What's *your* latest mess-up?

[larrymoencurly]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

12 years is nothing for a CRT TV (if it's properly made).
We have an old Philips that is about 30 years old. Has gone through a lot in its life. Also have an old Crown that is about my age (21). That one has only been repaired twice in its entire life, and I think it was SMPS issues both times. Picture on both sets is solid (but that doesn't happen very often because the cable TV is just plain horrible where they are).

I switched to the backup TV, a Sears brand Sanyo made in 1976 that I got from my parents. It's needed 2 capacitors (vertical yoke and audio coupling -- I misdiagnosed the latter by going to the doctor for a hearing check), a couple of pieces of brass to cover holes worn in some tuner contacts, and the wire wraps on the flyback needed soldering(intermittent sudden changes in brightness).

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

And how is that a mess up?

It's not... i just hope it won't turn into one. Coz man, we stick together like glue.

Speaking of which, some other random electronics-interested guy i have in my yahoo messenger list was like "another one gone" when he heard that i got a girl. He was implying that getting a girl means quitting the hobby. No it don't... And you wonder how come some guys don't seem to get chicks, well, here you have your answer. And that guy is actually better looking than me.

After this, we bought a snake from Home Depot, and that was the end of it - we got the job done in under 30 minutes.... if only we didn't hesitate to buy it before that, this could have been avoided.

Hope I'm not boring anyone to death with these long posts.

I believe i'm the one holding the record for the longest posts.

[joedaddy277]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

The destructable MCP61SM-GM motherboard!
Accidently soldered a 6v poly into 12v circuit.
Burn in was very successful !! Had to open doors and windows.

[momaka]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

Did you take it on video or not?

Unfortunately, no, but next time I definitely should .

I believe i'm the one holding the record for the longest posts.

I guess I don't mind being nominated for second place then .

Burn in was very successful !! Had to open doors and windows.

I think your overclock was too aggressive .

[inuyasha.rules]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

Getting nailed in the face by my cousins guarder at her wedding today

[bertsthon]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

Before even attempting to repair a Samsung 245BW I recently acquired, I was dismantling it and removing leads and whatnot so I could examine it. Well since I'm impatient and don't know how clips work, I ended up yanking and breaking off the very thin wires that went from the power led to the logic board.

After I stopped swearing I realised repairing it really wasn't as hard as I first thought and it's all working fine again (now for the hard part of actually figuring out why the monitor isn't working!!!).

[alexanna]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

Before even attempting to repair a Samsung 245BW I recently acquired, I was dismantling it and removing leads and whatnot so I could examine it. Well since I'm impatient and don't know how clips work, I ended up yanking and breaking off the very thin wires that went from the power led to the logic board.

After I stopped swearing I realised repairing it really wasn't as hard as I first thought and it's all working fine again (now for the hard part of actually figuring out why the monitor isn't working!!!).

A lot of the metal connectors on the “pig tails” of the wiring harness are the same, even the CCFL connectors.
The moral to the story is try to save everything from a monitor that's not repairable!

[ukskyrepair]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

I was repairing an amstrad drx280 sky plus box one day, the engineer had written no power. Ok I said no problem, changed the caps as they were poor quality anyway, changed the IC and the fuse. There I thought one brand new power supply! Plugged it in and BANG! Hmmm I pondered wonder why the chip and the fuse blew up again!
2 days later had another look, stupid me forgot to change the bridge rectifier diodes! Duh!

[Uranium-235]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

my pants.

[momaka]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

This week - no scratch that. These last 3 weeks sucked badly .
Had another major o-shit moment yesterday.

I was coming back from work and went for the usual Friday dumpster check at the apartment place I normally visit.

Dumpster 1 - nothing, pass. Dumpster 2 - nothing, pass ... dumpster 3 - white box with vents sitting on the ground - hey it's a computer! So I pull over in an empty spot about 10m away from the dumpster.
The dumpster was close, so I decided to leave the engine running.
...
Okay, now grab my wallet and my cell phone (out of habit) and go out to get the computer. It's raining, so I take the computer and quickly run back to my car. Pull the door open so I can open the trunk... WTF! the door is locked - SHIT! Try again.... nope it's locked. Windows all the way up, so no way of reaching the lock. Pull the trunk - nope, that's locked too. - DAMIT!
So there I am, sitting in the rain with some sort of computer in one hand, looking really stupid, and cussing. Took me about 5 minutes to stop raging - normally I'm not an absent-minded person and that's what was pissing me off so badly! That, and stupid habit of locking the car door as I go out.
...
Time to call my parents, I guess (they have 2nd key for the car). I'm thinking, "they sure won't be happy". But hey, at least I wasn't too far away from home (place is just slightly over a mile away). Of course I leave the computer back next to the dumpster - if anything that would upset my parents more than anything else (they hate it when I bring broken electronics in the house - I can see why sometimes ).
...
In about 15 minutes, my dad comes, gives me the key, but doesn't say much. He looks puzzled too. I ask him what's going on and he explains: as he grabbed the car key for me, he noticed the key from the house for a friend of ours wasn't there where we keep all of the keys (my dad was taking care of their house plants for a week while they were gone).
So we go home and start looking for that key now .
After searching for a about 1 hour, we finally find it in a grocery bag. The we have dinner and joke about the key mishaps that day... I guess it really was bad luck with the keys that day. I'm still very disappointed in what I did, though. Haven't been very sharp with other things this last week either.

