This one is lifted from here Re: Help & advice needed - PSUs for (Ahtlon Xp 2600 + Geforce 4 TI 4200 & Pentium 4 + Voodoo 3 2000 (which mobo?) , but, IMHO, would fit nicely into this thread as well, so I am quoting it .
To Vogons mods : if doing this frowned upon, please let me know and I will refrain in the future .

darry wrote on 2021-08-04, 05:53:

I will soon know if my Asus P3B-F will work with an ATX v2.4 RM750x . […]
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I will soon know if my Asus P3B-F will work with an ATX v2.4 RM750x .

The Enermax EG465P-VE PSU I was using had a little "accident". This accident involved an unused SATA power connector and the curiously designed backside of a Seagate 1TB SATA drive . You see, this drive's back has an indentation, which means the drive's top cover plate overhangs on top of that indentation. This overhang is just wide enough and deep enough for an unused SATA power connector to have somehow become lodged against it in a way that caused a short (I have trouble visualizing how exactly that happened, to be honest) .

I realized all this when I powered on the PC and heard a beep and turned the machine off so. I took only a few seconds (less than 20), but the both the connector and the insulation on various spots the SATA cable had started to melt . The PSU and the PC still seem to work (only had 1 video card, RAM and 1 HDD in it at the time), but I definitely do not trust this PSU any more as

a) Overcurrent protection did not kick in. I have accidentally caused a short 2 times before in my life (admittedly on newer) PSUs but I had never seen this kind of symptom as the PSU immediately shut off
b) I don't really know what damage this might have caused to the PSU, nor do I want to start replacing power cables .

So, the RM750x is coming out of my spares bin and will hopefully rise up to the occasion .

EDIT : The rail that shorted is the 3.3V one, based on the fact that the orange cable is the one with melted insulation .

So that 16-year old Enermax PSU may not actually be dead, but it is getting euthanized .

1nanoprobe wrote on 2021-08-03, 21:15:

Thanks for the help. There's actually no battery connected. Also, tried "ami" password. There's no clear CMOS jumper, so I will have to try in another board. Only have non-working ones so hopefully they are good enough to clear the CMOS.

Is it normal for these BIOSes to randomly crap out and require passwords when none were previously set?

Going on that other response,

One option, if you can get into MS-DOS, is to use debug.exe to write random crap to the CMOS chip.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/617 … -debug-command/

I remember doing this like 20 years ago for a 486 PC with a CMOS password on it and a dallas clock-chip.

I just killed 720kB floppy drive from Tandy 1000TL/2 (Sony MP-F11W-72) 😒 -> I killed (or at least killed even more) the FDD in my Tandy 1000TL/2 - questions and replacement needed

I foolishly broke a full-size 5.25" Fujitsu SCSI drive and perfectly good EISA 486 motherboard as a dumb-ass kid.

I killed a big pile of Sega Genesis consoles trying to figure out how to solder.

I also broke, smoked, sparked, ESD'd and otherwise destroyed countless cool and interesting pieces, CPUs, cache chips (including some fast 12ns modules), hard drives, video and sound cards, entire computers, etc.

Gah. I'd like to think that's how I learned to not be such an idiot around delicate old equipment, but the jury's still out on that.

At lunchtime, I noticed the well known smell of magic smoke.
As it became stronger and stronger, I went over to the test desk where the experimental rig with that DFI Haswell mobo was.
I noticed that the screen was dark and then I saw that the fan I attached to the Quadro NVS280 PCI GPU had fallen off halfways.

Curious about how warm it is, I touched the backside of the PCB on the opposite side. Quite warm.
I noticed some silverish stuff on my finger, some solder and a small SMD thingy.
I found this awesome. That little 14W GPUchip was able to render the soldering on the opposite PCB side liquid!
Just awesome that the BGA SOC didn't fall off! (Maybe some of the balls were not yet liquid, due to the partial cooling by the hanging fan...)

I guess trying whether the card will still work is pointless because I moved several SMD parts and it is unlikely that it will work with these random "circuit modifications" anymore.
Luckily the mobo seems not damaged, as a quick test using another PCI-E graphics card indicated.

Well, I guess I should have been less sleazy and used a bigger fan.
Now preparing a PCI quadro while venting the rooms, as I yet need to get a new PCI-E one...

