Oh yeah, if your AT build doesn't involve a little blood sacrifice, you're not doing it right

Dropped an HDD on my foot once and while the physical pain was almost none, the mental pain of losing most of my archives was 🤣

Nothing crazy thankfully but the usual blood letting from cheap cases with razor blades for edges inside. I did have a nice heavy but empty 4u rack mounted server case fall on my feet that was fun but no damage to speak of.

I burned my finger on a Athlon XP once because I was an idiot and ran it with no heatsink. In my defense, I thought the motherboard was dead and was trying to see if I could get life out of it. It happened to come to life at the worst possible time...
Had a pretty nasty blister for awhile.

Yes, it's a vicious species, they cut really well especially when you work on the entrails, I discovered that the heatsink is an especially perilous parasite inhabiting the average PC, if you press it too much it can release a ferocious and quite wicked attack that will cut your finger's skin.

When I bought my first (secondhand) PC I thought it was a good idea to clean/inspect my CRT internally. And got the infamous jolt doing so.

I was 16 or so at that time but I still remember it very clearly. Like they nowadays say in those Youtube repair videos: do this only when you know what you're doing.

Besides the usual requisite abrasions and small cuts from building 386/486 AT systems I have one noticable scar on a finger where a P4 era Mini-ITX case took out a chunk of flesh while trying to remove a stuck piece of stamped metal. No nerve damage though.
Also a few zaps from power supplies, but nothing serious.

In the late 90ies I was working for a small computer store and got countless cuts by the cheapo cases.

Yeah, I used to have this problem. Then I got rich and these days I only get cut by expensive cases.

That and today I dropped the top part of my moka pot, instinctively tried to catch it with my foot (which would have hurt), missed and stubbed my toe instead.

My worst cut from computer hardware was actually from a fan blade. I accidentally hit the fan while it was powered on and took a chunk of skin off. It didn't leave a scar or anything, so it wasn't that bad. It just bled.

I haven't had a cheap case cut me, but I did see one cut the power supply wires and let the smoke out. There are a lot more power supplies than you'd expect with inadequate protection.

When I was around 13 years old, I got a hefty shock from a CRT monitor.

I felt that for a whole day in my arm afterwards.

All I did was press the power button to turn it on, nothing fancy - and then it zapped me really hard. My arm was just floppy afterwards, like I did a massive workout.

The thing got replaced pretty quickly by my parents after that incident. Since my dad worked in an architecture firm, he was able to snatch a monitor from there. Going from 800x600 to 1600x1200 was reeeally nice.

At the old place I had a rackmount APC UPS on the floor, which is about 500lbs. I stubbed my toe on it a dozen times until I took the rack brackets off.

My finger slipped when uninstalling some RAM and went right into a stupid RGB header.

tons....

- Lots of bruises obtained bumbling around a poorly curated cable closet in my 20 years in I.T.....one place was so bad I asked if I could get a weekend to tidy up the cabling so I could see my walking path better.

- Lots of cuts from terrible cases, with the worst being LianLi of all cases. Seriously, I've gotten less surgical strikes from those old "SteelCase" computer cases from the 386/486 era than I have working on some stupid Aluminum "Gamer Computer" crap I've seen.

- almost burned myself with a NiMH laptop battery on my first laptop. I bought a TwinHead Slimnote 433DXM from E-bay for $15 in 2003, turns out the power section was blown up in it, so I replaced it with a COLOR version of said laptop. Now I had 2 batteries, one good laptop. So what did I do? I gutted the monochrome Twinhead and wired in a HP Printer Power Supply to it - 36v I believe. I'd charge that thing for 30 minutes and got a nice alarm when I went to remove the battery - it was as hot as a fresh meatloaf! So I had to use oven mits to pull the battery from my makeshift-charger.

All in all, that last one was well worth it though. First off, both laptops used that stupid 4-prong unobtainium-at-the-time power supply, so I ran the Twinhead 100% off battery power. The second thing was, I must have reconditioned cells really good because even the original battery out of the other one had insane long battery life. It was not uncommon for me, as most unattentive 18 year olds do, lay in bed and play Monkey Island or Wolfenstein 3D - then I'd close it and leave it under the bed....sometimes for days! I'd pull it back out and get a good 30 minute game session in before it needed a recharge! I remember once getting 45 minutes on top of 45 minutes before ZZZZing off in Wolfenstein 3D. Wonderful laptop, just a shame the cat had to destroy it. That was more hurtful than pulling the freshly charged battery without oven mitts.

Last week I moved my win95 PC from a horizontal case to a vertical one, as usual I had to mod the case (for some reason the screws for the mobo were in really weird spots) and I added a frontal intake fan, I cut myself not while drilling/cutting the case but while closing the damn lid and also while rummaging nearby the HDD aluminum bracket.

I finally know what those red spots in old cases are, blood from previous owners.

creepingnet wrote on 2023-07-12, 20:02:

- Lots of cuts from terrible cases, with the worst being LianLi of all cases. Seriously, I've gotten less surgical strikes from those old "SteelCase" computer cases from the 386/486 era than I have working on some stupid Aluminum "Gamer Computer" crap I've seen.

Yah the cheapest of the cheap cases actually got quite nice for that a couple of years into this century, because the super cheap steel was easily folded or rolled over on the edge, they discovered that if they did that it added rigidity, so they could make them a little thinner still... then they were very wrist and cable friendly. Whereas some of the manufacturers who thought they were "better" tried to double down on thick steel or alu and their dies weren't cutting it clean, leaving razor burrs on one side of the cut.

I don't actually have a clear memory on last time I really cut myself on a case, maybe mid 90s sometime. I have known to be aware of it for a long time and on "new to me" stuff I'd remedy any problem edges, either scraping them down, or just being lazy and putting tape on the. I might have had a scraped knuckle incident or two since, but don't think any that lost blood. I have however nicked myself on bits of case when carving them up with nibblers or aviation snips.

Re: What is your most hated/feard task in building a (retro)PC?

It was a dark and stormy evening. I was trying to plug a computer into a power strip I could barely reach behind the desk, using nothing but the late evening's cloud filtered light. My finger slipped, and bzzzt! Luckily the breaker tripped almost instantly, saving me from death and ghostification.

GAH!!! Stupid computer's power cord's metal prong, goddangit (is probably exactly what I said).

Old computers were dangerous.. You had to watch out for Ni⁋⁋les, Bites, Mega Bites and Killer (!) Bites! 😱
And if you weren't being careful, your equipment got formatted beyond repair.
On top of that, there were so many different sloths out there, awaiting you depending on which BUS you'd take.
It were dangerous times. Danger hid behind every desktop. The laser printers were always aiming at you..
😂

More times than I care to remember.

Back in the "wild west" days of PC computing (80s to 90s-- ESPECIALLY in the 90s), computer case chasis often had sharp metal edges inside, as they were mass-manufactured, with corners cut on some quality controls.

Packard Bell "Pizzabox" style systems were especially nasty. I have scars on my knuckles from working inside those cramped, razor-blade fanged beasts back then.