As for the computer - I went to pick it up later that night. This time I took the second car key with me as well and put it in my pocket while I got out to get the computer - no way I'm repeating the same mistake again (would have been too funny if I did).
When I got the computer home, it was pretty wet from the rain that day. Even worse, both sides ware missing so there was water (and a bit of mud from the rain splash) on everything inside. But at least the dust was nicely washed away and deposited into small wet dust balls - easy cleanup.
Anyways, more on the computer in the dumpster thread (in a few moments)...

[PCBONEZ]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

This week - no scratch that. These last 3 weeks sucked badly .
Had another major o-shit moment yesterday.

I was coming back from work and went for the usual Friday dumpster check at the apartment place I normally visit.

Dumpster 1 - nothing, pass. Dumpster 2 - nothing, pass ... dumpster 3 - white box with vents sitting on the ground - hey it's a computer! So I pull over in an empty spot about 10m away from the dumpster.
The dumpster was close, so I decided to leave the engine running.
...
Okay, now grab my wallet and my cell phone (out of habit) and go out to get the computer. It's raining, so I take the computer and quickly run back to my car. Pull the door open so I can open the trunk... WTF! the door is locked - SHIT! Try again.... nope it's locked. Windows all the way up, so no way of reaching the lock. Pull the trunk - nope, that's locked too. - DAMIT!
So there I am, sitting in the rain with some sort of computer in one hand, looking really stupid, and cussing. Took me about 5 minutes to stop raging - normally I'm not an absent-minded person and that's what was pissing me off so badly! That, and stupid habit of locking the car door as I go out.
...
Time to call my parents, I guess (they have 2nd key for the car). I'm thinking, "they sure won't be happy". But hey, at least I wasn't too far away from home (place is just slightly over a mile away). Of course I leave the computer back next to the dumpster - if anything that would upset my parents more than anything else (they hate it when I bring broken electronics in the house - I can see why sometimes ).
...
In about 15 minutes, my dad comes, gives me the key, but doesn't say much. He looks puzzled too. I ask him what's going on and he explains: as he grabbed the car key for me, he noticed the key from the house for a friend of ours wasn't there where we keep all of the keys (my dad was taking care of their house plants for a week while they were gone).
So we go home and start looking for that key now .
After searching for a about 1 hour, we finally find it in a grocery bag. The we have dinner and joke about the key mishaps that day... I guess it really was bad luck with the keys that day. I'm still very disappointed in what I did, though. Haven't been very sharp with other things this last week either.

As for the computer - I went to pick it up later that night. This time I took the second car key with me as well and put it in my pocket while I got out to get the computer - no way I'm repeating the same mistake again (would have been too funny if I did).
When I got the computer home, it was pretty wet from the rain that day. Even worse, both sides ware missing so there was water (and a bit of mud from the rain splash) on everything inside. But at least the dust was nicely washed away and deposited into small wet dust balls - easy cleanup.
Anyways, more on the computer in the dumpster thread (in a few moments)...

I 'trained' myself to only hit the door lock button when I'm touching the key with my other hand. Even when I'm sitting in the car. Touch key, then touch lock.
-
Wish my wife would learn that. She needs rescued about twice a year.
.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

Okay it's not recent and only -slightly- PC related but funny so here goes.

I needed some numbers off some mobos in cases out in the garage.
That house had a flat roof on the garage and it was summer so it was up about 120F in the garage.
- So I opened the car door to get some air moving.
Ended up with maybe 10 cases open scattered across the floor by the time I got all the numbers I needed.
Shirt was drenched and seat streaming down my face so I took the numbers and set them by the PC and went took a rinse off shower.
After the shower I wanted to get back to what I was doing so I skipped getting dressed and did the naked guy on the internet thing looking up numbers.
~ time~
Then I remembered the wife was coming home soon and I had PC's scattered all over the floor.
Went racing out to shove them off to the side.
- Door slammed behind me [spring auto closer hinge thing].
About the time I'm square in the middle of the garage I realize I'm in the garage stark-assed naked and the car door is wide open to the street.
- The little old lady the lives across the street was doing something in her yard and heard the door slam and looked up to be greeted with the 'grand view'.
I was already busted so I just waved [she waved back] and I walked over and hit the door closer button.
.

