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Requiem For A Motherboard
JimLynch writes "In my last DIY column, I discussed what it was like to build my first system. As time went by, unfortunately, my DIY system wasn't all wine and roses. This column tells the story of how I destroyed my motherboard through a series of ill-planned and stupid actions. It should stand as a shining example of What Not to Do for DIYers everywhere."
on that list there's "don't install windows" ;)
when i first started slapping computers together, things were easy enough to do without too much worry... general rule of thumb: if it don't fit, don't force it.
for a minute there, i lost myself...
I checked the temperature of my motherboard with SiSoft Sandra. The readings I got showed that it was too hot indeed. I was skeptical of Sandra's exact readings, however, so I posted a note in the forum and received some good suggestions for alternative programs to check the temp with.
Not very smart, are you? You smell your computer burning, but you start up Windows anyway (most BIOSes have temperature monitors built in) and mess around. Just...wow.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
Eat while working on PCs
Attempt to wash circuit boards, unless you have a ready source of de-ionized water, and it's still iffy
Dry sensitive electronic components with a blowdryer with the heat on
Install/remove heatsinks with wrong tools. I nearly chopped one of those tiny resistor packs in half with a cruddy old screwdriver
Let dust accumulate until it looks like the inside of a vacuum cleaner bag
Also, keep an eye on those electrolytic caps, in the past some leaked and caused a real mess.
In other news:
Every now and then Google News does something weird, I thought the combination of heading and article were interesting:
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
There are some tips you should know, like installing the cpu and heatsink before the mobo is in the case. And making sure you screw in the mobo with the correct standoffs.
If you don't know what you are doing, then either take it to or buy from someone who does. I mean come on, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out. I don't know how to fix cars, so do I fix my car when something breaks? No. I take it to a mechanic. Jeez, some people are really hurting in the common sense department.
i've built dozens of computers since 1987 and have cracked the case on thousands of others, literally. I've never toasted a part but for once, and that was an improperly soldered CPU board on a Compaq Proliant 2500 back in 1996. A surface-mount capacitor just fell off the board. Warranty replacement - the system was brand new.
Now, i've seen bad boards, particularly in the lower quality side of the Taiwanese parts market back in the late 80s, when if you ordered 10 motherboards you might expect 2 or 3 to fail. Never got any, though. I hear the same thing is true with some of the cheaper SiS based boards today.
I don't think it's all luck. Quality parts selection and careful handling will take you a long way.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
After smelling smoke, I reached for the plug, and turned to find the ZIF socket a smoldering mass melted into the motherboard. Removing the Bright green Cyrix heatsink from the ZIF socket revealed that I had shattered the ceramic block that encased the CPU chip.
I took the melted motherboard, cracked CPU, and the faulty manual back to the store and they acknowledged that the manual was wrong. They gave me a new mobo, and a used but working CPU, even though I had only bought the board from that store.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
For all the disparaging comments, the one good thing that comes of all this is this: Cheap Hardware. I've built a lot of machines and only once had a problem with overheating when I didn't quite get the heatsink on the CPU perfectly ... no burning smell, just the temp in BIOS rising swiftly was enough to make me pull the plug.
I've got another "jinx" friend who fries motherboards and graphics cards regularly. I laugh at him quietly so as not to give myself bad computer karma and realize that the more people feel that they can DIY, the cheaper components will get. Good can come from idiots of the world, however reading this is like reading Darwin Awards for computer retards.
The tech people at my local computer store said it was heat that did that, the people at another store said that it would've happened anyway. It left a nice mark on the side of my tower though, capacitor guts everywhere!
Why would cutting power kill your motherboard?
Worst that could happen is if power dropped in the middle of flashing a BIOS, but that's recoverable via a quick trip to the nearest little computer shop that has an EPROM burner (or warranty replacement if your bios is a TSOP)
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
the part that made me ill was him not knowing what doohicky he knocked off.
