I was spending part of my Friday upgrading a system for a friend. Adding a new motherboard/processor, reformatting the drive and installing a new OS.

Things were going along swimmingly, in fact they were going too good. Came right up, the BIOS was happy, found everything went straight to the CD-ROM with barely a pause. Wiped the partition and started loading the OS.

Went to grab a drink, came back - blank monitor with flashing light...and the room was disturbingly quiet.

Hmmmmmmm.

Push power supply button. Nada. Power diode was lit. Checked cable set, everything nice and tight.

"Crap, did I burn out the processor?". Grab old board, plug in.....still no joy.

Power supply caput. Rip out old power supply, only to hear a strange rattle. "Well that's not good."

Tear off power supply covering, out drops........a 'brass' motherboard standoff.

How in the heck did that get in there, and how long had it been there. Oh well, off to buy a new #@%!*& power supply.

Been there, done that. My one was a motherboard getting fried though. I was fixing my mates computer for him, and putting a new hard drive in. Me,,being the clever little guy I am, didn't wear any anti-static straps, and managed to fry the hard drive. Fortunatly he wasn't too annoyed, as he was going to throw the machine anyway ... but it was still a pain, as the machine itself was in good order (just a little old).

Cheers

Andy (mod)
andy@ultranerds.co.uk

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I had "something" in one of mine blow - came out looking like a piece of popcorn. Stunk up the room big time.

I've damaged a few items myself. plugged a floppy drive power connecter the wrong way and it caught on fire. A CD-R shattered in my burner, blowing the drive mechanism in the process. And just a month ago I was cleaning off my Athlon XP's on my dual system to reapply a better compound and accidently jabbed a flat-head screwdriver onto the PCB while attaching the second hs/f, severing two leads.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.

I worked on and off in various computer repair jobs to support myself through school. I had an amazing ability to interact with electricity at the worst times.

Once while replacing a power supply switch I tested it one too many times and in my haste didn't disconnect the power the final time. *POW* - I blew the circuits for our shop and the architect's office next door.

My boss came into the darkened shop floor and said I was standing there with a screw driver in one hand, and the widest eyes he'd ever seen on a human

LOL! I did a similar thing when on 'Work Experience' in my schools IT detpartment. I wasn't the most popular person, as it happened to be the computer that run the 'Automated Jig Machine' in the Design and Technology department

Cheers

Andy (mod)
andy@ultranerds.co.uk

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