[momaka]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

I 'trained' myself to only hit the door lock button when I'm touching the key with my other hand.

Well, in my case I always make sure I have the key in my right hand and then I lock the door with my left hand.
If the car is running, normally I open the door and put my hand away from the lock. Wasn't thinking this time, though. Even worse, you'd think that maybe with the headlights on, wipers on slow, engine noise, and all the rest, that maybe it would cross my mind not to lock the door - yet somehow it didn't. I guess there's a first time for everything.

...
After the shower I wanted to get back to what I was doing so I skipped getting dressed and did the naked guy on the internet thing looking up numbers.
~ time~
Then I remembered the wife was coming home soon and I had PC's scattered all over the floor.
Went racing out to shove them off to the side.
- Door slammed behind me [spring auto closer hinge thing].
About the time I'm square in the middle of the garage I realize I'm in the garage stark-assed naked and the car door is wide open to the street.
- The little old lady the lives across the street was doing something in her yard and heard the door slam and looked up to be greeted with the 'grand view'.
I was already busted so I just waved [she waved back] and I walked over and hit the door closer button.
.

And I bet you the old lady was actually enjoying the "grand view" . (or she couldn't see that far).
Should have put at least boxers on - it would have taken like 5 seconds.
Then again, where I am from it isn't too unusual to see stuff like that.

[kc8adu]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

hey at least you gave granny a thrill.
and the cure for car lockouts is spare keys in the wallet.cheap and effective.

Okay it's not recent and only -slightly- PC related but funny so here goes.

I needed some numbers off some mobos in cases out in the garage.
That house had a flat roof on the garage and it was summer so it was up about 120F in the garage.
- So I opened the car door to get some air moving.
Ended up with maybe 10 cases open scattered across the floor by the time I got all the numbers I needed.
Shirt was drenched and seat streaming down my face so I took the numbers and set them by the PC and went took a rinse off shower.
After the shower I wanted to get back to what I was doing so I skipped getting dressed and did the naked guy on the internet thing looking up numbers.
~ time~
Then I remembered the wife was coming home soon and I had PC's scattered all over the floor.
Went racing out to shove them off to the side.
- Door slammed behind me [spring auto closer hinge thing].
About the time I'm square in the middle of the garage I realize I'm in the garage stark-assed naked and the car door is wide open to the street.
- The little old lady the lives across the street was doing something in her yard and heard the door slam and looked up to be greeted with the 'grand view'.
I was already busted so I just waved [she waved back] and I walked over and hit the door closer button.
.

[momaka]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

Last week, I vacuumed the house. As I was moving stuff out of my room in order to clean it, a hard drive with some SDRAM modules on top fell of a box that I was moving and hit the ground pretty hard.

The SDRAM was in an anti-static bag, but that did not help much as all but 2 or 3 modules got damaged (knocked off SMD ceramic capacitors). Sure, it's old SDRAM, but I actually needed those modules. 2 of them were 256 MB desktop RAM and 1 was 256 MB laptop RAM - all of which I was going to use eventually.

On the less negative side, I was able to recover all of the broken SMD caps from the bag and solder them back to the damaged RAM modules. Some of the RAM modules had slightly damaged pads where the SMD caps were, but I was able to fix those as well.

All in all, I was able to fix my mess-up (well mostly... read below). I've tested all of the desktop SDRAM, and it all checks and boots fine. In fact, the computer I'm posting from right now has one the 256 MB desktop modules in it.

The only thing that I really screwed up is the hard drive - a 250 GB SATA Seagate 7200.8. I'm not sure if it's broken, but when I power it on, I can hear a faint click every few seconds, so most likely it is (I can't check since I don't have SATA on any of my computers yet) - which sucks because this is the biggest hard drive I have at the moment and I was eventually going to use it (I just found a PCI SATA card recently). What a bummer.

[Ami Sapphire]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

Yesterday...

The future server is about ready. I finally decided to check the server RAM using memtest86+ on a bootable floppy. The version I had was v4.20. It originally kept reporting that I had bad RAM in DIMM slot #2. After restarting it, the board's BIOS would disable slot #2. I cleared it within BIOS and tried again. Same thing. Tried an earlier version of memtest86+ (specifically v4.00). Failed again. I finally broke down, removed the RAM in slots 1 and 2, and switched their positions. Now memtest86+ v4.20 shows it as good RAM. So either some misseated RAM or the fact that one RAM stick didn't like DIMM #2 (more likely the first one) was the cause for bad RAM. Thank God.

