mythbusters in real life

[TollhouseFrank]

any good stories out there that sound like obvious BS, but are true?

For example, years ago when i was in highschool, I had just gotten one of hte first 56X CD drives that ever came out. I took it to a friend's house to show off, and so he could compare it against his drives (the fastest he had was 32x at the time).

There was a power surge went through the area. I don't know how, but it didn't do anything to the motherboard. all of the drives, including my brand spankin' new cd drive started to wind up faster and faster. :eek: It made a sound like a jet engine on take-off. Fearing for the very expensive (and very new at least for me), Windows 98 SE CD ---- I had also bought when i got the drive, I hit the open button.

Without spinning down, the drive shot open, the case gave a small rock (not large, but enough to notice the slight nudge of movement), and the cd flew past both of us and then hit the wall about 2 feet away, putting a huge crack right across my brand new cd.

I swear, this is not B.S. However, I am wanting to hear other 'highly incredibly hard to believe but true' stories from you others out there.

This ought to be entertaining. Feel free to call BS on my story or any others in this thread! I don't expect you to believe it, but it did happen. Anyways, on to the good stories (i'm sure there are plenty of them out there).

[Yuriman]

Not as good as yours, but a few days ago I set my new Nintendo DS on top of my pc. I was at a friends house, and it was dark in the room, and somehow I knocked my entire full cup of tea right onto the pc, which proceeded to go straight into the GBA port on the ds and right into the fan on top of the pc, which acted like a sprinkler. Both completly quit on me and wouldnt start. So, I alcohol bathed both and now they work good as new(L trigger a tad stick on the ds, not really noticable).

[TollhouseFrank]

still quite good yuriman. Your very lucky that both didn't die. Only problems with the gameboys i owned is i accidently dropped one in the toilet while playing tetris....

[NiTrO bOiE]

still quite good yuriman. Your very lucky that both didn't die. Only problems with the gameboys i owned is i accidently dropped one in the toilet while playing tetris....

Playing Tetris while taking a dump are we? :p

[TollhouseFrank]

unfortunately.... yes... i got the tetris cartridge with the original gameboy back in the VERY early 90's... it was a b-day present from my parents.... about 1990 or so. It still works (i play it about 2 or 3 times a year now).

[CrashOveride]

Um... did you drop it in after you flushed? Or did you reach into the crap to save it?

[TollhouseFrank]

its was after the flush. was standin' up, and just dropped it. *SPLOOSH*. right into the water.

[CrashOveride]

That's good, I dread the possiblity of dropping something expensive into a toilet I just used.

And this thread sorta seems like a Gen.. Chat thread more than Gen. Hardware...

[Aphex_Tom_9]

Playing Tetris while taking a dump are we? :p
hell yeah, do it at school whenever i feel the need.

[TollhouseFrank]

i tried to start it off as general hardware... but it kinda left that... so if someone thinks it needs moved, go ahead and move it. but still... i hope to get some good stories for this thread. i love reading mishaps... er.... trials nad tribulations that others go through

[Aphex_Tom_9]

i tried to start it off as general hardware... but it kinda left that... so if someone thinks it needs moved, go ahead and move it. but still... i hope to get some good stories for this thread. i love reading mishaps... er.... trials nad tribulations that others go through
oh, oops, sorry didnt mean to do that. hmm, amazing hardware stories? i delibrately smoked an old dead HD by jamming the molex in upsidedown and sprinkling it with water once...

[I.M.O.G.]

Canadians get their milk in freaking bags. I know that sounds like the most ridiculous thing ever, but I swear to god its true... Crazy, eh? :eh?:

[Aphex_Tom_9]

Canadians get their milk in freaking bags. I know that sounds like the most ridiculous thing ever, but I swear to god its true... Crazy, eh? :eh?:
it's true! i have a summerhouse on an island in the st. lawrence and every summer when im up there and we buy food, the milk comes in these bag things!

[Twigss]

i accidently put in my ram upside down(it was dark and i wasnt completely sober... yes i have learned my lesson)... luckily it was on a 5 year old p2 233 gateway that was almost dead anyway....

[zait]

My old CDROM once ate one of my expensive music cds... I ejected the device to see the shattered shards. I was heartbroken. The drive was boiling hot. I tossed it after.
Lucky I made a backup of the musid disc.

