Did you ever stupidly damage your IT stuff?

[TempestCatto]

Well it wasn't exactly on purpose, nor in my control. But in the summer between 7th and 8th grade, I was struck by lightning and it killed my Sony Ericson. My new phone became a Pantech P5000 after that, and she served me very well until just recently. AT&T is going to shut down their 3G service, so I had to switch. Thankfully I found the Blackberry Bold 9900 (until 4G becomes obsolete). 

[Curious Pineapple]

9 hours ago, Vitamanic said:

Please be careful with things that have lithium batteries. They can easily explode if bent and cause seriously bad injuries or death if you catch on fire.

It was removable, and not in it at the time.

[Spindel]

OK so this is a really old stupid thing I have done. 

 

Back in the days when I was still building PCs I had a rig with a AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1333 MHz. 

 

Well one day I was going to install a new heatsink on it and dropped it on the CPU (that was seated in the motherboard). Since this was in the old days the die was exposed (no IHS) and of course I chipped an edge of the die and bricked the CPU completely.

 

 

EDIT:// For you young ones I've added a picture of how a Athlon Thunderbird looked like

Edited May 25, 2020 by Spindel

[Radium_Angel]

1st PC I built was back in the AT-style days and the power supply came with twin colour-coded cables.

Which were *supposed* to be plugs into the motherboard with the black wires from each power cable, next to each other.

Of course, you could happily reverse that, and they'd fit just fine.

 

Fit yes, work...not so much.

Blew the power supply a dime sized hole in the mobo and every fuse in the house.

Amazingly (and this is why I"m an asus fan) when I got a new PSU, and plugged it in the *correct* way, everything worked fine for years and years.

 

Learned one Hell of a lesson tho, always read the manual first, not later.

[Ashleyyyy]

i haven't stupidly damaged anything... have i tried to repair something with no succes? yes, if that counts. but those things were already broken...

[UpTheDons]

My brother got a new monitor in- a Samsung 27 inch (forgot the name) anyway it cost around 200 quid and he asked me to attach the stand which i did not noticing the screw in the back, the next day it randomly slumped forward when he was doing his work onto his keyboard he picked it up and the whole screen had one massive crack across it  

[denden1088]

I dropped a Rubics cube, I then proceeded to try to catch it with my foot, it uses my leg as a ramp and launches away, it then lands successfully onto my Western Digital blue 500GB hard drive's PCB.

[Warin]

10 hours ago, Spindel said:

OK so this is a really old stupid thing I have done. 

 

Back in the days when I was still building PCs I had a rig with a AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1333 MHz. 

 

Well one day I was going to install a new heatsink on it and dropped it on the CPU (that was seated in the motherboard). Since this was in the old days the die was exposed (no IHS) and of course I chipped an edge of the die and bricked the CPU completely.

 

 

EDIT:// For you young ones I've added a picture of how a Athlon Thunderbird looked like

Ah, the lovely T-Bird Athlon.  I remember overclocking mine with a pencil.

[Guest]

I've dropped laptops a few times, but never any permanent damage.

 

I've also shorted out microcontrollers by getting aluminum shavings from the shop into them. Luckily they were all reverse polarity protected, thoroughly rinsing them with distilled water removed the shaving and got them back to functioning normally.

[The_russian]

Not sure if this would be considered IT, but I got a cheap Chinese power bank on eBay that used 18650 batteries. I put in the batteries at 2 in the morning and with the batteries I was using, it was a little hard to tell which side was positive and which was negative. You could probably see where this is going... well I learned a lesson... when you buy something cheap on eBay, don't expect it to have reverse polarity protection. Let out the factory magic smoke and fried the circuit on the power bank.

[Spindel]

6 hours ago, Warin said:

Ah, the lovely T-Bird Athlon.  I remember overclocking mine with a pencil.

Yeah those were wonderful times I did that to (before the bricking of it).

 

Before that Thunderbird I had a Duron 600 MHz that with some pencil overclocking ran stable with no problems @800 MHz.

