the_ultra_code wrote:

I'm curious, Richo: What is a DoM? I have never heard of them before.

Disk on Module, a flash-module you plug straight into an IDE connector. Sort of like a CF card without the adapter.

Not quite a gaming machine yet, but I may have just fried an i386DX-25 and the Wyse motherboard I was trying to install it into. Yep, messed up the keying and stuck it in 90 degrees from how it should have been. In that state it tripped the PSU's fuse. Afterwards 00 on POST card. Of course, both motherboard and CPU were untested beforehand, so maybe it was already dead. But maybe not...

Richo wrote:

Plugging a DoM on ide cable through a ide male/male adapter.... Burned out PSU, DoM and use cable as a result. Fortunately didn't put in the second DoM in there yet back then, was lucky.

Reminds me of when I put the power connector on upside down on a SATA->Mini Sata converter and fried the drive unintentionally.

Wow. I'm amazed that DOMs have been around for so long, yet I haven't heard of them. Thanks guys!

I was thinking about getting one myself, but, the one thing that upsets me is that the IDE connections don't show which pin is pin 1 (on the DoM itself, that is) and the IDE ribbon cables show which one is pin 1 (red/pink color coding). I made my Packard Bell lock up on me once when I reversed the IDE ribbon cable for the HDD as the one pin (I'd say pin 20 or so) is uncovered (that was a thing in the 1990's until late 1990's early 2000's), but the other ribbon cables I have do have that one spot covered (plus, the onboard IDE controller has the 1 pin out, which was common for PC OEM manufacturers in case someone replaced the cable with another one) so that way I won't screw up at all, and it wasn't until the late 1990's when they put the plastic around the IDE pins with the gap in the center that the IDE cable goes into so that everyone knows which orientation it goes into.

bjwil1991 wrote:

I was thinking about getting one myself, but, the one thing that upsets me is that the IDE connections don't show which pin is pin 1 (on the DoM itself, that is) and the IDE ribbon cables show which one is pin 1 (red/pink color coding). I made my Packard Bell lock up on me once when I reversed the IDE ribbon cable for the HDD as the one pin (I'd say pin 20 or so) is uncovered (that was a thing in the 1990's until late 1990's early 2000's), but the other ribbon cables I have do have that one spot covered (plus, the onboard IDE controller has the 1 pin out, which was common for PC OEM manufacturers in case someone replaced the cable with another one) so that way I won't screw up at all, and it wasn't until the late 1990's when they put the plastic around the IDE pins with the gap in the center that the IDE cable goes into so that everyone knows which orientation it goes into.

Perhaps DoMs are different (I've never used one)? But I've never had that issue kill an IDE device or motherboard before, it mostly just causes irritation having to switch off and reverse the cable to the correct orientation. Usually the worst that happens is the device simply won't spin up and/or causes everything connected to that IDE port to not be detected.

I quickly signed up just to say thanks for cheering me up! I was mad, frustrated and over-tired trying to figure out what stupid thing I had done to my lappy when I stumbled across this thread and proceeded to giggle my ass off 😁

Thanks for the memories peeps... particularly Errius! Way back when I was building x86's one of my house mates electrocuted himself the exact same way - tryin'a hooking up the stereo to the PC. Only nobody noticed because he was an exceptionally bad singer and we all thought he was just singing badly! 😈

Anyhoo, I'll be off now. Thanks for reminding why we do the stupid things we do!
(0_o)

No problemo! 😀

Well it wasnt on the machine, but on one badly yellowed at keyboard, since it was overcast here i went with the heat method. But since the whole keyboard upper platic bezel didnt fit on the tray one part just rested on the side of the tray resulting in a more intense heat transfer to the plastic and the completely meltdown causing an extreme bend rendering the keyboard useless.
Thankfully it was a standard rubber dome keyboard, nothing fancy.

next time wait for a sunny day, not oeuvrecast

oeuvre wrote:

next time wait for a sunny day, not oeuvrecast

Well most of the time that i have to retrobright the sun goes away, washing my car and acquiring yellowed plastics works like a rain dance.
Gray clouds appears from nowhere.

I'm not sure which is more stupid.... thinking I did something stupid and troubleshooting every day for almost 2 weeks only to find out I didn't do anything stupid and it was the CMOS being dicky all along.... OR... actually doing something stupid 😜

OR... paying $20 to WinZip Driver Updater because I somehow thought some other mobo component wasn't getting updated after flashing the BIOS.

I think the last one is probably the winner 😜

Nah, I think the former wins. 2 weeks!?!?! I think 2 weeks is worth more than $20. 😀

teehee... true ay 😜

Used a microfiber cloth to clean a beautiful 19" NEC FP950 monitor and ended up removing part of the anti-reflective coating in one corner. Bugs the hell out of me every time I notice it. So stupid....

So I was at RE-PC in Tukwila and they had about six or seven Socket 3 motherboards there. Not knowing for sure what prices they were going to be and wanting a PCI board as a backup for my 486, I found this board with a VLB Local Bus slot and THREE PCI slots + 3 regular 16-bit ISA slots - PERFECT. And it appeared to have a Pentium Style COAST module on it - NICE. And 2 cache chips already on board, and it had a BIOS date of 1996.....

Well......this is what I got!

So if you have not already guessed by the photographic evidence by now, I paid $20.00 for what is a PC Chips M919 v.3.4 with a fake Cache, 🤣. When I saw the traces went nowhere, I was like "aw crap". now I find it kind of funny and maybe an opportunity to test out my board etching skills - maybe I could make a working cache module for it. But yeah, as for a backup, huge downgrade from a FIC 486-PVT, but hey, it's my fault for not checking the traces on the Cache.

So far it does not POST though, not sure if there's a problem with my DX2/66 or the board. I'm thinking the board has a BIOS issue of some kind, keep getting an E1, FF, or F0 code on the PC Analyser card at startup from the AMI BIOS. But that's a project for another day (and probably one that will too have a bunch of funny stories/follies to go with it).

I, like an idiot, failed to figure out that the problem with my IDE to SD adapter was the 16GB card. The 16GB SD and CF card both caused the computer to fail to complete a boot to HDD, CD, or Floppy (reached BIOS and posted fine) after being intialized in Fdisk. It took days of troubleshooting. I bought a CF to IDE adapter (and card seen in the photo) thinking that the IDE chip on the SD adapter was the problem. I then tried a 2GB sd card I had laying around. Problem solved. I have yet to go back and try using Fdisk on the 16GB card to something lower than 8GB. My pride is pretty hurt on that one. In my defense, I only used DOS and 3.1 between 8 and 10 years old, from there I used 95 and ME.

Silver lining. I was able to hook up the old 4GB drive and use XCOPY to get all my files and games over to the SD card (after installing DOS). She runs like a champ with only a few games having issues.

Plugged in a PCI card while the motherboard was still connected to power, whoops. Imagine my surprise when the machine suddenly turned itself on as I was about to connect something inside!

Hand to face; disappointed
😀

I plugged in power cables to a mobo while the PSU was powered on, luckily nothing bad happened though my surprise was pretty big when suddenly the machine beeped and came to life hahaha

@creepingnet I generally have a hard time getting good deals at that RE-PC (they check ebay). Fun to find weird hardware there though.