mythbusters in real life

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. 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).

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).

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....

TollhouseFrank said:

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....

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Playing Tetris while taking a dump are we?

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).

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

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

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...

NiTrO bOiE said:

Playing Tetris while taking a dump are we?

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hell yeah, do it at school whenever i feel the need.

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

TollhouseFrank said:

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

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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...

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?

I.M.O.G. said:

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?

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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!

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....

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.

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.

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/

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...

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 .

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.