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

Get a Toughbook off Ebay

[Wee]

I wish I could buy one of those things on the open market, I love the damn things.

You can get them on ebay for around $2,000. You can also buy them new in the $3K - $4K range.

I'd probably go for one of the lower-powered CF-25s for a couple hundred. Actually, I'd buy three of them and use two for parts. If you're really in the market for a portable that does duty in hazardous conditions, you're probably not going to be doing video editing and such on it anyway, and might be able to get by with a P166 CPU.

-B

Re:Fire Fire Fire

[MooseGuy529]

I did that at computer camp once... it was build and repair a PC class, and the instructor had already had us plug everything in. My group had had a hell of a time with the floppy cable since it was in an awkward location and hard to get to, right-side-up or upside-down! So, we jammed it in--backwards (we didn't know yet). He told us to wait for him to check everything out, but I was impatient. I plugged it in, turned it on. It started booting, and suddenly it smelled smoky. I immediately knew what had happened and gave the power cord a quick tug out of the back. The smoke only started pouring out of the case after I unplugged it (I was really quick).

The guy was actually a bit of a jerk--he was like, "you know, I have half a mind to bill you for that!". First, it was a mistake--accidents happen. Second, the stuff was ancient--Pentium 100's, 1GB hard drives, Windows 95, 16 MB RAM or something... Third, the damn drives cost almost nothing. Well, he never did, but he was a bit of a jackass.

Anyway, it adds another trick to the repertoire of pranks (replace heatsink with anchovie, switch PSU to 220V, surgically rotate R, G, and B connectors, install OS/2, Windows 3.1, BeOS, or another OS the user can't figure out) to my bag of tricks. I've never done it to anyone, but it would be pretty fun.

Wait. Why the hell don't floppy drive manufacturers install a coupla diodes so power isn't supplied or shorted if the connection is bad?