Hey hey, I used to have a PS/1 just like that! It was a 486SX/33, and I could never get it work worth a damn. Never boot from diskette, never boot from onboard ATA, never boot from an MFM/RLL/SCSI card... It would get into setup but no further. Eventually, it quit putting a picture on the screen and I junked the case and power supply. I have the board and riser somewhere if anybody needs it.

Also, on topic...
I bought an IBM AT. A real 8MHz 512K AT, almost brand new. It was packed insanely well, Styrofoam everywhere, wrapped in bubble wrap, the Styrofoam was wrapped in bubble wrap, there were packing peanuts and newspapers everywhere, it was double boxed, too!

Arrived completely broken. Damn UPS must have thrown it against a wall or something, they completely bent the case, even the slightly rounded corners were folded inwards. This thing saw some HARD impact. Luckily, the board was okay, but the hard disk drive was not as lucky. Platters were shattered. I can hear glass inside it if I move it around a bit. Poor ST-4038, it was the original drive to this machine, even! At least the metalwork was easy...

Oh yeah, I bought a used junk computer for parts, listed as "Turbo Beltron." It showed up in a loosely taped cardboard box with about 6 packing peanuts and last week's newspaper strewn about. Not a scratch on the machine.

Tl;dr: UPS absolutely decimated my poor IBM AT, despite it being packed extremely well, but FedEx didn't do any damage to a Taiwanese clone that was barely packed at all.

VioletGiraffe wrote:

Miphee wrote:

I didn't want to open another thread because I just want to vent.

I feel you. But relatively speaking, you paid a small price as only a replaceable module was damaged. Is there no way to raise a complaint with the shipping company?
And yeah, I'm not the crafty kind, but I doubt that is impossible to repair.

I already raised a complaint and asked for compensation but I already know the outcome.
Hungarian Post is notorious for not paying if you don't have concrete evidence that they caused the damages. I recorded the unpacking that shows that the box was sealed and undamaged so that's a 1% chance for success.
I didn't lose too much money but I wanted the drive. I don't care about a few dollars but I was planning to use the drive. Now I have to buy another. I'll try to repair the plastic but I'm not too handy.

SirNickity wrote:

Both post offices in unison, "not my problem, sorry!"

So good luck with getting anywhere with a claim, especially if you're the buyer.

Same with Hungarian Post. Next to impossible to get any money back. I'll die trying though.

FAMICOMASTER wrote:

Hey hey, I used to have a PS/1 just like that! It was a 486SX/33, and I could never get it work worth a damn. Never boot from diskette, never boot from onboard ATA, never boot from an MFM/RLL/SCSI card... It would get into setup but no further. Eventually, it quit putting a picture on the screen and I junked the case and power supply. I have the board and riser somewhere if anybody needs it.

I've had a couple of those PS/1s as well. Both got scrapped. So was a Aptiva I got, which was a pity as I liked its slimline design.Those flaps in the front of the PS/1s were terrible and flimsy. You are better off without them. Had better reliability from my Zenith, Digital DECpcs, Compaq All-in-ones and no name clones. The best IBM I've had is my Win98FE PC300GL mini tower, which I still have. Nearly all the preinstalled crap was purged from that. Acer is another brand brand I haven't had issues with.

The best IBM I've had has been my PC 340. The plastic case is on it's way out, and lately it's been having motherboard troubles, but it used to run Windows 98SE great!

Pentium 120 or 150, I forget. I had 128MB of RAM. Onboard Cirrus Logic video and a 2GB IBM hard drive.

I replaced it with an HP Vectra VE series 3 5/120 ages ago, which has a great onboard SiS 6205 video chipset, and it's been overclocked to 200MHz. 196MB RAM and a 2.1GB Seagate hard drive. It's a lot faster, probably because of the clock and the fact it has a COAST slot.

Knocking on wood, but despite buying almost all of my retro components/PCs through ebay, so far the only problem I've had with physical damage was a SCSI CDROM I bought - seller thought a bubble mailer would be good enough, so I received an envelope full of jagged beige plastic shards. Drive may or may not work, but who wants to put something like that in their PC? Seller was generous enough to just give me a full refund though, in that case.

The bigger problem I run into is the number of sellers who don't bother to pack things with any kind of anti-static or even moisture protection. Probably about 1 in 4 cards I buy are "tested, confirmed good!" then shipped in a paper envelope or cardboard box stuffed with newspaper or packing peanuts. I bought a socket 3 mobo w/ installed DX4 + cache last spring that was shipped internationally that way. When it arrived, there was a nice layer of dried mud on inside of the box and the bottom of the board. Cleaned everything up to the best of my ability, but the board at least is dead. Because it was about a month between the arrival date and when I actually had a chance to test it, I ended up out the entire purchase price + shipping. Seller even had the gall to say the problem wasn't the way it was packaged but that I had screwed it up somehow.

I have been extremely lucky with this. I have had to unwrap some hardware, cringing the whole time, from a cocoon of plastic wrap -- and it still worked. I think I got a ZIP drive in a bubble mailer once, worked. Bought a CRT PVM and gagged on my Cheerios when I saw the freight charges.. Asked the seller, who said "sorry -- I ship on a crate, packed well, with a carrier I trust. Any other way and it arrives in pieces." I coughed up the cash with a smile and a "thank you for caring."

Yes, I once received a computer on a pallet. I was impressed.

(I was however left with the problem of disposing of the pallet.)

Errius wrote:

Yes, I once received a computer on a pallet. I was impressed.

(I was however left with the problem of disposing of the pallet.)

I use to work for a large computer company and they use to ship computers on a pallet to remote locations for educational training. I did not realize it at the time. But now that I think about it that was very risky.
With NO cushion for vibrations and jolts it is a miracle that they survived the trip in the back of a shipping truck.
There must have been allot of jolts in the back of those big rig trucks.

And then they would ship the computers back and then ship them out again to another location.
These computers must have taken a beating but they survived.
Never had a problem with them falling apart or breaking or not working.
Even with monitor displays too.

They would just load them on a pallet and wrap them all together with plastic wrap.

Amazing now that I think about it.

Maybe a box shipping case with padding would be more ideal.

That's how modern TVs are shipped as well. I used to work in recieving at a now-defunct chain, your big flat screen TVs are just set upright on a pallet and wrapped up in plastic wrap. If they are new in box, they'll even stack crap on top of them. Most shipping damage occurs during sorting rather than during transportation.

Intel486dx33 wrote:

You could try to repair too. Some JB weld should fix the cracked bottom. As for the cover. Make a mold out of some clay to fit […]
Show full quote

You could try to repair too.
Some JB weld should fix the cracked bottom.
As for the cover. Make a mold out of some clay to fit the broken piece,
Then create some sort of mold from that piece. You can fill the mold with resin for a temporary piece.
Then 3D scan the replacement for printing with a 3D printer.
Then just JB weld the replacement piece to the IBM case.
Sand and fill voids with filler. primer and paint.

Good as NEW.
Who is going to know ?

That’s what I am going to do with some missing parts on my IBM PS/1.
One of my computers has a missing flap cover. So I am going to 3D scan one and edit it with some really cool
Graphics and badges. And then send the file out to a 3D printer and have them print it out.
This way I will have a really cool unique PS/1 of a kind.

For what it's worth, I MUCH prefer JB Plasticweld. It's quite strong, sticks really well, but you can remove it if necessary (usually). Plus, it doesn't flow like JB Weld, it's more of a putty than an epoxy.