Get ready.....starts February 1st!
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Get ready.....starts February 1st!
:eek:
Bump!
DaveW gave a thumbs up, jdbnsn gave a thumbs up and so has Paul. I believe it goes on the home page tonight.
we're waaaaaaaaiiiiiiting...
hammering it out now, be patient my children, the fun begins soon. Thanks TGS!!!
It's 5:31PM Eastern time USA. You have 21600 minutes to submit a story. Good luck!
http://www.thebestcasescenario.com
So do we post the story right here in this thread?
OK, here we go.
In 1998, I was working as a part time "Junior Technician" for an IT department at a college. We had just built 3 new classrooms, and each contained 30 workstations, with Pentium 166 processors.
The supplier had assembled all the computers for us, and done a 48 hour burn in test before delivering them so we would be sure that they worked.
As we setup the labs, we began to power them up and ghost the correct images for each different class. Some of the machines fired right up, but some appeared to be dead! Oh no... 90 new PC's, and probably 25% of them were DOA.
We began to troubleshoot a few of them.. there were 4 techs there, including myself. What we discovered was that the CPU's weren't seated correctly, and after they heated up and cooled down a few times, they would work themselves loose, and were no longer making good contact. The solution? A quick re-seat of the CPU, and it was good to go.
Remember how I said "SOME of them" had troubles? Turns out that they all did. Over the next few weeks, we ended up reseating nearly all of the CPU's, and some of the RAM. (No, we didnt continue to deal with that supplier.)
The reason I mention this story is what happened during one of the reseatings.
I was called mid-day, to come up and check out one workstation that had suddenly turned itself off, and wouldnt come back online. There was a class of students in the room at the time, and this one poor fellow was without his workstation.
I ran up to the class, screwdriver in hand to be the hero, and make this thing work. I pulled the case screws off to remove the one piece cover (*shudder*), and picked up the tower to turn it on it's side, to make it easier to work with. Whoops, slippery fingers!
*BANG* Tower slips from my fingers, and lands HARD on the desk, in the middle of a lecture. Everyone turns to look at me.. a few people jumped from the noise.
Without missing a beat, I raised my hands in a calming gesture, and said "Dont worry everyone... I"m a professional." Trying hard not to act too embarassed at my accident. "please dont be ruined" I thought to myself.
I hit the power button, and the computer jumped to life. The fall had firmly seated the cpu, and the machine was whirring away without a care in the world. There were gasps and whispers.. one person whistled.
As I picked up the tower, I was careful not to repeat my performance, and reassembled the cover. The room was eerily silent.. everyone, including the prof was watching me with astonishment. As I walked out, I heard one student say to another, "I'm gonna try that when I get home."
TRUE STORY!
Alright, here's mine...
* I have a few friends who work for computer companies.
* 4 of them actually work for IBM.
* 1 of those was actually chosen by IBM to go over to Japan and fix some problems they were having over there.
* I don't know how to do ANYTHING except play games, so when and if my computers have problems, one of them comes over and fixes it.
* In return I have to make them dinner.
...I'm probably not going to win this contest...
Hi everybody :)
I'm gonna try my luck at this here competition, with a.. true... horror... computer repair.. story :)
Not long ago, I was sleeping happily after a long night of cramming maths and theories in my swollen brain. Albeit in the middle of my exams, I was receiving countless cries for help from several fields, some easier to tackle than others (I help other people with projects and written papers). That's why I believed I could help out a friend.. This is where the HORROR began!
As I was called to check a P4 system that sometimes refused to start and which frequently just shut itself off during avid sessions of counter strike or graphical design, I never would have guessed that my knowledge and inventiveness will be put to the test by that infernal machine.
First step i took was to see if it started... It didn't.. We (me and the owner) were thinking: bad PSU, CPU or mother board. So, I took the PSU and tested it independently: i disconnected the wires from all devices and used the paper-clip trick to jump start it.. It worked (literally). So, it wasn't the PSU..
Second attempt at diagnosing the system was to dismantle everything and put it back piece by piece.. I used the motherboard, CPU and the on-board POST display.. It found the lack of RAM so I concluded those parts were OK. I plugged in the twin RAM modules and the system detected them too.. OK.. I plugged the video and.. OK :) all essential parts were OK.
Then I tried to plug the TV tuner inside and was shocked! ... The signal wire was charged with static electricity :P Anyway, the system worked.. on the table.. So, I said it must have been a fluke and put the stuff back in the case.. It was down on the floor, in the middle of the room, under the light bulb.. And it worked! I put it under the table and started gathering my stuff..
Tragedy! Now it wouldn't do anything again.. no power at all.. well, back to pieces with it.. we cleaned everything carefully, tried the POST routine again and it worked.. dang..
After several "it works!" and "what the..?", with different PSUs even, we were seeing the following: if in the middle of the room, lay flat and with the lights on, the system would power up.. put the system under the table.. no response.. "What the..?" We moved the computer like a couple of idiots and tested to see whether the geometric parameters were influencing the working status or whether magical gremlins were mocking us..
DAY 1 end...
..zZzzzZZzzz..
DAY 2..
System has been taken apart and made to work on the table.. several days pass.. I was busy and had to go to an exam... days pass, system works flawlessly..
..ZzzzZZzZZzzZZ...
Final day:
At this point, we thought there has to be some type of short under the motherboard and used duct-tape to insulate the mother board tray.. Again, same symptoms.. System works if flat.. Oh, this time I was again zapped by the TV cable, in the foot.. It was funny (not).. I gave up after the system refused completely to power up and we concluded that the PSU had passed away.. So i gave him my spare PSU.. Shock! It didn't power up... Damn.. Now I had no spare PSU! I left disappointed.. but his case was now clean, had a nice wiring job and was almost 20 degrees cooler processor-wise... but refused to work in a case..
A friend took over and.. this is the high point of the story.. tried all possible combinations and realized one thing through empiricism! All the weird behavior of the PC was caused by one thing: <<drums>> a faulty power cable! Take that out of the equation and you find your culprit!
I replaced the cable with one of my own and the system never again.. true story.. weird behavior.. shocking developments.. happy ending.. :)