On Apr 22, 2005, at 2:11 AM, Rick Womer wrote:
Failing computer hardware must communicate with working hardware in a diabolical way. Last fall, failure of the motherboard on our venerable G3 Mac was followed by failure of the backup external hard drive, just as the data were being transferred to our new G5. Coincidence? I think not...!
A number of years ago I read about a guy who accidentally swapped the Live and Earth wires when wiring up an extension cord.
When attached to a very expensive BBC Micro setup it fried the computer and everything attached to it. Instantly. The photos of the logic board were quite interesting.
The worst I've done is that I fried a HDD when plugging in a case fan while the system was powered on. I think I also fried an I/O controller card doing something similar a couple of years later. These days with everything integrated on the motherboard I wouldn't dare do such a thing.
Cheers,
- Dave
http://www.digistar.com/~dmann/
