Ora de anarhie
Many computer users perform their own hardware upgrades, and a distressing number
of these result in insufficient damage to the system. Destroying your own computer
is every user's right and is the pattern of behaviour expected by the manufacturers
and, especially, repair personnel, whose very livelihood is put in peril by those
users who perversely persist in correctly upgrading their equipment.
This article will explain to you, the user, the most common ways by which
you can cause your computer to cease to function. Follow the instructions carefully
and you will shortly find yourself making appropriate contributions to the
all-important service sector.
First, it is essential to be incorrectly prepared
When opening the case of your computer, you will probably be presented with
a number of hexagonal head Phillips-slotted screws. These can be easily removed
with a Phillips('+' shaped) screwdriver or 6mm nut driver, but using a flathead
screwdriver, especially one that is slightly too big, maximises the chance
of the screwdriver
slipping from the screw head and smashing into one or another of the computer's
connectors. Personal injury is also possible, especially if excessive force
is used when turning a screw the wrong way, but the object is to damage the
computer, not yourself.
When removing screws from the back of an ordinary clone case, ensure that
you extract every screw in sight, not just the ones around the edge that actually
hold the case on. This will, with any luck, cause the computer's power supply
to fall off inside the case and cause serious damage, before you even have
to take off the lid.
Leaving one fastening screw still done up in the corner and then attempting
to wrench off the case may cause significant damage to the metalwork, but this
is generally easily bent back into shape and not very expensive to replace.
You can do better.
Fortunately, there are a plethora of computer case designs, and a gratifying
number are fiendishly difficult to take apart and, especially, reassemble.
To maximise the chance of damage, ignore any locking tabs and slots, don't
worry about pinching cables in the case, and make sure you push really hard.
When replacing screws, remember to tighten everything as if the computer were
a major structural component of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Overtightening screws
increases the chance of reaming the heads, and the extra frustration involved
in removing super-tight screws increases the chance that someone will give
up and turn the machine over to a professional. Use of an electric screwdriver
makes screw destruction easy for anyone.
Use of computer cases as furniture is an excellent way to obey your entropic
imperatives. Many PC cases are in fact very strong, and so it's necessary to
balance large monitors, tabletops and grand pianos upon them to ensure rapid
destruction. Fortunately, the pop-riveted construction of most cases and their
poor endurance
under lateral loads means that even
relatively small stresses can, over time, cause sufficient structural creep
to snap a solidly attached motherboard. Patience, and not buying enough chairs,
can be a virtue.
Static Is Your Friend
It is possible to destroy computer components just by touching them, thanks
to electrostatic discharge (ESD). Static electricity accumulates best on
humans when the air is dry and both the carpet and the soles of the shoes
are made of synthetic materials.
Unfortunately, static discharge damage is actually a fairly rare cause of
computer problems. On the bright side, however, a discharge as low as 200 volts
is sufficient to destroy a chip, and this level of charge can easily be accumulated
in just a few steps on carpet. Static discharge can only be felt when the charge
gets up around the 2000 volt mark, so it's possible for a truly adept user
to unknowingly destroy several components in one session.
Old-fashioned belt-drive vacuum cleaners are quite efficient static electricity
generators, so cleaning computer componentry with one is an excellent way to
bolster the income of a service engineer. Newer cleaners are still good at
accumulating static, and are also quite powerful enough to seriously damage
fragile components with sheer suction.
Air force
Electronics stores stock canned "air duster", which is actually compressed
difluoroethane gas, and can be used to clean various devices. Air duster can
also be usefully employed in computer destruction, where it is more than capable
of blowing chips out
of sockets, spinning fans to prodigious speeds and destroying their tiny brushless
motor assemblies, and, of course, redistributing dust from relatively accessible
locations to far more exciting ones, like deep inside expansion card connectors
and CD-ROM drives.
For truly powerful air-blasting, though, the discerning user will have to
employ the services of an air compressor. These can be rented cheaply from
many equipment hire shops, and as well as their greater power (which can snap
a RAM module and its socket right off the board) offer the added bonus of high-speed
water delivery, provided of course that the user makes sure not to use the
condensation drain valve provided for less focussed operators.
Get it wet!
Contact with plain water is surprisingly unlikely to destroy computer componentry,
unless the device in question is left wet for a while. Beverages like coffee,
tea and (especially) cola are much more effective, and so it is important
to have a tall, unstable container of one or more of these within elbowing
distance of the work area. Crumbs of food can foul connectors and floppy
drive moving parts, but intensive open-mouthed chewing over the computer
is required for a reliable kill.
Killing chips
If the job involves inserting or removing socketed chips, the options for destruction
of expensive devices open up enormously.
Inserting and removing Pin Grid Array (PGA) processor chips in Zero Insertion
Force (ZIF) sockets is unlikely to break anything, unless the user somehow
manages not to operate the locking lever and forces the issue. PGA chips in
old-style sockets are easier to damage; PGA pins are annoyingly hard to bend,
but the forest of pins under the processor gives many chances to bend just
one and make the chip uninsertable.
If the computer is an 80486-based system, the Central Processing Unit (CPU)
can be plugged into its socket in more than one way. One corner of the processor
is bevelled and the matching corner of the socket will also be marked, but
if these markings are disregarded - or if the user decides instead to line
up the printing on the CPU with that on the motherboard - then the processor
can be inserted in one of the three other alignments. This makes the chip's
destruction, possibly with the emission of smoke, quite likely. Intel regrettably
made processor misalignment impossible with the introduction of the Pentium
series, unless of course the enterprising user is equipped with a mallet.
