ha!

Re:broken cooler clips

[Anonymous Coward]

JB Weld works as well to attach the heat sink to

my Cyrix 333 with a one of those broken sockets....

Microwave and Chips

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard all kinds of chips, zipps, SIMMs, DIMMs... love to be basked in rays of the Microwave. They sometimes even pop with joy!

Simpler method

[spectrokid]

My sister is a traveling nurse and in her first moth of automation she went through three laptops by simply dropping them on the pavement. Nothing special here, but the funny thing is she now refuses more replacements. Her current laptop hangs together with duct-tape but she got "emotionnaly attached"; it is now her computer.

Sledge hammer and hard drives

[ymgve]

Some years ago I participated in wiping and destroying 100 or so hard drives. My part of the job was to break all the drives with a sledge hammer.

Swing...SMASH. Swing...SMASH!

Good times.

Re:Destruction? In my house it's easy

[Pyrometer]

Man if only you had a longer joke line you could have karma hored a little more ;)

Challenge: Someone must make a post and reply to the same thing again and again so they get +5 Informative, Interesting and Funny ... and to top it off end with a -1 Troll :)

I prefer the "big axe" method

[MacGod]

1) Stand prependicularily in front computer with feet shoulder length apart. If you are right-handed, your left shoulder should be towards the computer and vice versa.

2) Pick up a large, Dwarven-style double-headed battle axe.

3) Raise axe above head.

4) Cry Havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.

Incidentally, this same method works for shutting down a computer that refuses to do (uninterupptible process etc.

that's quite funny to do, but...

[stardome]

when i don't have that much spare time, i just end up installing windows. it's usually faster.

Seriously - there are some design points here

[njdj]

From the article ...

If any components of your computer are held in place with Pozidriv screws (superficially similar to Phillips head screws,

Why do there have to be 10 different possible screw types/sizes in the approximate size range of computer-case screws? There is no valid technical reason for this.

He forgot one of the best ways

[CyberDruid]

Make one of the many funny possible mistakes involved in installing the CPU fan:

1) Put it on 90 degrees wrong, so that most of the CPU core is left uncooled (have a friend who did that)
2) Use loads and loads of cooling paste (it must be there for something, right?)
3) Apply the enormous amount of force necessary to fasten the hooks, but apply it unevenly so that the underlying CPU cracks. (the most common way to destroy your computer when building it yourself nowadays, according to my favorite computer store)
4) When applying said force, slip with the screw driver/tool of choice and redesign your motherboard (another classic)
5) Attach the power cable to the wrong connector. Preferably some random jumpers. Alternatively become so proud of succesfully getting the damn thing hooked on, that you forget to plug the insignificant little cable in.
6) Become intimidated and decide to try to run the computer without it. Smile smugly when it turns out that the computer indeed can run without it. For a while. (have a friend who did that too)

Re:He forgot one of the best ways

[markh1967]

Or my favourite, which I've seen twice now, is to not remove the little bit of tape that covers the paste.

Re:He forgot one of the best ways

[Kashif Shaikh]

Man, even after the days of the AMD Duron, heat-sink designers are still smoking crack and so out of clue - installing those fucking heat-sinks on AMD boards is the shittiest, difficult, piece of work in a computer(next to when things Don't Work(tm)).

Just that day, I installed yet another heatsink and just barely scratched the surface of the motherboard.

I don't know how many cursed words and sweat dripped from by forehead whenever I have to install one...I dunno why no one is like Intel where heat-sinks come with plastic leavers with huge handles that make installing a processor a snap out-of-the-box.

Re:He forgot one of the best ways

[moonbender]

Meh. Buy better heatsinks. Modern HSFs aren't very difficult to install, most even do a pretty good job preventing the user from doing stupid things resulting in the untimely death of their hardware. My first AMD HSF, a Taisol 60x60 was a bitch, but the two 80mm HSFs were both very comfortable.

Re:Destruction? In my house it's easy

[Ed Almos]

No

Ed Almos & Cath Ellerman

Software Developers

[Anonymous Coward]

...have similar job security techniques. One of them is OOP: the modern spehgetti paradigm.

funny /. bug...

