25 Jan
2004
25 Jan
'04
9:27 a.m.
> After a move of a device, open it up and check all
the connections,
> reseat the cards and do a "rattle" test and make sure a screw or other
> metal object has not found its way onto the electronics, into the p/s
> etc.... otherwise things could get ugly.
About 10 years ago, my son (from my first marraige) came to visit for
christmas. My present to him was a computer. I knew he liked to take things
apart, so rather than giving him a completed machine, I bought all of the
cards, drives, case, power supply, and gift wrapped each piece (after
assemblying testing and breaking down the unit).
On Christmas morning he was so excited (12 year old at the time) and we
quickly built the machine. Had a great time. After a week it was time for
him to go back to mom in Florida. We put the CPU tower in the original box
(from the case), the monitor back in its original box and checked them as
luggage.
That night I get a call from him that the computer "rattles" and does not
work. I have him open it op and tell me what he sees. "The black box thing
(disk drive) is laying loose in the bottom of the case, all of the cards are
bend out of their connectors...".
In our haste to boot the machine on Christmas morning, I had totally
forgotten to screw the hard drive into the case!!!!
The story has a happy ending. He was able to put the parts back together
(talk about an interesting "field support telehpone call!), and nothing was
really damaged. Ove the past ten years he has built many machines out of
spare parts for family and friends, and is a reasonable hardware guy for
these types of machines.
Unfortunately, he never developed an interest in programming.......