Recently my computer's power supply had overheating issues. But it wasn't 'til a few days ago that I found the cause. Both of the fans inside were making a lot of noise and when I examined them while the computer was on I found that they had a hard time turning. So what did I do about this?
I did this several months ago, but I used some old computer fans. This time I bought some brand new case fans. I then opened the power supply and examined the orientation of the old fans. I then cut them off (literally) and spliced in the new fans. I do this even though the sticker says never to do so because I could get a good electric shock from it (though who'd be stupid enough to try it when the computer is on?).
So… have any of you people done anything to your computer that no one is actually supposed to do anyway? :)
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Comic Talk and General Discussion *
Ever done anything crazy with your computer?
One of my video card fans is out. It grinds horribly. It's a specialty card so a replacement part is nearly impossible to find. I jammed a popsicle into the blades to stop the grinding, and installed a PCI slot fan one notch down. Works fine.
whoa… that's something I'd never have done. from personal experience a motor will literally heat up if something is keeping it from turning. I'd have just taken out the video card and unscrewed the fan off of it. I hope you haven't been running like that for very long. O_O
HELL YEAH I DONE CRAZY STUFF WITH MY COMPUTER!
When I was playing a game, it kept crashing at a certain point, and I had to keep reloading it. IT WAS ANNOYING ME! So after a while. I got SO ANNOYED I punched the computer. And a little bit of the casing went in…I told my Mum I was rest on it and it caved in…
I've never done anything stupid… Just normal stuff like replacing fans, hard drives, video cards, processor fans…
Hmm… One time I hand made some brackets out of sheet metal for one of the extra hard drives. More practical than crazy though.
Ah, one dumb think I did was pull out the processor accidentally bend some of the connections and then scrape off all the heat paste stuff. The processor fan was making noises and typically with computers the bits were so fricken badly designed that pulling the fan out also pulled out the processor. I didn't know what the paste was so I just scraped it all off…
No worries though! I got a new fan right away, it had its own paste and I straighten the processor connector pins out with a butter knife lol! Still works perfectly. ^_^
*As for hitting the comp… well electronics still respond surprisingly well to a bit of sudden impact even it this day and age, as long as it's carefully applied. When my big base speaker starts buzzing, a swift kick soon sorts that out. When one of the case fans started to grind and grunt, I leaned that a few careful but sharp taps while it was running would balance it out perfectly again- the last time I had to do that was months ago, it's run perfectly since.
*Heh, Phantom Penguin apparently keeps a hammer in his tank to whack the computer system with when it goes on the blink and correct problems!
*When one of my old TVs would start to go strange and fuzzy, a few hard hits would fix it up again.
-I think a lot of it has to do with arcing inside the system due to dust build-up or something. Hitting malfunctioning equipment can disrupt the arcing and temporarily correct problems.
I do this even though the sticker says never to do so because I could get a good electric shock from it (though who'd be stupid enough to try it when the computer is on?).FYI, although i'm sure in this case you'd be fine to do it when the power is off, there are a lot of electronics that don't lose a charge even when disconnected from the power. A great example of this is Tube Monitors (CRT) or televisions… they are basically giant energy storing devices, and can hold a dangerous charge possibly for LONG periods of time.
i've done some mods to my computers but nothing major. i buy cases big enough to suit my needs. but since i used to work in computer repair i've seen some insane things.
one computer i was working on had a makeshift lego hard drive rack hot glued to the bottom of the case
i've seen AA batteries and wires used to replace CMOS batteries.
i've seen the remains of a computer when someone tried to install their own ram. the person couldn't figure out how to open the case and hack sawed the back of it off. he sawed through the mainboard.
i've seen ram jammed into PCI, ISA and CPU cache slots
i've seen people modify cables to try and get more than 2 IDE drives on one cable
i've seen a plastic computer case melted because someone's blanket was covering the running computer
i've seen computer sabatoge. a woman's husband cut half the power supply cables of her computer, proke the fins off the CPU fan and sprayed WD40 all over the inside of the computer.
i've seen CD drives with cheese slices in it. and my fair share of slot loading imac CD drives with mini CDs jammed in them. coins are also common.
i've seen printers with cardboard jammed in them
i've seen numerous destroyed laptops from falls. one screen was hit by a baseball, one laptop was dropped in a lake and one smelled really bad of cat urine.
i'm sure there's tons more but i cant think of them right now.
I've smacked mine with a golf club….
No, really, the monitor wasn't working and giving me the Black Screen of Death, and I started smacking it on the side, which made it work. Eventually, it grew an immunity and I upgrade to a plastic golf club. It was rather funny when my dad finally found out:
"…What are you doing?"
"Making my computer work."
"…Maybe it's broken."
"No, it's not! Look! *smack smack* No, wait… *smack smack* There, see?"
On a more recent note, my desktop computer currently has some sort of hardware trouble in which it decides to reboot/crash somewhere between five minutes and ten seconds after turning on. I've discovered that, for some reason, so long as I play the game Bejeweled in the background, no matter what the devil I do, it will not reboot/crash. I've told my dad about this and he just rolls his eyes and refuses to look at it.
On a more recent note, my desktop computer currently has some sort of hardware trouble in which it decides to reboot/crash somewhere between five minutes and ten seconds after turning on. I've discovered that, for some reason, so long as I play the game Bejeweled in the background, no matter what the devil I do, it will not reboot/crash. I've told my dad about this and he just rolls his eyes and refuses to look at it.Yeah, the OS side of computers sux pretty hard… A few years ago my old laptop developed some problem with the hard drive. I think some of the OS system files got badly corrupted. It meant that it'd freeze randomly if I tried to access files through Windows Explorer.
But I worked out that I could use Netscape (this was a few years ago) as an alternative and completely stable file browser. it worked a treat! In many ways it was better than any of the Windows alternatives lol!
Oh-ho! which tale would you like to hear?
I've cleaned up all sorts of messes other people have made. I could tell you about those.
Nah! got two choice stories of my own. To be honest I got way more than that, but I won't talk about the others.
Story:1 High speed chase LAN party.
Setting: before they had wireless cards.
So yea back in high school (long time ago) I got together with a few friends. We had gotten bored with our regular weekend LAN party. So in the fashion of guys with no girlfriends, brains enough to be dangerous, and too much time on our hands, we got inventive. I addition to being nerds a few of us had access to a junkyard. A few spot welds later we had attached some old steel tables and chairs to the TOPS of two old bread delivery vans. We strapped the computers, monitors and a couple switches to them.
The two retired bread delivery vans, then proceeded to race around an abandoned mall parking lot in the middle of the night. Nerds astride playing a virtual race. Of course it all went to shit. Smart we may have been but coordinated drivers we weren't. The vans pulled apart a bit to much and the well designed hooks holding the cables mounted pulled one of the tables loose. Two very shocked dorks (myself included) went with it. We um, both broke a couple bones.
And No, we never tried it again.
Story 2: FrankeNIC
Setting: Home after a government auction.
wow, Half a Dozen old Compaq Prolineas. Well the state had seen fot to sell them off and I had a small office worth of 486 based flattops. They were worthless so I decided to play. The had split motherboard/daughterboards configurations. So being an untrained 12 year old at the time I thought to build a supercomputer. I up the cases, and hooked them up in a series (just like playing legos in a way). I powered it on and, well lets just say my parents had to call the fire department. It actually did power on and show the POST screen before the capacitors started exploding. hehe
Incidentally thats also why I don't own any of my childhood toys.
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