I can relate to components not fitting in certain configurations;CD rom drives that were 2cm to long for the mobo/case combination i was trying to install them in, or powersupplys right up against cpu heatsinks blocking the air flow. with infinite combinations comes infinite ways to screw things up.
I once put a HUGE heatsink/fan combination on a CPU for a friend. it was an aerocool deep impact limited edition (gold plated heatsink with iridescent fans) as seen here without the 80mm fans mounted on it or the gold plating. i had to use a dremel to trim the shroud around one of the fans so it would clear a memory module. but I figured "hey, you can't see it from my house"
"He's a real midnight golfer"
I was working at ChimpUSA about 7 years ago in the upgrades department. A woman with the 'clueless drone' expression came up and asked for a new cpu and mobo.
"Would you like us to istall it for you?" (Not an attempt at selling over-priced services, just an attempt to prevent the inevitable.)
"No, I'll do it myself"
After the requsite hour she called back and claimed that the mobo didn't work.
"Did you hook up the power supply? Make sure the CPU was properly seated? Checked the RAM? Plugged in the drives? Proper grounding on backplane screws?"
She answered yes to each question as I explained each of them to her. After a good 30 minutes of trouble shooting...
"Oh yeah, when I was putting the motherthingy in, I poped off a brown cylinder with my screwdriver. is that important?"
"Hmmm, yeah, capaciters can be important. They probably didn't put it on the board to look cute."
And that is how I know the guy. I sold a mobo to his mother. "...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Actually, considering the growing "newbie geek" audience, it's a damn good article to put on on /.
Lots of the little tykes - such as my soon to be nephew-in-law believe that just because they can figure out how to install and play Counter Strike, that they can fix a PC (or enroll in Computer Science.)
The simplest possible thing that can do WONDERS for keeping a machine running for a long time - is practice propper grounding techniques. Use that wristrap, kids. Ground yourself, your computer, and your components. MOVE THE PLASTIC AWAY. Just by freaking breathing, you're generating enough static to static to blow holes in the gates.
Perhaps if more wanna-be-geeks would read something like this first, they might save themselves a little bit of frustration and time.
Bang. That machine never worked again.
Has Apple fixed the problem in the G5 yet where the fans are controlled by some intricate dab of MacOSedness, and if you install and run a non MacOS on your G5 all 27 (or are there 47?) fans spin up at their default full-speed?
resigned
A screw sticks, for example, on a side cover assembly. You check the manual to see if there might be any special cause for this screw to come off so hard, but all it says is "Remove side cover plate" in that wonderful terse technical style that never tells you what you want to know. There's no earlier procedure left undone that might cause the cover screws to stick.
If you're experienced you'd probably apply a penetrating liquid and an impact driver at this point. But suppose you're inexperienced and you attach a self-locking plier wrench to the shank of your screwdriver and really twist it hard, a procedure you've had success with in the past, but which this time succeeds only in tearing the slot of the screw.
Your mind was already thinking ahead to what you would do when the cover plate was off, and so it takes a little time to realize that this irritating minor annoyance of a torn screw slot isn't just irritating and minor. You're stuck. Stopped. Terminated. It's absolutely stopped you from fixing the motorcycle.
This isn't a rare scene in science or technology. This is the commonest scene of all. Just plain stuck. In traditional maintenance this is the worst of all moments, so bad that you have avoided even thinking about it before you come to it.
The book's no good to you now. Neither is scientific reason. You don't need any scientific experiments to find out what's wrong. It's obvious what's wrong. What you need is an hypothesis for how you're going to get that slotless screw out of there and scientific method doesn't provide any of these hypotheses. It operates only after they're around.
This is the zero moment of consciousness. Stuck. No answer. Honked. Kaput. It's a miserable experience emotionally. You're losing time. You're incompetent. You don't know what you're doing. You should be ashamed of yourself. You should take the machine to a real mechanic who knows how to figure these things out.
From "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig. (Chapter 24)
-- Gary Goldberg KA3ZYW 301/249-6501 AIM:OgGreeb Digital Marketing Inc., Bowie, MD