[smoondog]

Hmm. Heh, looks like /. messed up on numbering the old comments. If you look closely the comments are not numbered in order of submission, but by ascending user_id #. Only once does the user_id drop. Heh. Nothing is more satisfying than looking at someone elses bugs (as opposed to the despair of looking at your own :)

-Sean

Good Move

[appleLaserWriter]

You should leave the computer plugged in so that it is grounded. Before touching the computer, ground yourself. At that point, you know the voltage difference between you and your computer is 0 v, and it is safe to tocuh.

Re:Good Move

[toddestan]

The problem is that ATX power supplies keep power flowing the AGP card and (on some) the PCI bus, amonst other things. The only way to be sure there is no power flowing is to unplug the thing. Though with any decent ATX power supply you can utilize the switch on the back.

Re:Good Move

[StressedEd]

Or the one on the wall.... ;-)

Re:Good Move

[appleLaserWriter]

The only way to be sure there is no power flowing is to unplug the thing

Unplugging the power supply only guarantees that there is no power flowing *into* the unit. But if there is a voltage potential difference of 500 V between the unplugged PS and yourself, you will feel all of the stray electrons as they seek to equalize the difference as soon as you touch the power supply.

Though with any decent ATX power supply you can utilize the switch on the back.

Yes, go for the PS with the switch on the back!

that power off in the middle of doing shti

[waspleg]

happens every day

it's called Windows XP

Bad Parts

[Ruis]

So ever buy that ram, cpu, mobo that is flakey and has hard to reproduce problems, and as soon as you take it back to the store and they test it, it works fine?
Microwave it.
It's not just for cd's and food.

Removing processor while on

[menscher]

Yes, it's true, folks. Once when trying to destroy an SGI Indy, I pulled out the processor while it was powered on. Naturally, the machine hung. Screen just kept displaying what it had been displaying. Unfortunately putting the processor back in didn't make it immediately come back to life. It needed a reboot for that.

I felt like such a failure.

Re:Destruction? In my house it's easy

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is that you're an agressive little bitch?

Computers: Remote ignition, in four easy steps.

[Ebirah]

1) Power computer off. Open case.

2) Unplug floppy drive power lead.

3) Plug floppy drive power lead back in, one pin out of alignment.

4) Power computer on.

This reliably results in a very satisfactory electrical fire with visible flames and a reasonable amount of smoke, which will definitely destroy the floppy drive and its power lead, and if not extinguished in a very timely fashion, will take out the rest of the computer, the building it is in, and anything else flammable in the vicinity...

(Step 4 will be most satisfactorily carried out by the computers real owner, ideally when you are several miles away. :-)

chip extracters . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

"The very best tool for bending and breaking pins on DIP chips is the inexpensive springy "chip extractor" available at various electronics stores. U-shaped, the steel tool has an inward bent lip on the end of each leg, and is designed to hook both ends of a chip at once, and give the user the impression that it will in fact extract both ends at once.

This never happens."

HAAA!!!!!!!!

I knew those things wouldn't work just by looking at them. They never got any money out of me! I'm sure I'm not alone. I'll stick to my leatherman, thank you.

ahhah

[Eric(b0mb)Dennis]

A vaccum, I gotta save that one, genius, pure genius.

Now we just have to learn how to destroy a computer using a toaster or something... uiks

He left out the best way . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

1 Open computer
2 Remove heat sink on cpu
3 Extract egg from shell and put on cpu
4 put case on
5 turn on

When the smell and sound of eggs cooking makes you hungry go out and get yourself some breakfast at the local diner.

OR . . .

put a guiness on the cpu, put case back on and wait for it to explode. when you smell the beer inside go and get yourself one. If you are doing this then whatever brain cells you have left aren't that important anyway.

KEWL DUDE!!

Have I really been reading /. for 4.5 years??

[lightistoobright]

I vaguely remembered the article, but what really jogged my memory is that creepy guy over in the righthand margin.

My life really would have been just fine without having to see that guy again, but noooooo. Stupid slashdot dupes.

Re:Have I really been reading /. for 4.5 years??

[Nodatadj]

Same here.
Bugger, has it really been that long?

And to think, my first thought was "That anonymous coward guy posts a lot..."

Re:Have I really been reading /. for 4.5 years??

[lightistoobright]

Oh man, I totally made the same mistake when I first started reading. (I can't believe I'm actually admitting this.)