[FyreDaug]

I put a stick of ram in backwards once, no idea how I did it, but it was in my case and I couldnt really see, I was in the process of putting it in when I dropped it and caught it with my pinky finger, which I guess somehow flipped the stick around because I know for a fact it was right when I *went* to put it in, the I dropped it, put it in (and it clicked in) backwards and fired it up. I burnt the ram controller so bad it was red, I saw light and it was smoking. Fried the ram, board and chip :( That was the wierdest thing ever because in that tight of a space inside my old case there was almost no way the ram could flip around.

And before you start thinking something gross, it isnt what you are thinking. But I was shaving one day infront of the mirror which happens to be right over the toilet with my electric shaver. Again somehow it slipped out of my hand and ended up in the toilet while it was on. It was still running while it was in the toilet too, so I figured it was electrically shielded or water proof or something, so I stuck my hand in the toilet (which wasnt used by the way) and pulled the shaver out. Right as I was 90% out of the bowl it shocked me really quickly and I pulled my hand out right away with the shaver still vibrating away.... seriously.

[ThePerfectCore]

I put a 486 in backwards and the power supply exploded (smoke, flame, loud pops). Fortunately it was a cheap junker machine.

In March of 2004 I was playing the FarCry demo when smoke and flame shot out of my case. A chip near the video card had exploded. Funny thing was as fire and crap was flying everywhere, the game was still playing perfectly fine... I replaced the motherboard, fortunately all other hardware lived.

And here's the ultimate hard disk crash:

http://www.astro.ufl.edu/~ken/crash/

[TollhouseFrank]

wow... the ultimate harddrive head crash. WOW. if that's real, then WOW. have had a crash a couple of itmes, but never that bad. it was just a huge gouge on a platter.... never total wipage...

[phrkshw]

Nothing like a dump and a lil bit of GB Tetris . Got my old Gb sitting on the back of the toilet in a basket with a few other games .

I havnt seen the cd spin out and try to " I Come In Peace " somebody , but I have seen a cd reduced to little shards . Not pretty when its a brand new legit copy of XP Pro Corp . Needless to say was HIGHLY pissed . :temper: :temper: :temper:

[I.M.O.G.]

What are platters made out of, I had assumed they were metal from looking at them first hand, but those look more like CD's? That link seems like a hoax to me, but I don't know enough to judge it actually.

EDIT: It would appear the main substrate is glass or aluminum actually. The thin magnetic film is placed on this using sputtering. This is covered with a carbon layer and a lubrication layer for protection. This information was mostly from wikipedia.

[Big Smoke]

I wired an old 20" 'T' type television antenna to one of my wireless 802.11g receivers, in the thought that it would increase my range. Myth busted, it only caused more signal noise and loss of link quality. I got a better signal with the stock plastic flip-up antenna. Man was I plum after that one, I thought for sure I was going to be a super-spy with ultra receiving capabilities. Only in my head I guess, lol.

[Aphex_Tom_9]

What are platters made out of, I had assumed they were metal from looking at them first hand, but those look more like CD's? That link seems like a hoax to me, but I don't know enough to judge it actually.

EDIT: It would appear the main substrate is glass or aluminum actually. The thin magnetic film is placed on this using sputtering. This is covered with a carbon layer and a lubrication layer for protection. This information was mostly from wikipedia.
yeah, most new HD's are all metal platters, some old or special ones are glass underneath.

[gt24]

<snip>

And here's the ultimate hard disk crash:

http://www.astro.ufl.edu/~ken/crash/

WHAT THE HECK!?!?!

I'm going to keep that link... :)

Eitherways, here are my stories, not many but just a few of the interesting ones...

First off, from a friend, I learned of a problem in a lab at a college. Some of the textbooks had business card cds. It didn't take long for those cds to have problems... namely being jammed into floppy drives...

Now for mine. I'll share what happened with an interesting system I had. Not having a case, and having a friend who wanted a computer, it was decided that a caseless, living on the desk pc, was a smart idea. I wasn't so bright back then. However, this setup worked out very well, and lead to an interesting problem... The ISA and PCI cards (This was a 486) held the motherboard off of the table, so to alleviate this problem, I asked my friend to get a book or something to hold the motherboard off of the table. That task being done, I turned on the computer... only to reveal a FIRE under the motherboard!! Quickly turning off the computer (thank goodness for hard switch power supplies), I then picked up the motherboard quickly, to see the notepad of paper underneath on fire, due to the nice metal spiral binding... :rolleyes: The system worked fine after that incident though, and when a BOOK was put under the motherboard.

