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

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Reply 60 of 83, by Sombrero

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retardware wrote on 2021-11-23, 12:08:
PAL is not trash. […]
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Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-11-23, 07:15:

PAL is trash.

Screw whoever thought that giving us Europeans 17% slower games with squished graphics was a good idea.

PAL is not trash.

You obviously haven't experienced Never The Same Color.
This was why PAL and SECAM had been developed in the 1960s as alternatives which didn't, for example, show the news speaker with a violet face that had to be adjusted with a "hue" knob to look more natural, and constantly to be readjusted depending on the reception quality or when changing programme.

If you experienced the "SECAM fire" back then, you'll agree that PAL is the analog TV system that gave best colors even with bad reception.

And the reduced game speed is because of PAL's higher resolution, 625 instead of 525 lines.
The alternative would have been to introduce black bars, but obviously that would have not been accepted well by the gamer audience.

They reduced game speed to fit PALs 50Hz, resolution had nothing to do with it. The games that were PAL optimized ran at correct speed and had PAL resolution, all that took was effort from the developer which too often was too much apparently or the publisher wanted to cheap out. And I would have taken black bars over wrong aspect ratio any day of the week, and I don't see why black bars would have been a problem. Even some NTSC games had them and people didn't grab their pitchforks and torches and start rioting because of those.

Eh Joseph_Joestar was quicker but I'll post anyway.

Reply 61 of 83, by retardware

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Ah I see!
Well, I never had a game console, and just assumed that they just work like computers, eg, game speed independent of frame refresh rate.

To me it was much more fun to share and enjoy many games with my friends on cassettes for the PET 2001 and then with Apple II diskettes.
The Atari 400 and 800 were available here also, but I saw no sense in buying expensive, non-rewritable ROM cartridges that could not easily be shared.

So, I was already "spoilt" when the Atari 2600 reached European market in 1980.
Why buy a game cartridge if you could get more than 10 diskettes for the same money 😀

Reply 62 of 83, by Joakim

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cyclone3d wrote on 2021-11-22, 22:33:
Joakim wrote on 2021-11-22, 21:30:

I used a normal ide cable to connect a SB audigyto one of those 5.25 front expansion things once when I couldn't find the right cable. The cable melted and people in the dorm were not too happy with me... To this day I wonder if it was to be expected. 🤔

That shouldn't have happened as far as I am aware. Pretty sure the Creative front panels use a straight through cable.

Now if you were using a floppy cable with the twist in it, then yeah, that would have caused problems.

That makes me a little at ease. It wasn't my fault the dorm smelled like burned plastics and ozon.

Reply 63 of 83, by RaiderOfLostVoodoo

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Sold my NES with all my games (half of them with box) in the lates 90s for 200 Kraut Mark (=100€).
Who needs such an old crappy system with antiquated graphics anyway, right? Right... 🙁

Reply 64 of 83, by Victorkorp99

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Mine was when I was testing a cd drive on a pc and it was inside the case but without screws, then I unplugged it and took the pc with me, ignoring that the cd drive was not holding on to anything ... The unit fell off and you can imagine that I didn't need any more tests after that ...

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Reply 65 of 83, by BitWrangler

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I go in a few wrong directions for a few minutes before I go "doh!" and swing myself back on course, but couldn't think of anything major in recent memory. I do remember doing this..

Pierre32 wrote on 2020-07-31, 03:05:

Here's a fresh one. Small form factor case, and a CF-IDE adapter installed too close to a drive bracket. I guess it made contact when I closed the case up. Luckily this cable adapter took all the damage, and things are still working fine. For now.

Though I think it was a fairly contemporary system about 10 years back, I had an extra fan rigged off a drive power cable and there was far too much spare wire I hadn't tucked in or ziptied down and yup, managed to catch it in the case and fried it.

I've had a good few scares where I thought I did something "expensive" but it turned out I got away with it, like "oh shit I just pushed that DIMM in with the power light on..." etc.

