h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1720

"26% PSU and power issues
23% Bad gear and user negligence
13% Heatsink related
15% Assembly and moving
10% Lightning strike and static
3% Computer cruelty
6% USB related
2% Overclocking"

So basically, if we stopped messing about with them, they wouldn't break so often...

(intrigued to know how bad gear can cause a computer malfunction!)

Our harddrive on this machine 'just failed' some time back, and in effect the whole machine is now 'dead' because its old and not high enough spec and not many percentage marks there for death due to beer/redwine

Depends on what you do to the computer whilst taking bad gear, I s'pose?

RF

I don't know about PCs relaly; this is my first one, but in terms of my laptop distorying career.
laptop no 1. developed power supply fault in first week of ownership, sent back, returned, developed same fault sent it back, recieved it back, same fault sent it back; they replaced motherboard and PSU and some other stuff, it worked, for a couple of months and then got nicked.

Laptop no II. Had it for a couple of months, and the power pack began to fall to bits, the socket for the power supply disentigrated, the PCMCIA slot fell out of the machine, and the keyboard caved in on one side.

Laptop no three. Keyboard entirely distoyed in about four months.

laptop no five. keyboard distoyed in about six months, pcmci slot failed completely, screen got a crack in one corner caseing came loose.

First PC - died due to being old and the CMOS battery leaked allover the motherboard and ate away the circuit board leaving all that cruddy crusty battery residue all over the shop. It did sorta work, but the keyboard and mouse weren't too happy.

Pc #2 - Died due to overclocking. Sorta. Worked fine when it left my hands, but wouldn't work for friend. Hmm.

Pc #3 - Motherboard died whilst re-inserting yonks old TV Card. I left the coax in which, I think, resulted in a static discharge through the card into the expansion slots thereby b*gg*ring it up completely. Wouldn't even boot in the end.

However, i am still ont he same 17" CRT monitor that I had in 1995, which even then was 2nd hand!

I still have, and use, the first PC (laptop) that I bought in 2000 or thereabouts.

RF

I had a happier storey with the next latop I got, I still have it and asides it being very slow processor, and the battery beign just about completely shot it works fine though I do want to replace that once I've got me new wizzo PC tower though that is likely to be a while off; I got it in Hmm, when I went to Manchester, 2000 or 2001 I think

The first PC I ever bought, a Tandy 1000 was retired gracefully once the hard disk got old and tired. It was so old that there were no replacements.

The second was a self built 386. The mother board died on that but the power supply is till in use powering and computer with an AMD KT6 400.

I had a 486 after that that just went phut one day and that was it.

The only computer that I have ever killed was one that was having intermittent power problems. It died when I dropped the PSU onto the motherboard. I dropped the PSU because I suddenly discovered where the power problem was!

I am not surprised that the hard disk in the photograph in the original link is on fire. Someone has forced the power connector in the wrong way. The yellow cable should be on the outside.

Donald

My first PC, a 386, (stop laughing!), went up because the MOBO couldn't handle the graphics card. Same thing happened to the replacement MOBO, so the dealer gave me a premium MOBO at no charge, and the thing finally worked.

My Hitachi notebook served me well for a number of years, but eventually suffered an LCD anurism in the upper left corner of the display, and one of the 32MB chips lost one bank of RAM, reducing the total to 48MB. The thing still works after a fashion, and may be eventually reincarnated as a router/firewall.

I've noticed that the PSU, CPU and graphics card fans are one of the most neglected bits. If your computer starts making noises, especially on boot, it may be time to replace a failing cooling fan..

that reminds me, I've still got my first PC a 486, 66 MHZ 12 MB RAM .5 GB HD PC lurnking in teh back of the cupbaord under teh stairs somwhere I think it is the harddrive on it that went Hmm, wonder if I could get a new HD for it and revive it from the dead?

If you can get it to boot from floppy, or CD, you may be able to run a small Linux distro and use it as a router/firewall

I just remembered, my first Pc was a Tandy 286. Not too bad. Last I saw of it I flogged it cheap to a mate who had plans to make a satelite decoder out of it. So long ago it was for the one with the sqauriel I think. But I might have got that wrong.

Computer Cruelty - what's that then? Sharpened bamboo up the motherboard?

Would have thought 'Bad gear and negligence' would have come under 'cruelty' too, obviously PCs are very fashion-conscious and attention-seeking.

My first home computer was a BBC B - Hah (5.25in floppies to you)! First work computer was an enormous great thing, very cutting-edge, housed in its own air-conditioned environment with sticky mats and double doors and worked off punched paper tape which I used to be able to read.

Nothing compared to the computer my grandad managed for the BBC after the Second World War (probably only a couple of others in the country at the time, maybe only half a dozen worldwide) worked off punch cards, took up a whole floor of the building (lots of magnetic tape and flashing lights, etc) and used for . . . Wages!

to your 286s and above

The first pc I ever *used* was an IBM PC. That's what it was called in them days - no fancy numbers or designations after it, like "286".

After switching it on, I would go and make a cup of tea whilst it booted up.

The software I used was Lotus 1-2-3 v2.0, a database programme called DataEase, and an IBM wordprocessing programme called Displaywrite.

RF

>> 5.25in floppies to you <<

You should be so lucky. All I had was a cassette tape that loaded programmes at 300 bytes per second and a word processor called electric pencil!

It's nice to see somebody new to computing post jazzhag.

Ah, the good old days!

Kids today don't know they're born!
In my day you either made your own or went without, very basic. Nowadays things automatically happen and not always what you want, but is a lot quicker.

P.S. Not that old, obviously old enough to have turned into a boring old fart though!

My own computer history - I've had one and a half PCs.

The first one developed a minor fault but was still under warranty so was sent off to supplier by Parcel Force heavily packaged and insured. Arrived at destination with great big hole in it (probably due to fork-lift truck)

Now THAT'S how to kill a computer.

The half is the bits that were replaced when the insurance came through (with a few added extras as not everything was killed by PF)


Zantic