A while later, this system had a CD Rom attached to it that was... weird... This drive, despite being a 12 speed, handled disk errors in a strange way. It increased the speed of the disk on a read error, then reduced the speed. Eitherways, being that I had the incident above, I made a copy of the Windows 98 disk being used in this system (I had a fear that something would go wrong with the origional) and I used the copy on the computer. The disk got some scratches on it over time. Eventually, on a reinstall, the disk had a read error, the disk speed increased, but didn't decrease. This rarely happens, and the solution is to eject the cd, which causes the disk to spin down and eject. This time however the tray ejected without the speed being decreased. For who knows what reason, the disk decided to fly... BACK INTO THE CDROM! Some plyers later, the disk was removed, and had a scrach on the bottom that nearly went to the label, really deep. The drive still worked... although I didn't use its' fine services for much longer after that. I wonder where it went...

Anywho, the drive issues are real, they are not myth, and they have been reported in comptuer magazines from time to time, along with me having a personal incident I have read time after time about either a disk flying across a room, back into the drive, or simply turning into confetti (however, when that happens, the drive is usually DESTROYED).

That is why I always try to copy all my disks and only use the origionals when necessary (like, online game playing, etc etc) because I have seen way to many ways to destroy the origionals, and as I learned when trying to replace an origional disk (a Need For Speed disk), the manufacturer wanted pretty much the normal retail price to replace my disk.... yeah, REAL nice... :rolleyes:

One last thing, isn't so much a disaster thing as it is just pure amazement. Going back and forth to college, I lug my cheapo printer, an Apollo P-1200. This printer has seen many high end collisions with various pieces of luggage and has been in as many as 8 pieces from the impacts. Yet, nothing is damaged on it (at least, nothing that cannot be reassembled) and it still prints fine. It was cheap enough to replace if it got damaged, yet it still doesn't die! This isn't consistant with other Apollo printers I know from friends, their printers die within a year or two... Mine just defys the natural order of things...

[RoadWarrior]

Canadians get their milk in freaking bags. I know that sounds like the most ridiculous thing ever, but I swear to god its true... Crazy, eh? :eh?:

That's complete and utter BS, the most ridiculous thing I ever heard.

They're not bags, they're membranes.

You know when you shell an egg, there's that membrane under the shell? Well, up here in Canada, we crossed cows with chickens, and put in the egg laying gene into the cows, but we left out the part of it that makes the shell, and instead of it happening at the start of the reproductive process we got it delayed until the end, so they are actually milk eggs, not cow eggs that you could hatch a calf from. So, twice a day canadian dairy cows lay membranes full of milk and the farmers collect them up, sort all the standard sized ones for selling 3 in a bag to Canadians, and burst all the rest into a tanker to ship to the US for cartoning.


;)


Road Warrior

[MonroeM]

LOL@RoadWarrior


I've got one. From my friend's mom.
She was on her computer one night, ready to play Diablo (big RPG players, the entire family, went on to become EverCrack addicts). She pops in the Diablo disc and waits for the autorun to pop up so she can hit "play". My friend said she told him the CD-ROM drive didn't sound like it was staying at one speed, and sounded like it kept speeding the disc up in the drive. The autorun wasn't coming up and the drive sounded like there was something wrong w/ it so she leaned over (the PC was on the desk) and pressed the eject button. Nothing happened and it still sounded like the disc was still spinning. She hit it a few more times then bent down to look at the drive (she stood up and was infront of the PC now), making sure she was hitting the "eject" button and not the "play" button, which was apparently on this old CD-ROM drive of hers.

The drive explodes right in her face, litteraly. Her Diablo disc shatters and cuts her across the bridge of her nose.

I think they ended up taking the PC in for repair, nothing else was damaged, but the CD-ROM drive was toast. The front-side of the tray blew off when the disc exploded.

Pretty funny stuff, my buddy and I still laugh over it to the day. His mom was quite afraid of the computer afterwards and ended up putting the tower on the floor after that.

[Gabber359]

Well here's another CD self-destruct story :)

This was back about 6-7 yrs ago on my old P1 200 system (which I have sitting right next to me, I cleaned it up good, formatted, reinstalled Win 98, still works fine).
Anyhow

So one night I place my BroodWar CD in the drive as usual. CD starts spinning like it's loading, then it keeps spinning faster and faster and faster and just like Tollhouse said, sounded like a bloody jet engine taking off. Luckily, unlike Monroe's friends mom, I did not hit eject. I just sat there staring and listening in amazment. You know, the "WTF is going on?" look.
All of a sudden I hear this godalmighty CRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRACKKKKK !!

