I was working on a small form factor PC and I forgot to take the power cable out before putting it back together. Then I accidently shorted the power supply by touching the metal housing. It was quite blackend and for a while I thought I had destroyed it but it came back to life after I restored the power. Pfew!

I posted some screenshots of that PC here btw: Unsual 90's Thin Client, customized AMD case!

I flipped the 115/230 switch on the adapter of my NES. I was 10 and I didn't know what I was doing, I was just curious and dumb.
My first victim. I hated those kill switches with a passion ever since.

I had this Toshiba T3100 with a plasma screen which had a few stripes across the screen. I thought of fixing it by checking the screen cable and applying some pressure on the screen bezel and that's when I cracked the screen. One time I hooked up a PC I got from recycling and made a visual inspection of the inside and everything seemed nice and clean, I turned on the power and BANG! Some asshole had switched the PSU from 230->110 and at that one time I didn't bother checking the switch. Never made that mistake again.

Huh, once destroyed my gf256 SDR. Tried replacing the thermal paste but accidentally took out the gpu processor with it. I was without my pc for quite a while after that.

I have occasionally bent the back plate, though usually they can be straightened out ok(ish)

dropping the screwdriver onto the motherboard is something we've probably all done and most of the time its fine, but its always a worry!

oh, damaged the heatsink pins/mounts on an LGA 775 and had to get new ones

no total destruction but quite a lot of needless adding to the wear and tear of some machines!

I once not plugged in correctly a berg (floppy power) connector, this resulted in my PSU cable catching fire.

To this day I still don't even know how the hell this happened, that PSU still worked after I had snipped off the burned cable. Keyword here being "worked" because after a short while, it decided to blow a cap up in vengeance.

I really have bad luck with PSUs.

Oh and once I set an IDE cable on fire! I was trying to connect my audigy to one of those front panels with connectors but I couldn't find the original cable so I used an old IDE cable I had lying around because it was a good fit. But the cable caught fire and my entire dorm smelled like ozon for a while. I laughed it off but was not very popular after that.. 😀

Allowed a midi daughterboard to make contact with the top of a cap on the sound card. There was a bang and smoke.

When I was a freshmen in high school (2001) I was carrying my dad's brand new Toshiba satellite laptop. He asked me to get it from my parents room and as I was walking across the house I sneezed and dropped it on my sister's foot and broke her middle toe. The laptop was fine and had now damage and I still have it. But even after all this time she still won't let me forget it.

Vynix wrote on 2021-05-20, 14:51:

I once not plugged in correctly a berg (floppy power) connector, this resulted in my PSU cable catching fire.

To this day I still don't even know how the hell this happened, that PSU still worked after I had snipped off the burned cable. Keyword here being "worked" because after a short while, it decided to blow a cap up in vengeance.

I really have bad luck with PSUs.

Made the same mistake a while back... And then there was white smoke...

Yup I recall that thread, too, in my case (I wish I had taken pictures), the whole cable (unlike your PSU) started catching fire... It was, hectic to say the least.

pan069 wrote on 2021-05-20, 20:13:

Vynix wrote on 2021-05-20, 14:51:

I once not plugged in correctly a berg (floppy power) connector, this resulted in my PSU cable catching fire.

To this day I still don't even know how the hell this happened, that PSU still worked after I had snipped off the burned cable. Keyword here being "worked" because after a short while, it decided to blow a cap up in vengeance.

I really have bad luck with PSUs.

Made the same mistake a while back... And then there was white smoke...

Ok this reminds me that I do not have a fire alarm in the room I have my retro rigs in.. I do however perform some soldering there too so I guess it should not be too sensitive.