Then I thought, "Wait a minute..... ANONYMOUS.... NOW I GET IT!" *smacks self in forehead*

I am smart, S-M-R-T smart.

Re:Have I really been reading /. for 4.5 years??

[Nodatadj]

Even worse...I only twigged when I thought "Hold on...he's talking to himself too"

True story...

[Anonymous Coward]

In college, my brother rewired a neighbors dorm room for 220v when he got tired of listening to their stereo.

He never heard from them again!

The most gratifying way...

[Nick Driver]

...to destroy a computer involves a Remington 870 12 guage loaded with 00-buck 3" magnum shells at close range to both the side of the case and to the face of a CRT monitor. Make sure you wear adequate hearing and eye protection first.

serious stuff, this

[Rock Ridge]

Really! If the feds, al qaeda, neo-cons, DHS, or any other enemy is after you, knowing how to thoroughly destroy your computer may save your skin. Hint: start with the data: NVRAM, drives, etc -- and don't forget to shred AND burn all paper associated with your computer. Seriously, this is what the enemy does.

Re:Destruction? In my house it's easy

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if his wife did as good a job to his computer as she did to my bed?

no, no, no. That's the hard way.

[Zen]

These methods all take too long and do not provide the desired outrageous sound effects that should go along with properly destroying a computer.

When I was in college a couple years ago, a friend of mine had a computer from a major manufacturer that had intermittent problems with simply turning on and all sorts of other useful activities. He talked on the phone with them several times, and sent it in and they supposedly worked on it and sent it back. The problem was that since it was intermittent they were never able to see the problem and hence were unaware and unwilling to do anything about it.

So as any enterprising computer science major with a bum computer would do, he took matters into his own hands and allowed us to watch. He took a standard pc power cable, cut off the end, and stripped the shielding off it to expose the bare wires. He then proceeded to plug the cable into the outlet, and verrrry carefully (don't try this at home kids, although it is pretty cool) touched the two wires together to the middle of the motherboard. This is guaranteed to provide at least a little smoke and the desirable fried plastic and electronics vapor that we all know and love. In his case, he was able to kill the circuit for the entire dorm room floor. So not only did he fry the computer and was able to finally get a replacement, but we got to hear various people yelling from inside their dorm rooms trying to figure out who did it 'this time'.

Much better than reading this discussion!

[Leeji]

Thanks for finding that one! The discussion is much better without the trolls and lamers. I don't share their enthusiasm for 486 computers w/ 128 mb of RAM though :)

PSU pulverisation

[danme]

"PSU pulverisation"

Ahh... I tried this when I was going in college. Do I have to say that I didn't get very popular in the eyes of the system administrator...

(I thought there would be an over-voltage protection built-in and I wanted to test it... I'm much more well-informed now... :-)

Stereotype buster

[Peaceful_Patriot]

The directions in the article are much too complicated for my non-tech husband. He perfers a simpler method of computer destruction: chain saw

Mod Points for Sale! Offer expires 9-9-03

Desctruction

[Anonymous Coward]

He forgot my favorite:

During assembly, you will find several useless stand-offs in the motherboard or case packaging. Ignore these and proceed to screw the motherboard directly down against the flat metal of the chassis motherboard tray.

Don't worry - the screws are in the right place and are the correct thread pitch.

Don't worry about the PCI cards being 1/2 inch out of the slot when you assemble the machine - just bend their screw tabs up and they'll fit.

Re:This mentions little meaningful about hard driv

[temojen]

For the truly paranoid, nothing beats the certainty of a small explosive charge.

Re:Destruction? In my house it's easy

[muzzmac]

Nah. CmdrTaco found her...

How not to fix a power supply

[paul248]

Once, I was working on a computer that seemed to have a dead power supply. I opened it up and noticed that a fuse on it was blown. So, I took a staple, and soldered it on top of the fuse to see if it would bring it back to life. When I plugged it in, the thing started shooting flames (or sparks or something) a few feet into the air, and making strange noises. Luckily, I unplugged it before anything bad happened. I learned that day that when a fuse blows in a power supply, it probably happened for a good reason.

Damn luck!

