VOGONS


Reply 100 of 222, by Windows9566

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

i just killed my micronics d5-cub after dropping the hdd caddy on the board while i was in a hurry. it broke off components, broke traces, and bent the southbridge pins causing shorts and frying the board when i tested it not knowing i ruined my board out of my clumsiness.

R5 5600X, 32 GB RAM, RTX 3060 TI, Win11
P3 600, 256 MB RAM, nVidia Riva TNT2 M64, SB Vibra 16S, Win98
PMMX 200, 128 MB RAM, S3 Virge DX, Yamaha YMF719, Win95
486DX2 66, 32 MB RAM, Trident TGUI9440, ESS ES688F, DOS

Reply 102 of 222, by Unknown_K

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

Not sure how retro an AM2+ Tyan S2925 SLI board is but I put one on a pile and the thing fell over (heavy copper heatsink) and broke a bunch of capacitors off. I have a few of that model and it can be repaired if needed.

Collector of old computers, hardware, and software

Reply 103 of 222, by Miphee

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

It was actually intentional.
When I was a stupid kid I got a buttload of old computers, parts, monochrome monitors because my dad's workplace scrapped everything old and he took them home to me. He knew I was interested in electronics so I took everything apart and desoldered every single PCB component. Yeah. I still have all those parts I desoldered, hundreds of chips, capacitors, resistors, sockets, you name it. I use some of them.
Only one motherboard survived the massacre, this TD60C with a Harris 286-25.
When I buy an expensive computer part to build my new project I think about all those parts I destroyed 10 years earlier. I'm still angry with myself.

Attachments

  • DSC_0228.JPG
    Filename
    DSC_0228.JPG
    File size
    1.51 MiB
    Views
    1073 views
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 104 of 222, by imi

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

well, at least you got a lot of spare parts out of it 😀

I used to do most of the IT in my dads office and only some years ago I got tasked with throwing out all the old stuff that was still left, good CRTs, old servers etc., I kept a lot of stuff, but would I have known that I'd end up like this 😁 I'd have kept a lot more. unfortunately my dad cleared out a lot of the old computers I had collected from our house 10 years or so ago 🙁.

Reply 105 of 222, by Caluser2000

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

I didn't kill it but I had an Amstrad small form factor Amstrad 286 system. Build quity was crap. Just about every major component played up. Didn't help the 1.44 floppy drive connection arrangement wasn't your standard fare. A good thing about the whole affair is that I was able to salvage the Amstrad Ablib clone sound card.

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 106 of 222, by hwh

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

My first "real computer" that was solely mine and used was a hand me down i486-66 DX2, in a fine large tower. Sadly, it was around for less than a year. One day it simply wouldn't turn on. Seemed like a power issue; back then I was clueless and had no idea what to do including asking for help. Because it was technically a "toy" of mine, not a mission critical thing. It was also our internet connection. 14.4Kbps! It taught patience 🤣

So, faced with a "broken computer," I just took it completely apart, salvaged what I wanted (pretty much everything but the case and power supply I imagine, but this is 2000 we're talking about - I don't know what the hell I did). The case and power supply went in the garbage! The other parts began my "vintage parts pile," never to be used again. I always regret doing that. If I had even left it alone, broken that would have been so much better...it's only original once, who knows what it was like?

Seems to me like I must still have the hard drive. But I have a lot of hard drives now, and my stuff is not in a well organized state. I *may* have thrown out the motherboard too. *sigh* I know I saved the modem though 🤣

On the other hand, that thing was definitely on the tedious side. It did work. Back then ANYTHING could go on-line and participate, stuff just loaded slower. Games, sure. I couldn't play the best stuff, but I definitely played a lot of Civilization II, Colonization, SimTower, DOS games, that kind of thing. I think I even tried Age of Empires on it (not...good). But it really needed more disk space/memory. It was much slower than it should have been because there was no cache space and probably 16MB memory.

Heck, it would have been trivial to triple the internet speed, and simple to speed it up with a little memory, less trivial maybe a bigger hard drive. But I didn't know crap about crap. So, we ended up buying a used computer to replace it - a far better, yet still disappointing one! I have a story about that too.

