What is the most “jerry-rigged” solution to a problem you have had with a PC?

[TheEggComputer]

I am genuinely curious what everyone’s most jerry-rigged solutions were!

[IPD]

Welp, offhand I'm at work on a 3 monitor setup with 1 running off VGA and 2 running off DP>DVI>HDMI.

 

Does that count?

[Mnky313]

my solution to get better performance on the internal display for a laptop with an eGPU was to drive the internal LCD via an external controller board taped to the back of it.

 

[WhitetailAni]

I had an old HDD that I was trying to recover data from for a relative once (this was before I joined the forums) and it was being really wonky. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. No odd noises, it sounded like a normal HDD, but connection was spotty. I tried multiple IDE cables but nothing.

So I left it alone and came back to it in the morning.

I put some stuff in the basement that I was done with and the HDD got moved so it was at a weird angle, leaning against the case wall but not perfectly flat against.

And somehow, SOMEHOW, that fixed it. Worked perfectly while I copied the data.

It still works weirdly unless I lean it in that exact way.

[CerealExperimentsLain]

 

 

[dkoudijs]

Quick story I got at a trade show

TLDR - PC used as a hard reset of a server

 

Many years ago I worked at a bank that was going through a ownership transfer. The current mangement froze all spending. Everything was forzen, we couldn't even buy pens if we ran out.

So this freeze was going to last another 3 weeks and we had a server that needed to be fixed. However it was way out of warrenty, the guy who wrote the code was long gone due to the merger so none of us left in IT knew how to permently fix it. However if someone manually rebooted the server it worked again for a few days.

 

This was the server that ran the batches, so would need to be online as much as possible.

The server would stop responding to network requests after it completed a batch, and would need to be manually rebooted.

 

 

The IT manager asked if I had a solution, I shurgged and said I could jerry rig something. Man I was not proud of this solution, but here it is

 

The solution

- Rig up a small desktop PC to ping the server

- Server stopped reponding, eject the cd rom

- CD Rom had a pencil taped on the end that would press the server power button

- Change bios to auto come back on if power detected, and power button was pressed

 

This solution was in place until the merger, then the whole team was let go. I wonder if the PC is still sitting there ejecting its cd rom

[InstantNewt]

I have an old laptop that somehow won’t turn on with a fully charged battery in it. I have to disconnect the battery, plug it in, turn the laptop on, reconnect the battery, then unplug it. Runs perfectly fine once you do that and the power button has no issues turning it on only when it’s plugged in and off battery power. I’ve tried draining the caps, checked connections, using a genuine brand name battery… Nothing seems to fix it. 

[Freakwise]

Soldering a generic tower cooler on top of already existing old laptop heatsink to avoid overheating, and (un)surprisingly it works

[harryk]

From an old thread:

On 3/22/2019 at 5:36 PM, harryk said:

> Me working at remote site

> Need VGA cable 

> Have no VGA cable

> Have many cat5 cable

> ...

 

 

 

[TetraSky]

This:

 

Stock fans were too noisy and one of them had died out, I had previously bought some fans on ebay and they were just as bad/died quickly. So I removed the shroud and put these noctua fans on it instead. I made my own Noctua Edition GPU before Asus came out with there. Temps aren't great when it comes to stress testing it, but for gaming, it doesn't throttle or bug out at least. Really wishing I had bought that 3070 or 3060ti when I could months ago, before prices skyrocketed and stocks become non-existent. 

 

[atxcyclist]

Oh boy.

 

Semi-recently I had a server at my office that I performed a PSU fan replacement in (yeah, don't do this) because it failed on a Saturday night, and it was easier to get ahold of soldering supplies than getting an actual power supply. It did run fine for a year afterward until I took it out of service, so it was a good enough repair.

 

Years ago I had a hard drive that was failing, and I was determined to get data off of it as it had some tax return information and photos, of course this was long before external USB hard drives being common so I had no backups. I had read that components overheating on the drive could cause issues right at the end of life, so I set out on a mission: I strung my hard drive IDE cable and molex power into my fridge. Set the computer up right next to the fridge and ran the thing long enough to pull the data off. Could have been a fluke, could have been brilliant, but the drive never powered-up again after I pulled everything off, so it was a weird send-off.