[incom]

"If the computer is an 80486-based system, the Central Processing Unit (CPU) can be plugged into its socket in more than one way. One corner of the processor is bevelled and the matching corner of the socket will also be marked, but if these markings are disregarded - or if the user decides instead to line up the printing on the CPU with that on the motherboard - then the processor can be inserted in one of the three other alignments. This makes the chip's destruction, possibly with the emission of smoke, quite likely. Intel regrettably made processor misalignment impossible with the introduction of the Pentium series, unless of course the enterprising user is equipped with a mallet."

I've actually done this one, but regretably no serious damage was done.

Look at the motherboard PSU connector...

[meowsqueak]

Goes to show just how old this article is. Also, the SIMM insertion technique - haven't done it that way for years. Still, it's fun to reminisce.

This article is too stupid too be commented on

[Anonymous Coward]

Whooops!!! I guess I just did.

Professinal BOFH

[beta21]

The only professional I know if is:

BOFH
This shoudl be every sysadmins giude to user and machine maintanece

How I killed a motherboard

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't check the PC speaker hookup to my generic PC chips motherboard, and it went up in a puff of smoke. While you don't expect your PC speaker to be miswired, this one was for some odd reason.

see actual destruction photos!

[Gunstick]

Hi

funny noone has yet mentioned DAU-alarm

Georges

Steam cleaning?

[dr2chase]

Seems like it would be more effective than a mere air hose.

Re:Destruction? In my house it's easy

[dotgain]

Man if only you had a longer joke line you could have karma hored a little more

In fact, he won't get any karma anyway. "Funny" is now a karma-free mod. Sorry I can't give you a link.

There is some kind of irony...

[MadAnthony02]

to the fact that the mac destruction video was in QuickTime

Re:There is some kind of irony...

[Slack3r78]

hehe Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking myself when the QuickTime plug-in loaded up in Moz :)

This would be a lot funnier if...

[NecrosisLabs]

...I wasn't staring at my skeletonized home system, waiting for a RMA for my dead mobo.

Re:This mentions little meaningful about hard driv

[Slack3r78]

Ahhh that's amateur stuff. For the true connoisseur in hard drive destruction, we have this.

Sorry, I don't speak the language that it's in, so I can't provide translation, but I think the pictures speak for themselves. :)

Re:This mentions little meaningful about hard driv

[Creepy Crawler]

New dummies book:

Computer controlled thermite explosions FOR DUMMIES.

Destroy a PC? Easy!

[frozenray]

Just give it to one of the guys who owned the equipment depicted in these galleries!

D.A.U ("duemmster anzunehmender User") can be roughly translated as "dumbest hypothetical user". Here is one of my favorites, the D.A.U. of the month for May 2003.

If you speak some German, reading the sarcastic comments is as much fun as looking at the pictures of fried equipment.

Hey Virus Writers Have Fun.

[Anonymous Coward]

Note people dig out your motherboard book and see if you have a Bios write protect jumper(some motherboard do ie jumper one way you can write to bios the other you cannot). I see a BIOS Viruses comming. This would be real havioc. Hmm a DRM removal virus a Microsoft need serial number read blocking virus(windows XP requirement) and the System stuffed virus. Note Linux is half smart as long as the bois works it is not in trouble. Basicly in most cases linux users as little as able from the bios. Load there program interface directly with the hardware. But if the bios does not work there up the creek. Basicly min damage will not bring it down. Complete wipeout is required. Microsoft is dependant.

Risk has been here for a long time I still remember embeding a laptop return to base code into the spare space in the bios. Ie past 30 days from return to base without bios exetention seeing a special floppy disk the machine would die dead even stop most computer techs in there track. Ie soldered in Bios. When dead required a special serial file transfer to bring it back. Basicly start up frease no harddrive activity no floppy activity keyboard No leds lit not talking from it. Note the disk and the file where date and time linked wrong date or time(1 hour window) and the disk and file was useless. Most would come that the bios was fried. The laptop was stolen once until the thief found out that it died we got it back because the theif thought it was dead.

Due to a sticker on case Saying Return if This Machine Stops Dead This is Due to a knowing but intermited Hardware Fault. Due to Budget limits This Machine has not been Replaced Due to it still being functional 99.9% of the time.(yep 99% is wrong the correct figure was 97.7% of the time if you missed a disk updates but 99.9% sounded better.)