More stories later.

imi wrote:

unfortunately my dad cleared out a lot of the old computers I had collected from our house 10 years or so ago 🙁.

What a monster.

Reply 107 of 222, by schmatzler

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

I just killed my Radeon 9500XT.

This thing was way too loud, so I wanted to put a passive cooler on it.
Still had a Zalman ZM80D-HP around that I used without a problem for a GeForce before.

I screw that onto the card and - crack - there goes the chip. F*CK! 😵

It was a pretty good card.
At least I didn't kill my Voodoo 2.

Last edited by schmatzler on 2019-09-23, 21:41. Edited 1 time in total.

"Windows 98's natural state is locked up"

Reply 108 of 222, by Warlord

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

Back in the day a lot of people just like me, just threw things away. before people were caring about the environment, and this stuff wasn't vintage at the time it was considered slow and obsolete so I threw alot of shit away in the 80s and 90s even early 2000s. no one cared.

Reply 109 of 222, by HanJammer

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

2 days ago I decided to retrobright buttons from the XT keyboard I got. It was badly yellowed. So I made a hydrogen peroxide solution and poured it to some jars, put them in hot water bath with buttons in it... well, lets say it wasn't a good idea to put caps on these jars as they pressed against some buttons and these buttons melted a bit and are distorted... space included... I straightened the spacebar a bit, but it's still melted...

Keyboard is working and even with these dammaged parts looks better than before, I only need this keyboard for testing XT stuff so It doesn't have to be beautiful... but well... that was stupid anyway...

New items (October/November 2022) -> My Items for Sale
I8v8PGb.jpg

Reply 111 of 222, by Vynix

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

I think I just killed a perfectly good Socket 7 mobo... I set the jumpers properly for it to operate with a Pmmx 233... And this is where all hell broke loose 😵

File corruptions on any hard drive I plug in (SCSI or IDE), I can't install W98 or W95 (hardlock when copying the files, or random SUWIN errors...). Fuckin' mobo isn't having any of it...

Well, guess I'm going to look for a ALi ALLADiN SuperSocket7 motherboard 😢

Either an Ali-based mobo or a Octek Rinho (Octek mobos are good, right?) will take the place of my Shuttle HOT-555A (I loved that board tho), not sure.... As long it can handle a P233MMX without shitting its pantaloons...

Edit: Nevermind, it seems that it somehow hates my P233, or maybe the P233 is plain defective... What a temperamental board... As soon as I put back the P133 in, it sprang back to life 😐

Last edited by Vynix on 2019-09-24, 09:07. Edited 2 times in total.

Proud owner of a Shuttle HOT-555A 430VX motherboard and two wonderful retro laptops, namely a Compaq Armada 1700 [nonfunctional] and a HP Omnibook XE3-GC [fully working :p]

Reply 112 of 222, by HanJammer

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
Warlord wrote:

what is the temperature that you had it?

Well... hard to tell - on top it was low enough I could take the jars out of the water with bare hand... But I used my induction stove, so it was hotter on the bottom of the jars (I tried to mix the peroxide in the jars but still)... Lesson learned anyway 😉

Vynix wrote:
I think I just killed a perfectly good Socket 7 mobo... I set the jumpers properly for it to operate with a Pmmx 233... And this […]
Show full quote

I think I just killed a perfectly good Socket 7 mobo... I set the jumpers properly for it to operate with a Pmmx 233... And this is where all hell broke loose 😵

File corruptions on any hard drive I plug in (SCSI or IDE), I can't install W98 or W95 (hardlock when copying the files, or random SUWIN errors...). Fuckin' mobo isn't having any of it...

Well, guess I'm going to look for a ALi ALLADiN SuperSocket7 motherboard 😢

Either an Ali-based mobo or a Octek Rinho (Octek mobos are good, right?) will take the place of my Shuttle HOT-555A (I loved that board tho), not sure.... As long it can handle a P233MMX without shitting its pantaloons...

Octek boards are fine.
I have P233MMX on Gigabyte GA-586HX - very stable.