I killed a 386/486 combo VLB motherboard while trying to reflow the floating legs of its chipset. It was a QFP SMD component and I apparently did something very wrong because I ended up bridging some legs, and while trying to fix that managed to lift some pads. I could MAYBE fix it with a lot of tedious work but got too frustrated to continue, so I just threw it away..

appiah4 wrote on 2021-09-29, 08:46:

I killed a 386/486 combo VLB motherboard while trying to reflow the floating legs of its chipset. It was a QFP SMD component and I apparently did something very wrong because I ended up bridging some legs, and while trying to fix that managed to lift some pads. I could MAYBE fix it with a lot of tedious work but got too frustrated to continue, so I just threw it away..

Haha, I know that feeling. And gratified I'm not the only one to break stuff this way.

I was replacing the cache chip on a Super Socket 7 board and did exactly the same thing.

I seem to have a habit of killing usb 3 to 2 header adapters. Most new cases come with USB 3 headers on the front panel and all my retro boards have the original USB1 and 2 headers so I need cheap naff Chinese adapters. These break about monthly and with every board change the pins in the USB 3 bit need pulling back out. I did see these so I might get this as a longer term solution (assuming they're more solid...)

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/USB-Adapter-USB2-0 … 0-127635-2958-0

I've not killed much stuff over the years , I'm pretty careful usually but I have had the odd accident.

Back in about 03/04 I bought an Asus 9800xt at Christmas and went to install it in my newly watercooled P4 I think , it had a Swiftech kit installed which had the old barb fittings which were just push on 5/8 fitting with supplied zip ties , I installed the 9800xt probably excitedly (rushed) and must've disturbed one of the pipes to the cpu bl0ck , didn't notice of course and when I switched it on, it squirted water directly on the card , obviously it didn't boot , poof! Back then there was none of this non conductive liquid , it was just water with green dye in it , I removed the card and cleaned it off and took it back and , "Wow just installed this brand new card and it doesn't even boot" (slight white lie?) Anyway they replaced the card and I was more careful the next time.

Not really retro but back in about 2010/11 whenever they came out I upgraded my main system from x58 and i7 920 to z77 and i7 3770k whilst building it I managed to drop the cpu from mere centimetres into the cpu socket when installing it , bent pins galore on the brand new Asus Sabertooth motheboard , I chickened out that time returning it and got my wife to take it back in her best thicko voice and act dumb as , they replaced no question luckily for me. I'm such a wuss 🤣.
"My husband says the fingymabob is not right , bent stuff or sumfink"

Not really destroying something but going scrap when they should never have been thrown out.
I split with my ex wife in 08/09 and I started living with my girlfriend in about 2011 , my daughter stayed in our old house for a few years until she moved out , along came 2015 orso and we decided to sell the house , I said I would clear the loft before selling it but when I got there to do it she'd already been in the house and thrown all my old PC stuff out , which I'm still gutted about today.
"It was old crap anyway wasn't it ?" 🙄
It wasn't done out of malice , there was no animosity between us and still isn't.

Scrap death stuff that I can remember

Packard Bell P100 full system from about 1995 with all accessories , monitor etc (worth quite a bit these days)
Voodoo 2 sli
Riva TnT
TnT 2 Ultra
Geforce 3 ti 500
Full Athlon 1ghz system , can't remember vid card
3d Blaster Pci (rendition verite v1000) my first 3d card
Voodoo 1 Orchid
Full P1 233mmx Abit socket 7 system
Lots of other bit n bats , probably some Athlon XPish full system too
I've still got everything from Athlon 64 system onwards at my new house for what it's worth.
😢

I killed a 17" Packard Bell monitor after a LAN once because I was dead tired.

Oh and tried to remove a heatsink of some brand new Athlon motherboard and scratched off a component with a flat headed screwdrier. I was poor at the time and not handy with repairs so it was kind of a big thing to destroy a component that is worth half of my savings.. At the end of that month I think I had 2 dollars on the account. I still hade those damn heatsinks.

This happened last year, but I got a dead AGP 7800gs that didn't display any output, so I figured I'd try cooking it back to life. So I wrap the card in foil, and place it over a stovetop heater to preheat the card, and then to hit the gpu with a heatgun later.

Normally I place the card on a small pedestal that keeps it about 8 inches above the stovetop. But this time I got impatient I placed it directly on the stovetop, and set it to the lowest setting.

Well, as I found out later, the electric heater under the glass surface of the stove doesn't do low temperature. All you get are variable intervals of red hot. So a few minutes later I walk in to nasty fishy smell that I don't recognize. I remove the card, and sure enough, it actually melted the PCB and the electrolyte from the caps leaked all over it. That's one baking adventure that didn't end well.

A few months ago, I accidentally scraped around the CPU heatsink bracket on a Dell AM3 motherboard while trying to remove the bracket. Luckily I didn't scrape any of the traces, just the green silkscreen on the board, so it still works. I just placed hot glue over the areas that got scraped just to be safe.