Uhoh

So I open up the 'puter, take out the 48x CD-ROM drive and unscrew it.....Lo and behold, my BW cd, now in hundreds of itty bitty pieces in the drive. Talk about your average self-destruct, sheesh. So that little episode left me with no BW CD ( :mad: ) and a crappy 24x CD-ROM drive which I still had in storage (the 48x had replaced the 24x :P).

[FoxBat]

" twice a day canadian dairy cows lay membranes full of milk "

Holy sheep-dip! That has got to be the funniest thing I have heard in ages!

The hat is off, Roadwarrior. :clap:

Of course, out here in Winterpeg, we know that to be a complete myth. Everyone knows the bags are removed by c-section before the cows are "buger-ized".

Heh!

[stratcatprowlin]

Sick story but cats do not always land on their feet:)

[subtotal]

yeah, i heard that cats are more likely to walk away from a 3-storey fall than a 2-storey fall

[Aphex_Tom_9]

here's a real 'myth or fact' question-
apparently, if you take a piece of ceramic from a broken sparkplug, you can toss it at a car's window and break it, without making a sound.
myth or fact? i dunno. i forget where i read it, but some guy was arguing that it was quite true.

[CrashOveride]

break the window or the ceramic piece?
The window: I bet it's a myth.
The ceramic piece: I'de belive it, but that doesn't mean it's true.

[Aphex_Tom_9]

oh, the window, durrr.

[CrashOveride]

Just wanted to make sure, it wasn't very clear.

EDIT:
Some progress?

As an aside -- If you are ever in a junk yard and want to have some fun, break part of the ceramic off of a Spark plug and lightly throw it at some tempered glass... like a junk car window -- the glass will break and keep on breaking for several minutes. - the ceramic disrupts the glass on a molecular level.. See, science can be fun!!! (http://kwot.miskie.net/index.php?showtopic=4746)

EDIT:
A spark plug touched up against body of car will have no affect on alarm,[unless you touch it hard enough to trip a shock sensor, the ceramic of a spark plug,[new or old and any hard ceramic for that matter] will break auto,[or any] glass with very little impact, it works the same way as the carbon tip on the emergency tool carried in most emrgencey vehicles, its very sharp and very hard. 94 (http://216.239.63.104/search?q=cache:gZPzfdxkgLEJ:honda-tech.com/zerothread%3Fid%3D1017882+%22Spark+Plug%22+window+ ceramic+myth+break&hl=en&client=firefox)

I am a firefighter and a deputy who was in my station one day mentioned this. He said that gang members wear round porcelain pieces from sparks plugs around their necks on strings. Hold the string at the top of the window and let the round piece swing like a pendulum into the window...and the window is shattered...and it is quiet. Since we usually have donated cars behind the station for training (we cut them up), we decided to try it. We had a helluva time getting a good piece of porcelain from one of the car's spark plugs, but sure enough, it worked. Of course, a 5 dollar window punch works better. (http://www.r6messagenet.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-3793.html)


Maybe just the regular myth stuff but there is a lot of it.

being SILENT I don't belive, but reletivly quite, I do, and after reading this I belive it. But I'll have to try it somtimes (not on anyone's car mind you). The links to the window punch are what sorta close the deal for me.

I can't seem to find out how exactly a real window punch works though, anyone know where too look? (I tried howstuffworks and google, but I'm not some super searcher or somthing either...) I'll ask my physics teacher tommorow, he might know.

On a side note, I could see this circumventing alot of Car alarm systems since the window sensors 'look for' a certain frequency created by breaking glass, a frequency that this type of break COULD BE just out of range of. Also, some alarms use pressure senors that this sort of mellow break MIGHT NOT set off (I guess they use either your car speakers or a similairly designed specialty detector).
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/car-alarm.htm

I love that website!

[ghettocomp]

I accidentally dropped my toast one morning and it landed jelly side up!
that never happens... ;) :D

[ghettocomp]

Without spinning down, the drive shot open, the case gave a small rock (not large, but enough to notice the slight nudge of movement), and the cd flew past both of us and then hit the wall about 2 feet away, putting a huge crack right across my brand new cd.

I swear, this is not B.S. However, I am wanting to hear other 'highly incredibly hard to believe but true' stories from you others out there.


I have actually had this happen, only on a lowly 24X. and right after I put in a new game CD that carried a Virus (on the CD by the Manufacturer). I was really noob then and ended up reformatting, and got the virus every time I loaded that CD!

[subtotal]

i heard that too, but i don't know anyone who'd let me try it out with their car.

if that guy insists it's true again ask him to demonstrate using HIS car!