New items (October/November 2022) -> My Items for Sale
I8v8PGb.jpg

Reply 113 of 222, by data9791

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

One that really stands out in my memory... Killed a motherboard with a screw driver back in the day after only having it a few months. Can't remember exactly what model or brand, but it had a Duron 600. It was out of a computer my mother had me build for her around 2000 with Tiger Direct parts. I was trying to replace the shitty heatsink and loud ass fan. The fan was like jet turbine loud. You had to wear headphones while the system was under load or you would go nuts. While pressing down on the latches that secure the heatsink to the board, the screwdriver slipped and chipped off a bunch of those tiny surface mount resistors and ceramic capacitors. It also gouged the board and scratched away a bunch of traces near the CPU. Had to buy her a new one. Mom was pretty pissed she wasn't able to use AOL for a week 😵

Reply 114 of 222, by appiah4

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

I did the same with an MSI KT3 Ultra; I've learned the trick of wrapping the tip of the screwdriver with a lot of paper towels since, does not slip off as easily and does not damage as much in case of a slip.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 115 of 222, by TheMobRules

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

I think that was a pretty common way of killing boards, happened to me with a Socket 7 FIC VT-501: I didn't actually use a screwdriver, but the heatsink clip was so tight that I had to push down with extreme force, which caused the clip to obliterate a bunch of traces near the socket. RIP 😵

Seems like motherboard manufacturers also took notice of that, since I saw a few Socket A motherboards which came with a piece of protective tape on the area under the socket tabs.

Reply 116 of 222, by winuser_pl

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

I was just a stupid child. I had Compaq Presario CDS 522 all in one equipped with AM486 SX2 @ 66 MHz. I was curious what's inside, then started to unscrew the backside and so on. That day I ended up with non functional and disassembled Presario, the wires were cut, so almost no chance to fix for me back then. Finally went to trash... Today these units are really expensive.

PC1: Highscreen => FIC PA-2005, 64 MB EDO RAM, Pentium MMX 200, S3 Virge + Voodoo 2 8 MB
PC2: AOpen => GA-586SG, 512 MB SDRAM, AMD K6-2 400 MHz, Geforce 2 MX 400

Reply 117 of 222, by canthearu

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
winuser_pl wrote:

I was just a stupid child. I had Compaq Presario CDS 522 all in one equipped with AM486 SX2 @ 66 MHz. I was curious what's inside, then started to unscrew the backside and so on. That day I ended up with non functional and disassembled Presario, the wires were cut, so almost no chance to fix for me back then. Finally went to trash... Today these units are really expensive.

Lol, hasn't every curious child killed some device during their childhood? Its part of learning, and shouldn't be so hard on yourself for it.

How parents tolerate their children doing this, I will never know.

Reply 118 of 222, by yourepicfailure

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Not exactly vintage, but retro.
Got an old m-itx pentium m board. It ran, then smoke started billowing out from the cpu cooler and the chipset and it died.
Ram and psu survived, nothing else.

Investigation turned up that some caps went south and ruined the fets. And the rest is history.

I'm thinking of replacing the fets and caps, but that still leaves the bga chipsets and who knows what else fried. Probably more work than it's worth.
Maybe I'm lucky and just the northbridge burned.

Reply 119 of 222, by Daniël Oosterhuis

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member
data9791 wrote:

One that really stands out in my memory... Killed a motherboard with a screw driver back in the day after only having it a few months. Can't remember exactly what model or brand, but it had a Duron 600. It was out of a computer my mother had me build for her around 2000 with Tiger Direct parts. I was trying to replace the shitty heatsink and loud ass fan. The fan was like jet turbine loud. You had to wear headphones while the system was under load or you would go nuts. While pressing down on the latches that secure the heatsink to the board, the screwdriver slipped and chipped off a bunch of those tiny surface mount resistors and ceramic capacitors. It also gouged the board and scratched away a bunch of traces near the CPU. Had to buy her a new one. Mom was pretty pissed she wasn't able to use AOL for a week 😵

In hindsight, the socket heatsink clip design was pretty damn stupid, and I'm glad modern socket heatsink mounts tend to be MUCH harder to screw up. Taking off crappy heatsinks off old Socket A, 370, 7, etc. boards still makes me sweat a bit.

sUd4xjs.gif