Never Hot swap IDE peripherals with the power on :)

[bozack]

Sorry but I just had to smack myself in the face today.

Was at work trying to resolve a users issue with a CD Rom Drive

to make a long story short, power was on, unplugged cd rom power cable, decided to try to plug it back in, saw a spark, my jaw dropped, and everything went dead.

Luckily the user wasn't there when I got that wonderful idea and that there was an excess machine right next to the one I was working on so I just swapped the drives and he was back up and running.

Still I cannot believe that I attempted something so dumb, I have done it before in the past without consequence but I guess from now on I am not going to be attempting that magic trick

 

[medic]

That's not so bad, my 14 year old nephew decided to explore inside my sisters computer with it running and wondered what the lever was for beside the CPU.....of course he pulled it and the CPU/Fan/H.S. fell out slightly, he tried repeatedly to stick it back in (power still on)...the system died, toasting the K62-450. (Nice chip..use to do 550 for me)

 

[Adul]

LOL, I did that accidently one time... Burnt up cd rom pretty good.

 

[arthurb1]

my friend once insistedd that his chip went in a certain way(he forced it), cause he knew more about computers than me (it was a P120) ahhh, power on, burnt smell, chip popped out of its socket, I lauged so hard at him

 

[drakek]

In a hardware class in college my teacher didnt realy have anything planned so he said explore the different hardware and try to play around with things to get different beep codes. Me and my partner thought it would be funny to take the memory chips out of the video card while the PC was on. It was an old Trident card. I have never seen colors like that b4. The card was fried.

 

[Quickfingerz]

I know a guy that fried his mobo trying to put a super nintendo game genie into an ISA slot

 

[arthurb1]

LOL...I thought that I was dumb plugging the controller from my Sega Genesis into my serial port (I was about 12), and expecting it to work. Game Genie heh


Edit: But I didn't fry anything.

 

[zippy]

<< I know a guy that fried his mobo trying to put a super nintendo game genie into an ISA slot >>



Good lord...that tops them ALLLLL!

 

[Agar]

Hehe damn, I'm laughing out loud here guys
I wish there's more of them on the way

 

[Oyeve]

Dumbest thing I ever did was on a compaq deskpro 385/25, which back in 1987 cost like 12,000 dollors. I installed a math coprocessor (remember those?) and after it was installed I turned on the machine. Well, the CEO was there talking to me while the PC was booting and I noticed that I forgot to put the cover back on the math coprocessor chip which was fastened by one screw. I attempted to put the cover back and the CEO says to me &quot;Isnt that dangerous to do while the pc is on?&quot; and me, being so cocky back then said &quot;Nah, as long as I dont touch anything metal it'll be ok&quot; as i said this, I dropped the screw to the cover right onto the system board and ***POW***
12,000 down the drain.

 

[lowtech1]

Once I warned a guy not to hot swap the video card, but he ignore me because he is a Mr. Big paper MCSE guy... He shorted the system &amp; killed both the mobo &amp; vid card, while I try to hold back my laughter

 

[pm]

A long time ago when 486's were the fastest thing you would ever hope to own I got a temp job as a network admin. There was this older guy who was showing me the ropes on my very first day. He was explaining that most of the jobs involved helping users with software, but every once in a while I would have to replace hardware as part of the job as we walking into the lab section of the building. Then he picks up a computer carries it to the bench, plugs it, turns it on and points out to me that the Trident video card on this particular computer is dead (and it clearly is since it's only displaying grey and black). So, while the computer is still running he takes off the cover and says to me &quot;You should always turn these off when you work on them, but when you've been doing this for as long as I have, you get a feel for these things and can operate on them while they are running&quot; or words to that effect. He flips the computer over on it's side and pulls the video card and there's this popping sound and the whole system shuts down. He says &quot;oops&quot; in a small voice, and we spend an hour messing with it before we realize that the motherboard is now dead. So, we go to the store and get a new motherboard - which, to his credit, he paid for out of his own pocket. So, then we get back and plug in the new board, and a new video card, turn it on and everything is fine. Then, while putting on the cover - while the computer is running - he drops a screw on the motherboard and there's a pop sound and a little grey smoke comes from the motherboard. (I'm not making this up). So, we fiddle around and it turns out that the motherboard is ok, but the new video card we just put in blew. So, we go back to the store and he buys another video card (again, paying for it himself) and he says a little more humbly, &quot;ok, in the future, I'm always turning this computers off before I touch them&quot;.

Actually three days ago, I was pocking around in my computer with my left hand while it was running because I was trying to check for dead air spots and hot chips. I mention that it was specifically my left hand, because after a minute or two of this, there's a popping sound as my gold wedding band shorted some capacitor on my GeForce card. The system kinda stuttered, the video went dead and I rebooted, but, miraculously, everything is fine (GeForce is still definitely working). So I learned my lesson too...

 

[bozack]

Wow these are some great stories and I don't feel as alone now as I did before the game genie was too funny, and so was the &quot;when you get to know computers as I do you get a feel for them&quot;, I just did it cause it is the whole &quot;someone elses car syndrome&quot; or beat on it because it is not your own, needless to say I will make sure to shut down from now on before any internal harware installation.

 

[Sacotool]

I plugged the power cable in on a floppy drive while the computer was powered up. I got a big spark and the machine shut down, I waited a couple of minutes and when I turned it all was fine thank God

 

[BoberFett]

Really Bozack? Thanks a lot, I'll have to remember that hot tip.