Computer says baaaang.

[SteeleDragon78]

lol. I would recomend the extended warrenties purely because there are times when that rule is wrong but to be honest, there are only certain things it is worth it on. usually devices where it's either gonna cost a fortune if it does break (LCD TV, Laptops...) or things with mechanical copmponents (Washing machine, dishwasher etc)

might want to add stove to that one. lost my oven and 3 burners last week due to a short in the oven element. blew out the controller and the elements in less than 10 sec. had to jump back from the sparks. luckily it only blew the breakers and not catch my kitchen on fire.

have to say that ive never had a ps go on me like that. tvs and monitors left and right. had an old nintendo adapter with the HUGE transformer melt into a blob of stink and heartache once. i was 12 and we couldnt afford the replacement from nintendo, and it was before the universal ones.

I've heard six computers blow their power supply, and two of them were mine. One of them went so spectacularly, I just had to open up the blown supply to see what had happened. Turns out, a capacitor had blown so hard that half the rubber/plastic casing on it was gone, and it had knocked a small, capacitor-sized dent in the casing. It sounded like a metal balloon popping when it went.

love capacitor failure. wanna scare the hell out of yourself have a magneto capacitor fail. wonderfully loud and will blow through a bakelite casing. the cap is the size of a c battery roughly. i rebuilt 4 of them that lost a mag, took 2 weeks to get the replacement casings and then try to rebuild the mag. cause a new mag is $1500 for a small 4 cyl model, and you have to have 2 per engine. i know im in the wrong bussiness when i think what i can make rebuilding them. but its so hard to get in to it ill stay in computers.

[edible_hat]

Yeah, I saw that happen at school too. was one of the students who did it, and he knew perfectly well what he was doing. I hated that guy.

Happened at my school too. Twice. The school refused to let the offender sit his year 12 exams (and without a good result in those, he couldn't get into university) until he paid for replacements.

[Lingering Grin]

One of my favorite stories, is about the ONLY time I've ever seen a linux server display a "fatal error" message. (Yes, it DOES exist).


Me and my dad were building a computer, well somewhere along the line we screwed up and pumped WAY too much voltage through the computer (We think it was short in one of the wires, because the CPU fried before the power supply "exploded"). Not only did the power supply blow, but the CPU, and motherboard too. The whole thing started sparking and caught on fire.

It's was actually really pretty... did you know that copper burns purple and green? Just imagine a purple and green roman candle going off in your living room... and you wouldn't be far from what this computer did.


As for the error message, the monitor displayed a linux error message that read:

"FATAL ERROR"

For about 2 seconds, before the entire system went... which just goes to show, that the people who say "Linux doesn't crash" are WRONG! All you have to do is blow the machine up...

[Geek King]

love capacitor failure. wanna scare the hell out of yourself have a magneto capacitor fail. wonderfully loud and will blow through a bakelite casing.

Oh, I know that capacitors really do go boom. I was just surprised at the damage done by one that was about an inch long, and smaller around than a pencil eraser. More fun: The computer stayed on after the capacitor went, but, of course, was fully dead once shut down.

The other four I saw happened at the same time, when the building's surge protection failed, letting a nasty on get through and pop all four at the same time. That was an interesting day.

[AdvancedFlea]

might want to add stove to that one.

oh...well...yeah XD pretty much anything you can't really be without. Stove, washing machine, Fridge, Freezer, Boiler (Hot water & central heating system to americans) all that kinda crap

Happened at my school too. Twice. The school refused to let the offender sit his year 12 exams (and without a good result in those, he couldn't get into university) until he paid for replacements.

...did you go to the same school as me? lol

Actually, another story on a much bigger scale was a few months ago.