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 66 of 83, by brostenen

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I can't remember exactly what is the dumbest mistake. But I think it must have been back in 1995, when I whiped my harddisk in order to install Win95 April Test Release. The second I pressed enter I remembered that I might not have done a backup. And I looked at the still sealed packs of floppy disks that I had bought for backup....

That teached me a lesson in doing backup. But Win95 April Test Release were fun to mess around with, but I ended up dual booting MS Dos 6.22 and Os/2 Warp 3.0 instead. The worst part, was to hunt down new copies CD-Rom drivers and lots of other stuff.

Or perhaps it was plugging in an Amiga/C64 joystick in a Serial port on a PC, thinking it was possible to do that. I fried the motherboard in a fully working 80286 machine. But that was back in 1988, when I was 12 years old and knew nothing about why it was a bad thing.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

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Reply 67 of 83, by darry

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brostenen wrote on 2021-11-28, 00:28:

Or perhaps it was plugging in an Amiga/C64 joystick in a Serial port on a PC, thinking it was possible to do that. I fried the motherboard in a fully working 80286 machine. But that was back in 1988, when I was 12 years old and knew nothing about why it was a bad thing.

If it makes you feel any better 30+ years after the fact, AFAIK, this should not have happened . According to my admittedly vague recollection of RS-232 specs, but also according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-232#Voltage_levels (granted Wikipedia is not an absolute authority on anything, especially when lacking references, but still), an RS-232 serial port should easily have survived such an experience .

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article

The standard specifies a maximum open-circuit voltage of 25 volts: signal levels of ±5  V, ±10 V, ±12 V, and ±15 V are all commonly seen depending on the voltages available to the line driver circuit. Some RS-232 driver chips have inbuilt circuitry to produce the required voltages from a 3 or 5  volt supply. RS-232 drivers and receivers must be able to withstand indefinite short circuits to the ground or to any voltage level up to ±25 volts. The slew rate, or how fast the signal changes between levels, is also controlled.

Because the voltage levels are higher than logic levels typically used by integrated circuits, special intervening driver circuits are required to translate logic levels. These also protect the device's internal circuitry from short circuits or transients that may appear on the RS-232 interface, and provide sufficient current to comply with the slew rate requirements for data transmission.

Reply 68 of 83, by retardware

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Handling a mobo without dummy CPU in place.

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Reply 69 of 83, by cyclone3d

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retardware wrote on 2021-11-28, 01:01:

Handling a mobo without dummy CPU in place.

That's an easy fix.

LGA775 has HUGE socket pins.

Even LGA 115x isn't that bad to straiten the socket pins.

LGA2011 on the other hand... hahahaha. My current system is running an ASUS X99-E WS/USB 3.1 motherboard that I snagged for $100 due to multiple socket pins being mangled.

I was able to straighten all but two. For the last two I had to order a replacement socket from China and use two pins for donors.

I had remembered a video on Youtube about somebody fixing an LGA 775 board with broken socket pins. They removed the pins from a donor board, cut the part off that solders into the board and set them in the holes where the pins were supposed to be.

Decided to try that with this board and it worked. I am scared to try taking the CPU out of the board in order to upgrade to a 6950x IF I ever decide it is even worth it.

Using a needle to move those donor pins into place and getting them to fall into place was very annoying.

Having to use a desk lamp with a high powered magnifying glass to work on the socket was also not easy.

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Reply 70 of 83, by brostenen

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darry wrote on 2021-11-28, 00:55:
If it makes you feel any better 30+ years after the fact, AFAIK, this should not have happened . According to my admittedly vagu […]
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brostenen wrote on 2021-11-28, 00:28:

Or perhaps it was plugging in an Amiga/C64 joystick in a Serial port on a PC, thinking it was possible to do that. I fried the motherboard in a fully working 80286 machine. But that was back in 1988, when I was 12 years old and knew nothing about why it was a bad thing.