I went upstairs to go to sleep after I started the first memtest. Sometime later, I woke up and went downstairs to see the first failure.

-*-

Last week, I vacuumed the house. As I was moving stuff out of my room in order to clean it, a hard drive with some SDRAM modules on top fell of a box that I was moving and hit the ground pretty hard.

The SDRAM was in an anti-static bag, but that did not help much as all but 2 or 3 modules got damaged (knocked off SMD ceramic capacitors). Sure, it's old SDRAM, but I actually needed those modules. 2 of them were 256 MB desktop RAM and 1 was 256 MB laptop RAM - all of which I was going to use eventually.

On the less negative side, I was able to recover all of the broken SMD caps from the bag and solder them back to the damaged RAM modules. Some of the RAM modules had slightly damaged pads where the SMD caps were, but I was able to fix those as well.

All in all, I was able to fix my mess-up (well mostly... read below). I've tested all of the desktop SDRAM, and it all checks and boots fine. In fact, the computer I'm posting from right now has one the 256 MB desktop modules in it.

The only thing that I really screwed up is the hard drive - a 250 GB SATA Seagate 7200.8. I'm not sure if it's broken, but when I power it on, I can hear a faint click every few seconds, so most likely it is (I can't check since I don't have SATA on any of my computers yet) - which sucks because this is the biggest hard drive I have at the moment and I was eventually going to use it (I just found a PCI SATA card recently). What a bummer.

I have destroyed RAM before. However, instead of breaking SMD caps off RAM, I toasted a RAM stick by pure 'luck'. That was my only ECC RAM stick at the time, too.

And I also have a very similar Seagate model drive, except it is a PATA model. Yep, 7200.8, 250GB, PATA drive. It clicks sometimes when it hits 48 degrees Celsius. And there's an occasional chirping sound, except when it is being written to, and only then, it is rare. Otherwise, it reads and writes data fine. Oh, and SMART was tripped twice on it. Yet, I'm still keeping it.

[cmj21973]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

A friend asked if I could put in a 30amp outlet for a 5th wheel camper that needs a 110/120V 30amps, no problem.

He has a outlet that's on a double pole 25amp breaker, 10AWG wire, 240V. So, all I need is the 30amp outlet. Hook it all up and check it with DMM. Told my friend I'm done and proceeded to plug the camper up.

Do you see my little brain fart?

I just plugged a 120V system into a 240V plug!

Tripped all the campers circuit breakers and blew the inline 25amp, 12V battery fuse. Reset all the breakers. Keeped blowing the 25amp fuse, so I use a 30amp fuse.

Needless to say , I have a tv, dvd player, and microwave that needs new fuses by 7pm EST Friday, for Labor Day weekend.

[Derek23]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

Last messed-up:

While testing a computer while it's on, a screw fell on the motherboard. Motherboard and memory fried.

[Jack Crow]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

Hi all,
This weeks mess up.

I have this 'kit' of connector crimp tools. Mostly I use it for PL 259 and BNC connectors on RG 58.

Had it with me when I went to service that big amp a couple of weeks ago.
Thought I had it again when I got home.

Then it refused to be found when I needed it.

Tore the apartment apart. No luck.
Opened boxes that had not been touched in years.

No luck.

Went all the way back to Winchester VA (about 40 miles round trip) , and it was not there either.

It did show up today.
Spotted it hiding behind a box, in my living room. Hidden in plain sight.

I am going to start a self kicking event. Might even put it on U Tube.

Later guys.
Jack Crow feeling silly

[cmj21973]

Re: What's *your* latest mess-up?

A friend asked if I could put in a 30amp outlet for a 5th wheel camper that needs a 110/120V 30amps, no problem.

He has a outlet that's on a double pole 25amp breaker, 10AWG wire, 240V. So, all I need is the 30amp outlet. Hook it all up and check it with DMM. Told my friend I'm done and proceeded to plug the camper up.

Do you see my little brain fart?

I just plugged a 120V system into a 240V plug!

Tripped all the campers circuit breakers and blew the inline 25amp, 12V battery fuse. Reset all the breakers. Keeped blowing the 25amp fuse, so I use a 30amp fuse.

Needless to say , I have a tv, dvd player, and microwave that needs new fuses by 7pm EST Friday, for Labor Day weekend.

Add 120VAC to 12VDC 45Amp power converter to the list.
My freinds got to the campgrounds and everything looked okay, until later that night. The converter failed when they aparently had everything turned on at ounce.