The NEXT contest...

[DaveW]

Is there any way to have a contest where EVERYONE on the site has the same chance of winning?

My sig *cough cough* honestly...

-Dave

[TheGreatSatan]

Thanks for the sticky!

[DaveW]

Thanks for the sticky!

Thanks for having such a great community spirit

-Dave

[xmastree]

Right...

This wasn't written specifically for this competition, so some of you may have seen it before. Since it's already on my website, I'll just link to it, with one photo here as a teaser...

Click that for the full horror...

Most of the pictures are clickable, for extreme high-res gore.

Enjoy...

[TheGreatSatan]

Doesn't work...

[jdbnsn]

The clickable link works, but for entry you should copy some pics and tell the tale here, it looks good!

[xmastree]

I'm was given a laptop to fix, which refuses to turn on without pressing the button many times, then when it did start, it complained about the CMOS settings.
I suspected the backup battery, but didn't know where to find it or what type it was. I couldn't even get inside the thing at first.
Here is how I eventually got into it.

W00T!

Looks like I found the battery, or rather, two of them.
One six-cell and one three cell. My guess is that the larger one is the one which keeps it alive when you put it to sleep and do a quick battery swap, and the smaller one is the backup.

I think I'll take a closer look...

Eeeew... what a mess!
What's all that blue cack I wonder.

Lovely clean connections. NOT!
Those are on the smaller battery, with the three way plug.

The other one was worse.

Not obvious from this picture is something that's missing from the next...

Oh dear, that doesn't look so good.

I figured I might be able to remove the plastic from the two way header, and solder the battery directly to the board

Then I noticed this little mess.

The header pretty much fell off

Q30 was nowhere to be seen, (or so I thought until I was looking at these photos again and noticed that it's there in the first two) and D40 and D41 fell off as I was cleaning it up.

My guess is that something was spilled in there, (see the ventilation holes in the first picture) and the batteries discharged through it over a long time, causing some kind of electrolytic reaction.

At this point I decided it was probably futile trying to reconnect the larger battery, as I had a feeling it needed these components to function correctly.

Also, since there's only one main battery, the staying alive thing is irrelevant.

So, I cleaned up the connectors for the smaller one, reassembled it without the large one, and what do you know?
It started up right away. M0RE W00T!

So, to make it better still, I figured I ought to try to find a suitable battery to put in there.

I couldn't find exactly the same battery. There was a choice between a smaller one or a larger one.

I went for the larger one since I thought the charging current might be too high for the smaller one.

And there she is, up and running, with Damn Small linux.

Don't tell my wife...

[Logic Zero]

opps, only pc repair stories

[TheGreatSatan]

PC, laptop, computer...

[armadilloben]

I'm relatively new to the site so I don't know what all has and hasn't been done... forgive me if I rehash...

OBVIOUSLY this is your contest since you're giving stuff away...
and OBVIOUSLY since it is your contest, you can run it however you want...
and OBVIOUSLY this is a modding forum and therefore for comp people...
and OBVIOUSLY I would never tell you what to do...

but...

Some people (there's gotta be someone) are on their first computer so they have never HAD a computer problem.
Some people haven't the first foggiest idea about how to fix computers so they have never had a PC from hell story.
Some people are only 15 or 16 or 18 and aren't going to have had the life experiences yet to win a best thing ever or worst thing ever contest.
Some people can't sculpt or afford to kit bash so they can't build a DOOM 3.

Is there any way to have a contest where EVERYONE on the site has the same chance of winning?

Submit your favorite recipe for peanut butter pancakes.
Write a story about what you'd do to mod a PC if money were no object.
Write about how you'd mod it if money WAS an object and you only had 10 bucks and a roll of duct tape.
How many jellybeans are in the jar?

dont forget the 13 yr old i built my first pc when i was 10 with my dad and i have 4 so young doesn't mean you lack building experience or horror stories but i see what u mean ironcat