Basically, our building works on Huge power distribution systems. Myself and another guy were working on the server to try and get it back up and going. Now, the server & power distribution systems are in what's called a "dry room" which means that there are no sprinklers in there if there is a fire. only smoke detectors and a carbon dioxide fire supression system which triggers after 60 seconds, wheather you have got out the (small) room or not.

in this story; Me & mike

(after we had had to replace some hard drives on the CCTV's RAID array

Me: Okay! thats the last of them. fire us back up
Mike: Okay *flicks the circuit breaker back on*
Power distributor A: hmmmmm-BAAAANG!! *Smoke starts pouring out*
Me: SHIT!! what the FUCK was that?!
Mike: erm...distrib A
Me: Lets just hope the smoke doesn't--
Smoke detectors: SCREEE! ... SCREEE!... SCREEE!...
Me: Bollocks.
Mike: it should leave the firealarms alone, atleast
Fire Alarms: dooooOOOOOY!-dooooOOOOOY!-dooooOOOOOY!
Me: Right on cue. come on, lets get out of here before the fire suspressors go off

so we both left the room. just after we shut the door we heard the doors air-proofer inflate, then saw the room fill with carbon dioxide. couldn't get in there for an hour.

[Broomjockey]

the CPU fried before the power supply "exploded"). Not only did the power supply blow, but the CPU, and motherboard too. The whole thing started sparking and caught on fire.

I think I've posted this video before, but that reminded me of this

[Geek King]

I think I've posted this video before, but that reminded me of this

Ok, that was completly awesome. Now I have something to dream about to keep the heart some users have made so cold warm at night.

[AdvancedFlea]

I love those guys' poor english lol.

I saw that video YEARS ago, but can't remember how I found it

[Apallo]

I had a power supply go off on me...in a bank. I was there replacing the PS in another machine (these were big box machines, and under recall for exactly this problem), when BANG!!! The machine next to it went off. The decrepit looking guard (he must've been like 70) comes running over with his gun out and yells at me to get my ass on the floor. I comply, and then try to explain to him that no, i didn't have a gun and am not robbing the bank. I was able to prove it when i took the PS out of the other machine and showed him the HUGE dent in its case that was left by the capacitor. I had to explain the same thing to the police (i guess one of the tellers called or pressed a silent alarm or something.) That was not a fun day.

[AdvancedFlea]

...I comply, and then try to explain to him that no, i didn't have a gun and am not robbing the bank...

our security guards don't even bother when they hear a bang coming from tech. they KNOW it's us lol

[lordlundar]

our security guards don't even bother when they hear a bang coming from tech. they KNOW it's us lol

Ahh, so they've been conditioned already. Or is it simply apathy from too many bangs?

[AdvancedFlea]

Ahh, so they've been conditioned already. Or is it simply apathy from too many bangs?

I think it's a healthy mix of both

[B&NGoddess]

our last desktop decided to stop working and my decided that he could fix it. i remember running downstairs after the smoke alarm went off and hearing my mom yelling and smelling fried wires. the tower portion had literally burst into flames after he poked around in it and plugged it back in. funniest thing i had seen in a while.

[AdvancedFlea]

ooh yeah. I've had simalar...in a way...kinda not

My dads computer stopped working so I did exactly as I did in the thread-starting-post, taking out all the memory, add-in cards, etc. I took my eyes off it for 2 seconds to make a cup of tea, the only thing that brings my attention back is the smoke detector. I looked around the kitchen draw, grabbed the fire extinguisher and ran back out, filling the computer with dry powder.

[Blade_Raver]

Heheh reminds me when I used to work at a digital copier company... They sold a print server box called a Fiery.. It was more or less a blue box windows NT print server with a fancy LCD display.

I was at one of the company's clients on-site and was unseating/reseating cards and cables.. and made a mistake... the ribbon cable from an interface card to the LCD panel.. I flipped it and connected it backwards on accident.

Didn't know until I closed the box and powered it up... LCD display was acting funny... then smoke... a muffled "Oh sh--!" and I rip the power cable out the back of the unit..

Customers saw the smoke... I drove 20 miles each way to get a new Fiery unit and replace it at the customers premises...

Oh, this was back when these units retailed at about 10-20k apiece.

Oopsie!