What's the Hardiest Hardware You've Seen?

mrsev asks: "I work in a lab and so have lots of strange equipment around me. Recently I found an old 256Mb USB Flash Disk, that I had been looking for 6 months. This would not be amazing but for the fact that it was frozen in a block of ice in one of our -80C freezers (-112F). It must have fallen from my top pocket when I was reaching in. After chiping it out and a quick thaw and dry ... it worked!! All my data was intact and there were no problems. I am now looking for a victim to test in our liquid nitrogen storage facility. My question is what is the strangest hardware survival you have seen."

Comments

Tough CPU

[WavyGravy-R5]

I recently had an AMD 1400 Mhz chip that was used for my schools Journalism department. It has been dropped easily a few dozen times, left behind a VERY dirty, dusty desk for about a month, AND has been submerged in photo developing chemicals. Out of sheer curiosity, I put it on one of the boards the other day, and in amazement it still worked.

Powerbook dropped down the stairs

[joelparker]

I accidentally dropped my Powerbook Duo
down a long flight of concrete stairs...
it bounced all the way to the bottom.

It survived with all data intact,
God bless Apple's case designers. :)

Re:Powerbook dropped down the stairs

[adamjaskie]

A kid in my dorm has dropped his powerbook g4 several times. One time it fell off his lap, and hit the edge of a table leg on the way down, taking a chunk out of the table leg, and wedging it between two parts of the case. Another time, he dropped it off his desk, and it hit something on the floor right on edge, putting a dent in the side of the keyboard area. Then, it slipped out of his backpack, tumbled down a flight of stairs, and bounced through the railing to fall an entire story. It hit the railing on the way down, denting the edge of the laptop, and finally landed corner first on the concrete floor. He has the bright spots on the screen, two mashed corners, two dented sides, a dent in the side of the screen area, and a slightly bowed screen. And it still works perfectly, other than one of the USB ports being mashed beyond recognition, and some creative application of a 20 pound instrument transformer to bend the metal far enough to insert the charging plug.

IBM Thinkpad laptop

[Komarosu]

Now i've got a REAL monster, a Pentium 1 133mhz IBM thinkpad from a long time ago. Its been dropped down about 3 flights of concreate stairs, been hit in the LCD screen by a football a few times, survived the fury of a 6 year old kid, dropped on tarmac from 3-4ft.

The verdict? A nackered case, a flickery LCD, but a perfect, no badcluster HDD and it still works perfectly.

Diamond Viper Z200 (Savage 2000)

[andrewl6097]

The card's performance, drivers etc sucked, but one time I put it into the AGP slot and sparks flew, literally ( a bolt of electricity jumped from end to end of the slot ). Smoke rose. Powered the thing up and everything worked fine.

Vintage Macs

[Tyrdium]

The Macs that Apple had out in the 680x0 era have got to be the toughest things I've ever seen. I've got about four of them sitting in my room (I had more, but had to get rid of them to make space for more old comps). I've done pretty much everything imaginable to them, and they're just fine. The very early compact Macs in particular were very tough. The 128K to Plus or so had zero moving parts, except for the floppy drive, and their cases were made out of what seems to be thick steel (judging from their weight). The Apple series computers (e.g. IIGS) were pretty damned tough, too. Unfortunately, with their white plastic shell, the new Macs get scratched up extremely easily, and the cases aren't anywhere near as tough as those of vintage models. Oh yeahl, and their Laserwriters were damned tough, too. I've kicked my Personal Laserwriter 320 by accident a bunch of times, and it's taken numerous other abuses, but still works perfectly. I picked it up for 5 bucks at a flea market, so I have no idea what it took before then.

Amiga Floppy

[McCarrum]

Back in the days when Commodore Australia and Commodore US were at war (atleast internally), I worked for a shop in Canberra Australia selling the brand new Amigas. Wonderful things.

Well, we had contacts on both sides of the pond - and when Commodore Australia wouldn't give us the brand new 1.1 release of the boot disk, we contacted the US office and got one sent out to us. It came by courier late in the day, in the middle of winter. Indeed, I was just going home. I grabbed the disk, thinking that I'd take it home and test it out there. So I grabbed my stuff, got into the car, and drove home. Grabbed a drink, and promptly forgot about it.

Next morning, I got up (at a loverly -4C .. the fridge was warm), got to work, parked, got out, and spotted the 3.5" floppy disk on the wall next to the car .. completely iced over. I freaked, calmed down, freaked, calmed down, chipped it out, and put it next to a VERY gentle heat source. Five hours later, I unscrewed the disk (remember when 3.5" disks had screws?) and transplanted the data to a new shell.

Worked. Beutifully. A quick backup or 10 and we were happy. Indeed, that became a mascot disk at the place for a while, and worked for ages.

Ahh memories ... now, back to work.

USB 256 drive that should have been dead.

[Neck_of_the_Woods]

I had it in my shorts, I hit the pool. Still did not know it was in my short, threw them in the wash. Then the drier.

Found the damn thing when I was folding my shorts the next day, with water on the inside of it. Set it up on desk at work for about 3 days and pluged it in as it had the only known good copy of some offsite routers. Took a couple seconds and wamo there is my data, pull it off to the desktop. Reach down and find the little bugger all fogged up on the inside. 2 weeks on my desk for a real long term dry out and that damn thing still works like a charm.

Go figre....

IBM System 32.

[Glonoinha]

I worked IT/MIS for a company that had several older buildings including one that had a System 32 in it from way back when. Someone decided that they wanted that computer gone and since it was a computer and I was a computer guy it was my problem. Having never seen a S/32 before I grabbed my little leatherette pouch of little tiny screwdrivers, needlenose plyers and wirecutters just in case.

Boss stopped me, suggested I leave those behind and we stopped at the diesel mechanics shop for crowbars, a hacksaw, and a few 4 pound sledgehammers. I was like ... WTF and he asked if I had ever seen the machine in question. D'oh, no.

Get there and this thing is a beast. The printer frame was cast aluminum about the same size and strength as the intake manifold and heads on a Chevy V8 engine. The computer itself was made of 1" steel square tubing that was like a quarter inch thick, the bolts that held it together looked like something you would use on a house. The hard drive was a single platter, and the base housing was cast bronze or something, weighed about 20 - 25 lbs or so, about the size of a current ATX desktop case, and the motor for the drive was a monster 220V electric motor about the size of a small pumpkin - half horsepower maybe?

I have no clue why I was there taking that monster apart, but I got a real good appreciation for how Tonka tough IBM used to make their computers. Probably less powerful than my $50 calculator but built like a tank.