Last week, I broke the external floppy drive for my Toshiba Tecra 720CDT when trying to replace the belt. I ended up ordering two Toshiba external floppy drives because the first one I ordered turned out to be for a completely different model. It was a pain trying to find one that was compatible.

I was absolutely mentally and physically exhausted while working on a lga 1366 setup for a friend of a friend. Broke a screw while mounting a used Corsair H100 just this week. Stock cooler, blah.

retardware wrote on 2021-09-28, 19:44:

At lunchtime, I noticed the well known smell of magic smoke. As it became stronger and stronger, I went over to the test desk wh […]
Show full quote

At lunchtime, I noticed the well known smell of magic smoke.
As it became stronger and stronger, I went over to the test desk where the experimental rig with that DFI Haswell mobo was.
I noticed that the screen was dark and then I saw that the fan I attached to the Quadro NVS280 PCI GPU had fallen off halfways.

Curious about how warm it is, I touched the backside of the PCB on the opposite side. Quite warm.
I noticed some silverish stuff on my finger, some solder and a small SMD thingy.
I found this awesome. That little 14W GPUchip was able to render the soldering on the opposite PCB side liquid!
Just awesome that the BGA SOC didn't fall off! (Maybe some of the balls were not yet liquid, due to the partial cooling by the hanging fan...)
...

Ouch.... I just got me one of these PCI cards, and it does NOT come with a fan, so what gives ?
Are you really supposed to add one yourself ?? Seems very strange though if so....

I also have a regular Gainward FX5200 PCI card, been working fanless for years and years now, never thought of checking how hot it got.... 😯

bestemor wrote on 2021-10-02, 15:35:

Ouch.... I just got me one of these PCI cards, and it does NOT come with a fan, so what gives ?
Are you really supposed to add one yourself ?? Seems very strange though if so....

I also have a regular Gainward FX5200 PCI card, been working fanless for years and years now, never thought of checking how hot it got.... 😯

Touch the cooler, be prepared to cool your finger afterwards under cold water to avoid a blister growing.

KCompRoom2000 wrote on 2021-10-01, 06:56:

A few months ago, I accidentally scraped around the CPU heatsink bracket on a Dell AM3 motherboard while trying to remove the bracket. Luckily I didn't scrape any of the traces, just the green silkscreen on the board, so it still works. I just placed hot glue over the areas that got scraped just to be safe.

Last week, I broke the external floppy drive for my Toshiba Tecra 720CDT when trying to replace the belt. I ended up ordering two Toshiba external floppy drives because the first one I ordered turned out to be for a completely different model. It was a pain trying to find one that was compatible.

Ahh, regarding the 720CDT floppy drive, that is a shame. Those are mostly the Matsushita / Panasonic EME279TC drives. They are repairable as long you have some block to keep the heads separate while removing the disk carrier part of the floppy drive. You can 3d print a belt to get it working. Would it be worth me selling the drives I've repaired? I've fixed so many at this point that I have a significant surplus.

I tend to keep all the parts that I bought replacements for. In 2019 I bought a replacement for my HP Omnibook 800CT's keyboard. 2 years later I know how to repair keyboard membranes, so maybe I'll fix that now and make that available for someone else with an Omnibook 800CT / 800CS

Please no selling or asking for selling on Vogons

Well last week I managed to kill my Compaq Contura. I used it about a year and a half ago to do some writing and play Oregon Trail, then fast forward to last week. Plugged it in, the power light and charge light semi lit up and then came the very god aweful smell. Seriously thought something inside had set on fire and feared the worst. A quick strip down and discovered the DC power board had blown a component, one which so far I've been unable to find online. So not sure if I'll be able to replace the component and repair the board. In the mean time, bought another bust Contura with a working power board. Here's hoping the old gal with come back from the dead.

Well, the Toshiba floppy drive I bought from eBay is totally dead and the worse of it was the spring on the top had broke loose and so did the plastic clip that keeps the spring in place.

I attempted to solder it back together with my iron and some plastic from a broken piece of something and that didn't work out too well and I'm still attempting to find a solution to fix it and get the darn thing to work.

Plus, the diskette platter motor is making a horrible whirring noise and I cannot find the machine oil to silence it.

I didn't kill it per se, but I bought a boxed LG Optical DVD Drive that seemed to be in mint condition! I plugged it in, tried to read a DVD... And nothing. Absolutely nothing. The disk doesn't even spin. It frustrated me, it looks so nice! I'm thinking about opening and trying to repair it... Somehow, although I have no idea what's inside an optical drive.