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What's the dumbest retro mistake you've made?

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Reply 80 of 83, by creepingnet

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Dumbest mistakes?

Working on the case fabrication on the GEM 386 with the case open after converting the case to ATX and the board to a INtel D810EPV Socket 370 with a PIII 667MHz. I'd just upgraded to 384MB of RAM and destroyed one of the modules by accidentally dropping a nut and bolt on it while bolting the Gateway ATX Backplane into the full AT case.

I guess you could say that case modification was also a dumb mistake because now that would have been a unicorn among PC cases. It was full AT, looked like a Compaq Deskpro 8086/286/386, but used a standard power supply, and it looked like it was built by the same company given that the drive cage stampings and the way they attached were identical. Have not seen another chassis like that since. Wish I still had it. The keyboard even plugged into the front via a cable that ran to the back of the computer, plugged into a standard AT motherboard, and was hidden by a metal cover held on with 3 screws.

Then I scrapped said modded case when I built an $800 gamer rig in the late 2000's out of peer pressure from non-retro nerds at work who thought it was silly I was running a PIII still, in a full AT 80's chassis nonetheless. I just could not find a motherboard locally that fit and supported a Pentium D CPU.

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Reply 81 of 83, by armani

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Only mistake was a couple years ago. I was trying to restore a Fujitsu Lifebook C352 that I had that would not boot to a prompt at all despite multiple efforts and multiple repairs. Was taking it apart and I got to the small cable connecting the fan to the mobo, yanked it out too hard and it broke the connector. Can no longer re-attach it 😒

Reply 82 of 83, by BitWrangler

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creepingnet wrote on 2021-11-30, 23:43:

I guess you could say that case modification was also a dumb mistake because now that would have been a unicorn among PC cases. It was full AT, looked like a Compaq Deskpro 8086/286/386, but used a standard power supply, and it looked like it was built by the same company given that the drive cage stampings and the way they attached were identical. Have not seen another chassis like that since. Wish I still had it. The keyboard even plugged into the front via a cable that ran to the back of the computer, plugged into a standard AT motherboard, and was hidden by a metal cover held on with 3 screws.

I think I had a similar case, I took the front keyboard arrangement off though because I wanted my kb to sit against the system unit and the plug sticking out of the front was in the way, and KBs I wanted to use had bigass plugs. If that one is still around I probably can put that part back together.

ATX mods though, I confess to 3 of those, full tower, midtower and desktop, hacked out with a nibbler to clear the ATX I/O... those are still around, don't think I mauled any Rembrandts or Picassos as cases go though.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 83 of 83, by BitWrangler

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Okay, just did something pretty stupid... needed a USB cable, started pulling on one, couldn't tell why it was stuck, then crunch, the external 2.5" PATA drive case the other end was attached to moves, wedges corner to corner between two boxes and rips the USB mini connector off it's internal PCB..

Doh!
Doh!
Doh!

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.