[waterfish]

On 5/24/2020 at 10:41 PM, TempestCatto said:

Well it wasn't exactly on purpose, nor in my control. But in the summer between 7th and 8th grade, I was struck by lightning and it killed my Sony Ericson. My new phone became a Pantech P5000 after that, and she served me very well until just recently. AT&T is going to shut down their 3G service, so I had to switch. Thankfully I found the Blackberry Bold 9900 (until 4G becomes obsolete). 

Struck by lightning and it killed your Sony but not you, wow you are lucky.  Also have a story with lightning.

 

I was gaming during the storm of the century in my man cave on a pretty old system.  I knew it was not a good idea to keep doing so because of potential blackout (lots of issues in my neighborhood for some reason) but I kept going.  Then it happened, one of the loudest sounds I have ever heard in my life, my entire house went dark.  I felt a strong punch in my chest, an invisible force that knocked me backwards, scared the living shit out of me.  Waited for the power to come on but it never did so I went to sleep.  

 

Next day I go outside, there are 2 pine trees in my front yard, one of them has a crack down the middle and there are splinters of wood all over the place.  There is a sewage pipe that goes from my basement to the street and there was a big rift in the ground above it.  The roots of the pine tree almost ripped out of the ground.  I guess the lighting traveled through the tree to the root, to the sewage pipe, and to my room ( sewage pipe runs underneath another room ), and I was able to feel it on my end. 

 

Oh yeah, computer showed no signs of damage lol.

[sub68]

I dropped my old blackberry 9810 face down cracked the screen but still the touchscreen worked and LCD worked.( this was a while ago )

But march or april of this year the touchscreen bugged out, now I am looking to get a new touchscreen

[sub68]

On 5/24/2020 at 11:41 PM, TempestCatto said:

Well it wasn't exactly on purpose, nor in my control. But in the summer between 7th and 8th grade, I was struck by lightning and it killed my Sony Ericson. My new phone became a Pantech P5000 after that, and she served me very well until just recently. AT&T is going to shut down their 3G service, so I had to switch. Thankfully I found the Blackberry Bold 9900 (until 4G becomes obsolete). 

holy crud what a story of getting hit with lighting.

Closets of me getting injured was on a bike almost getting hit by minivan, I also had a dslr in a pelican case on the back of my bike.

[sub68]

1 minute ago, Kaloob said:

Made origami with a Vostro 1000's keyboard Monday.

pic?

[zassou]

indeed yes.

 

back when i didnt know computer stuff, i set the os resolution above what the monitor supports, ppl were paid to reinstall the os.

 

also one time i dropped a hard drive on the floor, tiled floor.

 

when i was a child, i dropped a laserdisc, it comes out in 3 pieces.

[sub68]

17 hours ago, Kaloob said:

Made origami with a Vostro 1000's keyboard on Monday.

Though that pales in comparison when I was showing my friends how my iPhone 3GS could take drops on to my school's hard tile without being damaged. I had already showed them once, got cocky and did it again, what do you know, it broke.

This was in 2016, so I was the coolest kid in school rolling in with my 7 year old iPhone with no SIM card

I used to run a Iphone 4 without the sim

[sub68]

Just now, Kaloob said:

I remember having an iPhone 4 (without a sim as well). Had it for a day then had to give it back to my parents. One day I noticed a bunch of new iCloud contacts on my iPad.

Turns out they sent it to Ethiopia and I never signed out of iCloud. Had to change my password.

Also, I'll get a pic of that Vostro later today.

lol and thanks for remembering the vostro I did something simaller with a thinkpad t23

[XR6]

I was in bed using my phone then I fell asleep and my phone slipped out of my hand.

It hit my chair leg face first. Part of the screen is broken and there are cracks all around the screen.

[aDoomGuy]

Once I was moving my 27" BenQ monitor and it tipped over and fell to the floor and broke. I forgot it had rubber pads underneath.... 

 

Other thing I can remember is trying to liquid cool by accident my Logitech G19 keyboard with coffee and my Saitek keyboard with coca-cola and ice cubes. Didn't work very well, the Saitek died immediately and the G19 had some keys that didn't work. Some keys on the numpad, the X-key and some others I don't remember.