This never happens.
When one end of the (usually very firmly inserted) chip
comes out of the socket, the considerable pull being exerted by the user immediately
causes that end
to be lifted well clear of the board while the last few ranks of pins are still
plugged in, resulting in badly bent or broken pins which are difficult to bend
back and very, very difficult to repair.
Chips are much less likely to be damaged if a small screwdriver is used to
lever each end in turn up a little at a time, until the whole chip comes free
at once. Those who have purchased stock in chip makers recommend against this
strategy.
Inserting Single Inline Memory Modules (SIMMs) should be relatively simple,
since SIMM sockets require one only to insert the module at an angle, then
swing it upright until the locking clips click into place. Fortunately, many
PCs are cramped inside and have at least one SIMM socket fouled by the power
supply or other metalwork, making it more difficult to insert a memory module
in that socket without damaging it or the socket. Inserting modules backwards
(even though they are designed not to fit that way), jamming them straight
in vertically and, of course, using plenty of force, increase the chance of
a misadventure.
Bugger the BIOS!
The ceaseless march of progress has made it possible to wreak functionally
unfixable harm upon essential computer components without inflicting any
physical trauma at all. Modern "flash" BIOSes, which allow the
Basic Input/Output System software of a PC motherboard to be upgraded by
the user, afford considerable potential for harm.
If a flash BIOS is "flashed" with the wrong data - preferably a
BIOS for a completely different motherboard, or, if the flashing software will
accept it, even some randomly selected file; an MP3 of William Shatner's "Mr
Tambourine Man" is ideal - the motherboard will, upon restarting, utterly
fail to do anything useful until its BIOS chip is physically removed and re-burned
with correct data. Interrupting the flashing procedure will produce the same
results.
If the BIOS is socketed, exchanging it for a working one is disturbingly easy.
Fortunately, many current BIOS chips are soldered to the motherboard, and cannot
be economically replaced. The iniquitous invasion of motherboards with built-in
BIOS backups must be stopped at all costs, lest their terrible reliability
paralyse the industry.
Cables, connectors and calamity
Ribbon cables are often difficult to plug in incorrectly, because the connectors
they go into are "keyed" to match the cable in only one orientation.
If a ribbon cable plugs into a bare pin header with no surround, though,
damage can result if the user takes note of the tiny "1" often
printed on the circuit board by the connector to indicate pin one, and also
takes note of the stripe on the cable which indicates which side is should
connect to pin one, and reverses the connector. Incompetently made cables
with one end backwards make this much simpler. Note that reversing a cable
at BOTH ends is likely to result in perfect operation of the hardware, which
is not the aim of this exercise.
If the pin header on the motherboard isn't "shrouded" - surrounded
by a plastic box to correctly align the plug - the intrepid user can quite
easily connect the plug in such a way as to miss one row or column of pins.
This can very excitingly change the details of the connection being made.
When connecting an older style, "AT" power supply to a motherboard,
the two-part power connector offers a marvellous opportunity for destruction.
Make sure at all costs to avoid the plug configuration shown below
This configuration, with the black wires towards the centre, will cause the
computer to work perfectly. Reversing the two plugs so that the red wires are
towards the centre will, gratifyingly, destroy the motherboard. Some manufacturers
appear to have temporarily abandoned their sanity and made AT power supplies
that will not work when connected incorrectly. Such supplies are, of course,
to be avoided if at all possible.
Fortunately, modern motherboards have introduced a new way to blast tracks
clean off the board. On-board fan connectors have three pins, and two adjacent
ones are the positive and ground supply. Mistaking one of these connectors
for a motherboard configuration jumper allows the adept user to slip a jumper
block onto the fan connector and short the positive pin to ground, which can
and will burn out traces on the motherboard and render it useful only as a
wall decoration. Motherboard manufacturers are clearly aware of this possibility,
and some assist by labelling, say, a three pin CMOS clearing jumper block "JP2",
and marking the CPU fan connector "J2". The use of the normal motherboard
annotation font (one point Flyspeck Sans Serif) makes misidentification simple
even for those with perfect vision.
Plugging and unplugging peripherals that attach to computer ports while the
machine is turned on is unlikely to damage the peripherals and not much more
likely to damage the computer - plugging and unplugging cards inside the computer
when it's on is a much better way to damage things.
If, in the course of diagnosing a problem, you have a hard drive out of its
assigned bay and resting on top of the open machine, remember that the logic
board under the drive can generally be shorted out easily by chassis metalwork
and position the device accordingly.
PSU pulverisation
Power supplies can be obliterated in a number of ways. The simplest is provided
by the ubiquitous voltage selector switch on the back. Because the user is
lucky enough to reside in a country where the mains supply is 220V or higher,
switching
a computer PSU to the 110V setting will result in a satisfyingly exploded
supply, and possible considerable secondary damage.
In comparison, the more pedestrian sport of dropping screws into the PSU fan
in hopes that they will cause a dramatic short circuit is scarcely necessary.
Particularly in view of the fact that the fan often spits them back out.
Remember - slapdash, ill-informed, incompetent work is what's expected of
you. Don't let the industry down.The taiwanese people live off what you buy.
Articol by: webmaster.
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