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Takes a licking but keeps on ticking.

1980-20..1980-20..
edited February 2010 in Chit chat
So pcs are notoriously a pain in the arse and suposedly very sensitive pieces of kit, but what abuse have you seen a pc take and still keep running.

A few months ago at work two of my co workers managed to empty a cup of water into the pc we use every day the display went all matrix on em and sterted displaying random data. So the power was quickly turned of the tower was tilted to let the water run out a fan was placed next to the vents and an hour later it was up and running and is going strong to this day!.
Post edited by 1980-20.. on

Comments

  • jpjp
    edited February 2010
    Funnily enough, I managed to empty a glass of wine all over my laptop last night.
    I stripped it down and left it to dry overnight.

    I've not fitted the keyboard back to the machine (the joy's of USB) but so far everything seems OK.

    Well, good enough to boot the machine and take a disk backup!
    jp nz | TZXs updated with new loading screens | youtube bits and bobs
  • guesserguesser
    edited February 2010
    older computers are far more resilient than modern ones.

    I've not got a 486 any more, but I have a pentium 133 around and it's the same: you can pull out ISA cards without it noticing, it doesn't mind you hot plugging IDE hard drives either :p

    I wouldn't suggest trying that on your shiny new dual core machines :)

    (actually modern machines have sata drives, and you can hotplug those so we're going backwards ;))

    I have a PC in my workshop that was originally my first desktop PC. Then it became my server and it was retired from that task because of random crashes and boot failures/hard disk errors.
    I reckon the smoothing capacitors on the motherboard are dead, cause I fixed it by wiring a 2000 micro farad capacitor across the 5 volt line :D
    My rubbish website including the redrawn Amstrad schematics and the Sinclair Wiki.
  • SpexSpex
    edited February 2010
    Where I used to work they were always spilling stuff on keyboards. If its water its normally OK after being left to dry out. If its a sugared drink, coffee, tea, fizzy drink, it is usually the end.
    Getting them to tell you the truth is harder.

    S
  • mel the bellmel the bell
    edited February 2010
    this is not exactly what you meant but

    mine had a cd exploded inside which killed the hard drive and bluray drive

    fitted a new dvd drive and hard drive and it works fine now
    Professional Mel-the-Bell Simulator................"So realistic, I found myself reaching for the Kleenex King-Size!" - Richard Darling
  • thx1138thx1138
    edited February 2010
    I pulled an old BBC out a skip, it was chucking it down with rain, water poured out of the old beeb, I took the cover off and left it on a towel in the kitchen for a week. Plugged it in, heard the familiar bee-beep noise, and it worked fine. :)
  • guesserguesser
    edited February 2010
    Spex wrote: »
    Where I used to work they were always spilling stuff on keyboards. If its water its normally OK after being left to dry out. If its a sugared drink, coffee, tea, fizzy drink, it is usually the end.
    Getting them to tell you the truth is harder.

    S

    if you get sugary drink (I've spilt tea into my keyboard countless times, but since I don't take sugar, it didn't seem to care :p) into your keyboard/laptop you do need to wash it out immediately. the easiest way to do this is to take the plastic case off and drop the whole thing in the bath. (unplug it and remove all batteries + hard disk first...)

    for best results, once it is clean, rinse that water away with distilled water and let it dry naturally in air

    course the best thing would be to just not spill your drink, or to have a full size keyboard that is by design spillproof.
    My rubbish website including the redrawn Amstrad schematics and the Sinclair Wiki.
  • guesserguesser
    edited February 2010
    thx1138 wrote: »
    I pulled an old BBC out a skip, it was chucking it down with rain, water poured out of the old beeb, I took the cover off and left it on a towel in the kitchen for a week. Plugged it in, heard the familiar bee-beep noise, and it worked fine. :)

    beebs are pretty damn bombproof. The one thing you have to watch out for is corrosion on the keyboard ribbon headers. once the connection to the keyboard starts to go iffy you get all sorts of weird glitches.

    the other main failure is the paper mains filter capacitor burning up in a cloud of acrid smoke.
    My rubbish website including the redrawn Amstrad schematics and the Sinclair Wiki.
  • milemile
    edited February 2010
    my gf uses vista on her laptop.
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