[Bruh1]

On 5/23/2020 at 3:21 PM, Ergroilnin said:

Heya,

 

so I just managed to brick my mech keyboard (like 80 euros give or take) and damage my monitor (around 450 euros).

 

I have a strict policy of not eating or drinking near my PC at all, well guess what, the one time I break it and bring a sugary drink there, I immediately manage to tip the cup over in a way, that the liquid hits whatever was in front of me, which obviously was my keyboard and main monitor.

 

The keyboard at first only left me with fully functioning keys but only left half of the keyboard still lit with RGB, after immeadiate disconnect, 24 hours of letting it dry and then cleaning it with isopropyl alcohol, it just died. No RGB, sure, but not even any keystrike recognition. Ouch.

 

Now the monitor did function properly for few hours (also turned it off as fast as I could and leave it off for more than a day to dry off (though not cleaning it, as dissasebly of monitor is way more work etc.), but two days after, it developed two vertical lines that are always red/blue respectively.

 

I hate myself so much right now. And I have noone but myself to blame.

 

But that is life I guess and I will learn from my mistake, though it will cost me a lot of money (I know that, give or take, 100 euros is not THAT much, it will still hurt my wallet... I will keep the monitor for now, since I was at least lucky enough, that the vertical lines are not near the center of the screen, so it is usable enough for me...)

 

The reason why I am not typing this as a status update is because I would like to know if any of you have some similiar experiences, what happened and how did you react to it, both immeadiately and over the time  .

on my first build i almost bricked my entire pc cause I didn't plugin the 8 pin cpu connector correctly , it was functionning fine but one day cpu was running at 0.5 Ghz and I was like tf? then it just shut down and wouldnt start again , i was like the PC is gone man :((( , I just unplugged everything replugged and voila everything is working fine, stressful moment :/.

Also one day I was partying on new years and broke a relatively new phone , it was like 5 months old Xd

[sub68]

this guy

 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Not me, but lets see how many people get uncomfortable from watching this:

 

[Jasonbas]

On 5/23/2020 at 4:21 PM, Ergroilnin said:

Heya,

 

so I just managed to brick my mech keyboard (like 80 euros give or take) and damage my monitor (around 450 euros).

 

I have a strict policy of not eating or drinking near my PC at all, well guess what, the one time I break it and bring a sugary drink there, I immediately manage to tip the cup over in a way, that the liquid hits whatever was in front of me, which obviously was my keyboard and main monitor.

 

The keyboard at first only left me with fully functioning keys but only left half of the keyboard still lit with RGB, after immeadiate disconnect, 24 hours of letting it dry and then cleaning it with isopropyl alcohol, it just died. No RGB, sure, but not even any keystrike recognition. Ouch.

 

Now the monitor did function properly for few hours (also turned it off as fast as I could and leave it off for more than a day to dry off (though not cleaning it, as dissasebly of monitor is way more work etc.), but two days after, it developed two vertical lines that are always red/blue respectively.

 

I hate myself so much right now. And I have noone but myself to blame.

 

But that is life I guess and I will learn from my mistake, though it will cost me a lot of money (I know that, give or take, 100 euros is not THAT much, it will still hurt my wallet... I will keep the monitor for now, since I was at least lucky enough, that the vertical lines are not near the center of the screen, so it is usable enough for me...)

 

The reason why I am not typing this as a status update is because I would like to know if any of you have some similiar experiences, what happened and how did you react to it, both immeadiately and over the time  .

Well when I bought my pc I and still am a pc lover and I wanted to see how a ram stick was and I turned off my set up well I thought I did I just turned off my monitor and took one of my memory sticks out . Instantly I heard a big shut down and I realized that I didn’t turn off my pc I put it back in and try booting the system didn’t boot. I sent it to an it and he said that the ram was just not installed well after the shut down  

 

 

[LitusSaxonicum]

Yep. Lenovo S20-30 small laptop. I took up slack in the mouse wire by running it along the base of the screen. Unfortunately the battery sticks up and the screen straddles it to close. This neatly guillotined the wire in 2 places.