Yep the thief was hopeing to find out what had to be done. The laptop was restored in under 3 mins of its return from the police and the police caught the thief because He had used the laptop and writen a personal letter after it was nicked. And had not deleted it too well either.

Basicly after that day I knew how powerful this could be and that was over 5 years ago.

Bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

This can destroy your microwave. I just know some fools are going to have to find this out the hard way. CD-Rs contain a layer of aluminum that will cause your microwave to arc, destroying the microwave emitter and maybe start a small fire if you are 'lucky'. Don't try this at home unless you are competing for the Darwin Awards.

But what about the rest of the network?

[Decimal Dave]

They forgot to mention the ever popular 110v electrical socket-to-ethernet "converter" cable. :)

Re:CD-Rs or ASUS motherboards

[Anonymous Coward]

I found this trick useful for doing RMA's through ASUS. If the flakey mobo boots at all, it is next to impossible to get an exchange. A dead mobo is much easier to get replaced. 1/2 second of magnatron exposure in the nuker makes this possible. But you can't set it for 1/2 seconds. Also, most microwave ovens don't start the magnatron until the airflow is up and running, usually 2 seconds. So, set the timer to 5 seconds and the instant you hear the louder hum of the inverter starting, stop the nuking as soon as your are able. Carful not to do it more than necessary, it will be obvious if too many fried traces are noticed. A more delicate way is to use the igniter out of a lighter and arc 1 or 2 sensitive parts of the motherboard.

I would rather that ASUS belive me about a problem the first time I call, but time is money. I don't have time to jump though endless hoops.

Here's one they forgot

[multiplexo]

Have someone install a networking card on the motherboard thinking that it is a modem because it has an RJ-45 jack on the back and the phones on the PBX all have RJ-45 jacks on them as well. Power up the system, plug the "modem" into the PBX system. Watch the motherboard start to act badly as it tries, valiantly but in vain, to absorb AC from the phone system through a 10BaseT jack. Have the user complain all day long that their computer is acting funny. Go upstairs and look at it and ask why they have two networking cards and why one is plugged into the phone system. Have the user's co-worker, who thinks he knows something about computers, and who wants to get into the user's panties, explain that he found this "modem" and installed it on her machine so she could dial-out. Explain to the user and to her co-worker that he just installed a network card, that modems don't have BNC and 15 pin AUI connectors on them, prove this by removing the "modem" and showing them the 3COM ethernet logo on it. Explain that the phone system has AC current running through it to power all of the pretty red and green LEDs on their phones. Have the user's motherboard replaced because the AC from the PBX has fried it. Explain to the user and her co-worker that you won't come upstairs and fuck things up in purchasing if they promise to refrain from fucking up their computers.
Oh, and the best part of this one was where the user told me that she had data on her computer that was "absolutely irreplacable" and that I just had to fix it. When I asked her if she had backed her data up she said "no" and I replied "Well, then I guess it really is 'absolutely irreplacable'."

Death and Destruction!

[shadowcabbit]

When I worked as an intern for my university's IT department, one of the last tasks they had me do one year was to haul a room full of old Pentium 1 machines, monitors, et al across the street to the cafeteria, where an industrial trash compactor was waiting to receive them. I was assigned this task alongside one of the first-year interns. We loaded our carts up with the machines and happily heaved machine upon machine into the beast. We were especially impressed with the various popping noises and flashes of light coming from within the compactor.

That's not the funny part.

Watching us do all of this was a fairly brain-dead janitor. As we were performing hard drive dumps (literally), this guy was rooting around in the carts and extracting the absolute scuzziest stuff he could find. Mice with missing balls, keyboards that were missing rows, that sort of thing. Periodically he would stop us and ask if this would work with his computer at home, and not tell us what kind of computer he had ("it's a old one").

That's still not the funny part.

The funny part is that, while we were listening to the wailing and gnashing of drives, he took us aside confidentially and said, "yuh know, we threw uh cat in thur once. Man, did at thang screeeeem..."

We immediately went to our boss and related the story. We didn't have to haul anymore garbage back to the cafeteria that day.

Old Laptop Craves Destruction

[crashnbur]

I've got an old laptop (AMD K62 300 MHz, 3.1 GB, Win98) that stopped working about six months ago, so I promptly bought a huge, fast, screaming monster of a laptop... Any suggestions on what to do with it? Testing gravity is always fun, but that's been done.