If it makes you feel any better 30+ years after the fact, AFAIK, this should not have happened . According to my admittedly vague recollection of RS-232 specs, but also according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-232#Voltage_levels (granted Wikipedia is not an absolute authority on anything, especially when lacking references, but still), an RS-232 serial port should easily have survived such an experience .

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article

The standard specifies a maximum open-circuit voltage of 25 volts: signal levels of ±5  V, ±10 V, ±12 V, and ±15 V are all commonly seen depending on the voltages available to the line driver circuit. Some RS-232 driver chips have inbuilt circuitry to produce the required voltages from a 3 or 5  volt supply. RS-232 drivers and receivers must be able to withstand indefinite short circuits to the ground or to any voltage level up to ±25 volts. The slew rate, or how fast the signal changes between levels, is also controlled.

Because the voltage levels are higher than logic levels typically used by integrated circuits, special intervening driver circuits are required to translate logic levels. These also protect the device's internal circuitry from short circuits or transients that may appear on the RS-232 interface, and provide sufficient current to comply with the slew rate requirements for data transmission.

It did happen when I tried to run software.... The serial port was onboard and it did not work after I tried to detect the joystick and moved the stick around and press the button.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen

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Reply 71 of 83, by retardware

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cyclone3d wrote on 2021-11-28, 05:15:

That's an easy fix.

Not really if you have two left hands and are a coffee addict.
Maybe I could manage LGA 775, but this was LGA 1366.

The damage was limited however, the pin affected controlled a bank of RAM, so the board was still usable, just with a bit less of memory.

Reply 72 of 83, by BitWrangler

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Next time try to damage GND or VCC there's tons of them.

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 73 of 83, by aureal

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I bought a odd sata cable to plug a slim hd dvd drive to a desktop. Not only did the hd dvd drive have a laptop ide connection when it arrived in the mail but the odd sata cable is just a normal sata cable. eh. So I wasted money on a cable that I have tonnes of and I'm at loss finding the special cable to hook my slim hd dvd drive to a desktop. I don't know why when hd dvd was cutting edge toshiba put an ide connection on it.

Reply 74 of 83, by BitWrangler

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Think I've got one of those drives sitting around for the same reason, no cable. Think it needs a 1.8" SATA connector.

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 75 of 83, by Tetrium

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I've made plenty of mistakes, but if I had to name a single one it probably is throwing out a bunch of old 486 boards. One was even a 486/386 combo board.
This was when I was new to the hobby, back in 2005 or so?
I also kinda regret 'testing' with my only SiS530 board a stash of old harddrives and one of those drives killed the board. The stupid thing was that sometime later I'd connect that same drive to my mothers PC and it killed it. Good thing she never found out it was me but doh, I've been labeling everything ever since to not make the same mistake twice.

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Reply 76 of 83, by vstrakh

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Many years ago I connected a MDA monitor to an EGA video card, as DB-9 connector is identical on both.
The monitor said "ding..." and shut off.

I was lucky, only a single powerful diode broke in the horizontal/HV circuitry, like physically exploded and prevented any further damage.

Reply 77 of 83, by gex85

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Besides the obvious "throwing out old stuff and regretting it later", I once connected an AT PSU to a Socket 7 motherboard the wrong way round (P8 to P9 and vice versa) because I was in a hurry and didn't pay attention. Bang goes the tantalum cap, quite spectacular. Luckily after replacing the cap, all components were still alive. Lesson learned.

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Reply 78 of 83, by dataino.it

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I had just bought a beautiful PlatinX-2E QDI along with a carton of AGP video cards. Due to my laziness I have not used the usual bad card where I insert the cards to be tested unless they explode, and I have decided to use the mobo in question to test them. At the 9th of 12 video cards BUM ....... bye bye chipset .. bye bye chipset PlatinX-2E

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