[BondiBlue]

Not the worst thing I've done, but one that comes readily to mind. Many years ago I had a Radeon HD 3870 that I wanted to get some use out of. However, the computer I wanted to use it in was a Dell OptiPlex MT (can't remember if it was a 330 or 755). That gave me two issues. 1) No PCIe power, and no molex power to adapt from, and 2) not enough room for the GPU itself to even fit. 

 

My temporary solution was to lay the machine on its side, remove the heatsink from the shroud assembly, and install the GPU. Then I just sat the heatsink on the CPU and let gravity hold it in place. For power I grabbed a PSU out of storage (it was Deer branded, and truly awful) and used a molex adapter to power the GPU. A simple paperclip started up that PSU and I was off. 

 

It worked well, but the PSU had awful coil whine, and the pitch changed whenever I moved my mouse cursor. I'm sure that wasn't a great thing to do to a nearly brand new GPU, but oh well, it survived. I didn't use this setup for more than a couple days. I got tired of the coil whine, and I had only intended for it to be a temporary setup anyway. 

 

I still have that card, and it still works very well. 

[8tg]

Once replaced an LGA pin with a needle I cut the tip off of.

just jammed it into the socket and it worked

 

 

[sub68]

Cable management in are schools laptop carts.

These bricks don't get hot as they pull 10watts

[airborne spoon]

My NAS has the CPU cooler attached with zipties. It was an old MB that i had used for watercooling and i lost the plastic mounting brackets, so i just grabbed an old stock Athlon cooler and slapped it on with zipties. Been like that for like 2 years now without issue.

 

I also built a computer inside an old miller box after the beer was gone for the lol's but that was in like 2008 its long gone now.

[CerealExperimentsLain]

3 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

shoots  Bad!

Hey it works.   I have a nice DisplayPort Gsync 1440p center monitor, but on either side are some old 1080p TFTs and they require DVI.  Since they are secondary displays I'm not about to upgrade them as they are perfectly functional.

[WhitetailAni]

5 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

shoots  Bad!

No guns in Canada.

[varrys]

On 10/26/2021 at 1:07 PM, IAmNotASmartMan said:

Just when my GPU fans died, so I dropped the setttings and aimed a desk fan at it on high whilst I waited for a replacement.

Yeah, the "take off side of computer and blast a box fan at the case" is an ol' reliable. Had a GPU that did the same thing, except I was young and didn't have money to replace it, so every time I gamed I had to run it with a box fan blowing in.

[whm1974]

I broken the Tabs on two Socket 7 boards trying to learn how to install Motherboard along with the CPU and HSF. This was the bad old days when HSF were not very easy to install, even harder to remove.

 

So the Older board got put back in and I hang the HSF off the other Tab...

[SansVarnic]

My foot.

[SolarNova]

On my old 780 Classified before I water-cooled it, the heatsink fins had a slight vibration at certain fan RPM's, to stop it i used some mild glue and a few small (5mm) pieces of cardboard to hold the loose fins apart.

[LloydLynx]

Problem: Stock speaker sucks

Solution:

There used to be an Xbox 360 cooler fan in that hole spliced with the SATA 12v before I upgraded the speaker. 

[BondiBlue]

Just now, LloydLynx said:

Problem: Stock speaker sucks

Solution:

 

There used to be an Xbox 360 cooler fan in that hole spliced with the SATA 12v before I upgraded the speaker. 

I can't imagine that sounds great, but it looks cool. How does it compare to the stock speaker?

[LloydLynx]

1 minute ago, BondiBlue said:

I can't imagine that sounds great, but it looks cool. How does it compare to the stock speaker?

It's better than the headphone driver sized stock speaker that used to sit in the middle of the case. Dell must EQ out all the bass from the internal speaker headers or something because this driver is not playing any of the lows that I know it can do. 

[Anghammarad]

while moving my Amiga 1200 from it's keyboard case into an AT PC Bigtower I needed to make my own cables from the connectors to the back of the case, because no standard layout... 

 

I wanted to get flat cables like the PATA ones and connectors to crimp on that...

 

Well in my home town then I couldn't get the cable or the connectors... only the ones to solder wires to... 

 

Due to wanting to get the system moved and running, I got those solder ports and bought two spools of copper wire... then I tried to cut it all to the right length and solder it.

 

The outcome looked like one of the nasty server racks... yellow and white wires everywhere in different lengths, bushy and so on... but it worked until I got hold onto the real stuff I wanted to get.