BPFH - "Windows 98 ate my wife's PC"

[theTerribleRobbo]

http://www.bpfh.net/microsoft/win98-ate-pc/

For all the pictures of burnt-out and gunk-filled hardware you could ever want.

I know someone....

[MadAnthony02]

who built an RJ-11 to electrical outlet cable. Use of it, I hear, is a good way to get a dead piece of hardware so that you can take advantage of the Best Buy Purchase Protection Plan and get it replaced with a new model

Fun with a chainsaw

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever try cutting a sleeping bag with a chainsaw?

Make sure it's someone else's chainsaw.

Re:Fun with a chainsaw

[rifter]

Ever try cutting a sleeping bag with a chainsaw?

Make sure it's someone else's chainsaw.

More importantly, make sure to get out of the sleeping bag first. For extra points, use someone else's chainsaw on their sleeping bag with them in it.

Defraggle your motherdisc!

[darqchild]

http://www.datadocktorn.nu/us_frag1.php

This artuicle is over 4 years old guys.....

[linkdead]

Seriously I can probably safely bet it's been here before.

Re:Destruction? In my house it's easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Which begs the question: was she the only one?

That's not what "begging the question" means! See

http://alt-usage-english.org/intro_c.shtml#begth eq uestion

Don't leave loose ends

[GQuon]

Remember, you should not leave loose wires hanging from the power supply (PSU). You know, those red, yellow and black wires hanging from the box in the back of the case.
If there are wires not connected somewhere inside, it means that those people who put together your computer short-changed you or the computer store. Your computer is not getting all the power it needs, and may be going slower than it could have.
Also if those wires re left hanging, there's are risk they could short out your computer and electrocute you.
There ought to be some metal pins sticking up from the big green "motherboard". Attach all those wires to those pins. It doesn't matter if they don't fit exactly, the main issue here is to avoid wires swinging around in the case and damaging something.
If the wire doesn't reach the motherboard, you can also connect it to pins on a harddrive, CD-ROM drive or DVD-drive.
Remember to turn the computer off and unplug the computer and monitor from the wall socket before doing this.
After you're done, plug it back in, switch it on, and you can be satisfied that your computer is in ship shape.

(No, don't do it.)

Article from 1998! Much easier now - heat-sinks

[walterbyrd]

If the computer is reasonably new, just remove the heat sink, and let the computer run for a short time - could be a very short time. If you don't want to be caught, just re-install the heat-sink when done. Couldn't be easier.

Flamethrowers? Hammers? Nonesense.

you might not want to do this

[RMH101]

with anything that contains large capacitors

Yup

[Andy Dodd]

After my cheapie Logitech at work died, I found an old AT&T variant of the Model M (I'm positive from the way this thing clicks and its shape that it's an OEMed Model M). It's yellowed from age, and works beautifully other than the contacts near / and . being a little worn... And actually over the past few months I think usage has removed the corrosion - Those keys work great now!

But someone broke off one of those little plastic things used to stand the keyboard up, so I have to put a textbook under the back to get a decent angle. :(

Cooking chips

[Andy Dodd]

Normally not a problem with already-assembled hardware, but some ICs must be "cooked" at low temperatures before soldering so as to drive out all the moisture.

Forget to cook them, and POP goes the IC when you solder it.

This is the case with the power amp used on a low-power (2W) radio transceiver I assisted in designing as an undergrad.

It's not the phosphors

[Andy Dodd]

It's the fact that it's a big tube with nothing inside it.

A vacuum that large has quite a lot of potential energy.

Crack it and it implodes - Violently. Inertia says that the glass shards will eventually be flying outward instead of inward after passing through the center.

