We Are Not Responsible for Your Impending Doom

[Shalom]

Everything is keyed such that it can only physically fit in one way. If it doesn't fit it doesn't below there. If it does fit it does belong there.

I can quote you two exceptions to this.

One, the miniature power connector that goes to 3½" floppy drives is close enough to one variety of audio-in connector on some older sound cards to be able to plug in there. Obviously that's not where it belongs. I've never done this myself, not being a total imbecile, but heard of it happening once. (And I still have a CD-to-sound-card audio cable with three different plugs paralleled at the sound card end, one of which is identical to the floppy power connector.)

Two, the said connector can be plugged in where it does belong, on the back of the floppy drive, but shifted one pin to the left. This has the effect of connecting either the +5 or the +12 directly to ground. (The two outer pins are grounds, so if you shift it, at least one of the hot pins is grounded.) This did happen to me, causing the almost-new Antec power supply to say "Phut!" and yield up the magic smoke, roughly ⅛ of a second after I hit the power button.

[Hyndis]

Whats a floppy drive?



Haven't seen or used one of those in a long time!

[lordlundar]

Add to the fact the floppy disk is currently being phased out.

[Der Cute]

Whats a floppy drive?

A guy with ED who's got the hots for a chick?

*ducks and runs*

[dalesys]

A guy with ED who's got the hots for a chick?

*ducks and runs*

Back in the day, we figured that a good date was like a good PC:
Dual floppies paired with a hard drive.

[lordlundar]

Back in the day, we figured that a good date was like a good PC:
Dual floppies paired with a hard drive.

OW OW OW OW!

Ginger Ale through the nose hurts!

[RestaurantDude]

You should have sold it to him. the results would have been... interesting. ::evil laugh::

[Chromatix]

A floppy drive is still required to load disk-controller device drivers during WinXP install - which is absolutely required if you want to use your modern SATA hard drives at full capability. That's unless you have the wherewithal to slipstream them into a fresh CD.

But that's about it these days.

[Hyndis]

XP is a very old operating system, and soon all support for it will end. Its already been extended, but its a nearly 10 year old OS.

[Midorikawa]

Well, now I'm curious. Midorikawa, you have access to some serious voltage. Go hook up a 120mm fan to a line.

Or we can send it to

http://www.willitblend.com/videos.as...e&video=iphone

haha. I'll have to build a rig to test it, and video tape the whole thing for submission to youtube. :-D

I saw a guy hook up a speaker to line voltage. It made lots of 60Hz noise before melting and making lots of smoke. :-D

[lordlundar]

haha. I'll have to build a rig to test it, and video tape the whole thing for submission to youtube. :-D

Why does this sound like the kind of experiment that has the warning "blast shield required?"

[Fire_on_High]

I showed this thread to a friend (who hasn't made an account here yet) and this was her response:

"That almost makes me want to suggest they should send in the idea to Mythbusters. Even if it's not "precisely a myth" (though people have heard incorrect connectors/things exploding), they might do it on a special, and then everybody gets to see what happens to lots of random crap that's not designed to be hooked up that way."

[Dreamstalker]

But it is a myth: someone says that a computer fan can be used as a standalone fan to cool anything

[Summoner]

I can quote you two exceptions to this.

I can add a third. You can stick a 12V PCIe power plug into a 12V CPU plug (IIRC 6 pin into 4). IN the process you're shorting 12V to ground. Luckily for an unnamed fumble fingered idiot the excellent engineers at SilverStone implemented a short protection system that has a fast enough response time that nothing suffered damage. The PSU did however show its ire by waiting about 5-10 minutes before it was willing to respond to the power on signal from the mobo; which did give me a scare.

[Midorikawa]

Why does this sound like the kind of experiment that has the warning "blast shield required?"

I have a blast shield of sorts. It's 1/4" thick plexiglass, and while it's not strong enough to do the stuff the mythbusters do, it's strong enough to wire a case fan to mains and be safe. I plan on doing this come next payday. I'll have to find a place to do this, since I'm almost positive the condo park I live in will frown on this activity. :-P