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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."
IT's gonna love me when they come in on monday hehehe.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
Post a link to it from Slashdot.
Or tell hackers that it is the most secure computer ever.
Here are step by steps instructions for that: http://www.datadocktorn.nu/us_frag1.php :)
You should only have to do this once
And here I was using the arc welder.
The Gardener
--
1. take hammer
2. apply to computer
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
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.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
...I just turn the computer over to my wife...
...Notlikethis :D
Feel that power? That's mah MOUSING FINGER
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.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
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.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
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!!
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
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.
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
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.
--------
It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
...Just kidding, dear!
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.
If you outlaw the law, only criminals will have laws
This article looks familiar. Perhaps it's because Slashdot linked to it 4 1/2 years ago.
Nice work, "editors."
I'm not Seth Finkelstein. I still speak the truth.
Achille Talon
Hop!
It's one of my favorite words.
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
Just follow these easy step-by-step instructions.
tcd004
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...
-- Cheers!
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//
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.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
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"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
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.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
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.
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.
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.
I don't actually exist.
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.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
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.
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.
The latest Slashdot meme.
If they wanted to destroy some computers, why not just put windows on, and then install Bonzi Buddy?
Purchase a litre of Muriatic Acid, take the cap off, set it beside running computer. It's a very slow and agonizing death!
Powered by FreeBSD! The Ultimate Windows XP Service Patch.
[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 ;-))
home
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 ...
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.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
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.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
"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.
You managed to meet, and then marry, a woman who reads Slashdot?!
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..."
Which begs the question: was she the only one?
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!!
If only Bill Gates had a penny for every time Windows crashed... oh wait.. he does!
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.
Who needs an electric fence to get a shock?
Quoth he
"It's all academic anyway..."
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)....
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
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.
Karma: Shitty (mostly due to American moderators)
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*
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.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
when i don't have that much spare time, i just end up installing windows. it's usually faster.
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)
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
I felt like such a failure.
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.
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.
to the fact that the mac destruction video was in QuickTime
I have blog like everyone else
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.
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.
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
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'."
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
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.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...