I had the solution before I RTFA

[ihatesco]

I opened the page, and I saw the banner hovering over "How to destroy the computer"... It was a banner saying "Windows Dotnet Server as low as 99$"...

my feats

[mennucc1]

I am probably a unlucky computer destructor: I did most of the above mistakes (and invented some new ones) but never managed to destroy anything. Here is a list of my feats

• in August I got an old PC, Celeron on a ABIT M/B; the Celeron is a PPGA, and is mounted on a ZIF which is itself soldered on a small board, called SlotKET, that is then insterted in the motherboard's SLOT1; the whole thing is too small for the PentiumIII retention system, and it wobbles under the weight of a massive heatsink. Since the heatsink was quite dusty, and I did not dare to detach the heatsink, I took off the whole SlotKET and washed the heatsink under tap water. Then I mounted the whole hw in a self-made case, and did some tests using Knoppix. When two days later I turned it on again, it did not boot.
  It took 3 days, and a borrowed PentiumIII, to understand that the problem was in the CPU; so I decided to brute-force it: I took off the hooks, only to realize that the heatsink was glued to the CPU (by them *** using some two-face-glue-tape, instead of paste); so I insterted a flat skrewdriver between the heatsink and the CPU, and applied quite some force: I heard a noise as of velcro, and saw that I had actually managed to pull the CPU from the ZIF (without releasing the lever), so I had to tore apart the last pins by hand. Then I really insterted the skrewdriver between the heatsink and the CPU, and managed to detach it. I sprayed abundant contact cleaner everywhere, and mounted it back on. It now works.
• Since ATX brought soft-off to the world, I have always prominently forgotten to use the back power switch (thinking "if it is noiseless, it must be off"), and I have plugged/unplugged components, while a green led was brightly and suspiciously looking at me from the M/B
• this week I helped my father to install a new 80GB drive; since the BIOS hanged on it, I decided to flash a new one; I downloaded it and put it in the floppy, but the aflash.exe utility reported a wrong checksum: I had forgotten to unzip it, and was trying to flash the bios1003a.zip file (instead of the bios1003a.awd that is inside it)
• static discharge? what is it? (seems that I was spared because: I live in a very humid place, with no carpets; and I never remember to turn off main power, let alone unplugging the cord; moreover, when I open a PC, I always sweat as a fountain, and, by reading above, you know why)

and, yes, I manage 3 PC at home and 6 at work, and I never got to break anything (that I could not repair by spraying it): probably because I always install St IGNUcius on any of them.

Re:Destruction? In my house it's easy

[FroMan]

I'm not the guy who posted above. But, my wife does read slashdot. Granted we met in college in our second year CS courses. So, yes, some folks do have wives that read slashdot. Infact, I pity some of my other friends from college that did not get wives that are from a similar field as they.

Melt that bios

[goatan]

The artical dosen't mention putting a bios chip in the wrong way round that will fry the chip knakering the computer and leaving a nasty burnt plastic smell. Result.

Re:Melt that bios

[linkdead]

bah! if you really want to do something that will leave the Pc maker's RMA dept scratching their heads for a long long time, just fill a spray bottle (like a windex bottle) with industrial grade isopropyl alcohol and spray the ICs and smaller components while the PC is running...poof...problem solved, one less eMachine in the world (or replace eMachine iwth your least favorite brand of pre-built PC)

FUD

[Jennifer E. Elaan]

That comment is mostly FUD. The amount of signal reflection from the thin foil in a CD should pose little threat to the magnetron. A cavity magnetron can just as easily receive microwave signals as send them, so unless you're amplifying the input power somehow (like, by storing energy and outputting in pulses...), then this should prove harmless.

The real danger comes from the arcing in the CD itself. This can pose a bit of a hazard of the CD bursting into flames. After a time, though, the CD pits and takes on characteristics of a microwave antenna. You probably want to stop it at this point, or the CD will begin heating rapidly, and the reflected energy has a chance to rise (although, because of the low current carrying capacity of foil, not usually to levels dangerous to the magnetron).

Something like a fork, however, is more likely to damage the microwave. On top of the sparks streaming from the points, the charge-arc cycle can lead to a high-powered pulse waveform, which can cause the amplification required to damage a magnetron.

Excellent /. demographics

[Anonymous Coward]

I see that the average age of a SlashDot reader is 9.5 years and that he (yes, he) consumed Beavis and Butthead exclusively before getting his first PC and DSL connection.

I'm sitting in a county where every working piece of equipment you've each so proudly destroyed would have been put to good use.

Go back to your ranch in Texas and tip cows or something.
(Insert equally-sarcastic save-the-cows post here)

AC

Don't unplug the fans!

[fm6]

Just block the air intakes. Much more fun!