I find computer repair sometimes frustrating, but almost always a challenge. Since I enjoy a challenge there is usually some vague way in which I enjoy fixing (or fighting) computer problems, even if I am half frustrated at the time. But often I am reminded why I don’t do this for a living.
In one word: Accidents.
“Oops” is one of those often-used words in my vocabulary. It seems like it comes up in one form or another no matter what I’m doing . . . writing . . . construction projects . . . fixing computers. I’ve found that before I undertake anything I had best stop and ask myself, “Can you stand messing this up?” If the answer is no, then I’d better not do it, because half of the things I do I flub to one degree or another.
So, if I have an accident with my computer equipment it might rate an “Argh!” or “Darn!” or “I’m so stupid!” but I get over it and life goes on. But if it is someone else’s computer . . . I envision the very worst and that involves my mental collapse when I realize my latest “Oops” has just fried someone’s entire electronic possessions.
No, I don’t think so. I’ll stick with putzing around with my electronic gadgetry. And should I ever start to think differently, something will always come along to remind me of this fact.
Saturday I was up at my grandparents’ helping Grandpa O with computer issues.
I should back up and say a few weeks ago Lachlan and I helped Grandpa O build a new computer from scratch. That was a pretty cool experience, minus the stress and nail biting when we couldn’t get the processor fan mounted (rightly) on the chip. That was the “Oops” incident on that occasion, but we got the computer together, installed linux, and . . . everything worked. Yay and all that, now I want to build myself a computer!
Anyhow, a few weeks later Grandpa informed me that his new computer wasn’t working. It was dead in the water. He left it running one day and returned to find it off, and was not able to turn it back on. Ah. One of those problems which is either cataclysmic failure of the highest degree, or just a little problem that can be easily fixed. Time to start trouble-shooting.
I arrived at their apartment and found the new computer in his office unplugged. Grandpa said when it was plugged in and he tried to turn it on nothing happened. As any tech knows, the first step is to re-try anything the customer tried, because often the customer didn’t do something right. I suspected that probably either the power cord was bad, or the power supply in the computer had gone bad, but I was going to start at the beginning and try the initial setup. If that didn’t work I intended to replace the old power cord with one I brought and see if that would resolve the problem.
With Grandpa watching I plugged his computer back into his power cord and pressed the power button on the front of the computer. What happened next is something I hope never happens again when I turn a computer on. The computer gave a very loud electric crackle and sparks shot out the back of the power supply, followed by a very hot electric burning smell.
Thirty seconds working on the computer, Rundy, and you’ve already blown it to kingdom come. I looked at Grandpa. He looked at me. “Well,” I said. “That wasn’t good.”
Something was clearly wrong. Very wrong. Power supply, power cord with a short, or something else? And, in the back of my mind, I wondered if there was any computer left to fix. With a crackle and flash of electricity I imagined the motherboard could now be so much fused junk, the hard drives smoking ruins. I hoped the power supply had absorbed all the surge and the rest of the computer remained in untouched bliss . . . at times like these you learn to supress your worst fears and just work.
I took the power cord that I brought and plugged it into a different wall outlet (got to think of every possibility) and then plugged in the computer. Grandpa and I were both nervous. If, by any chance, the computer was not already totally fried and if the power supply was the problem, switching power cords would not remove the problem and therefore if I turned the computer back on the computer would get a power surge that might just fry all the innards . . . if they weren’t all fried already. Grandpa suggested unplugging the motherboard before turning on the power supply again. This seemed like a good idea to me (and it was, from one perspective) but when I tried to turn the power supply on nothing happened. At the time I figured this meant the power supply was the offending piece of equipment, but later that day I realized that when nothing was plugged into the power supply it probably wouldn’t have come on anyhow. But at this point I took this as evidence that the power supply was the evil piece of equipment. So I pulled the power supply out of Grandpa’s old computer and put it into his new computer. I turned the computer on . . . and it worked. No fried computer today folks. Get out of jail for free.
By this point I realized that since the original power supply wasn’t actually plugged into any device when we tested it on my new cord we didn’t have conclusive proof that the power supply was the offending part. It was still possible that the power cord had a short and the power supply had simply blown out sparks in spectacular fashion because of the shorting cord. Possible. I mentioned the fact to Grandpa, but he looked at me and after a short pause we both decided that if testing the power supply meant plugging it into a motherboard (and thus risking the motherboard’s life and health) we would just assume the power supply was bad and get a new one for the old computer.
So we went out shopping. Grandpa wanted to put in several additional case fans into his new computer as well as getting a power supply so he could have his old computer up and running along with his new computer. A stop at his local computer parts store brought us a new power supply but they didn’t stock case fans. So we went to RadioShack. RadioShack carried a limited supply of fans but they were expensive and they weren’t of the right type. So no fans. Grandpa decided to skip the additional fans and we returned to the apartment to put together his old computer.
The old computer had two hard drives, one with Linux installed, the other with Win98 installed. These were both old hard drives that hadn’t been the primary drives when the computer was last used (the old primary drive was now in his new computer). At present the computer was attempting to boot to Linux (unsuccessfully) and Grandpa claimed that his Win98 install wasn’t showing up on the bootloader (I didn’t get a chance to double-check that). So he wanted me to switch drives so the Win98 drive was master. Easy enough, I thought. I’ve switched hard drives plenty of times.
But no. The cable that daisy-chained the two hard drives together was an old cable. In modern times all manufacturers have been smart enough to make it so you can’t plug the IDE cables into the hard drives incorrectly. Not on the old cables. Now, I knew that the hard drive wouldn’t be recognized if the IDE cable was installed incorrectly but I had a vague thought that no permanent harm would be done if I made a mistake. In any case, I thought if I didn’t get anything confused and had stuff plugged in right . . .
To make a long story short, somewhere along the line I got things screwed up. And, it seems, I trashed both old hard drives. In any case, it came to the point that no matter how I plugged in the cables, or how I set the drive jumpers, the BIOS wouldn’t recognize either of them. Now I talked to Lachlan (Younger brother #2, taking a course for computer A+ certification) after I got home and he agreed that it can be very difficult to figure out how to plug in an IDE cable that is not properly marked. He confessed that he had plugged some devices in incorrectly during his class. He said sometimes you could just switch the plug around and then everything worked. Other times . . . he said he thought he had trashed some drives. So I guess I am in good company. But that didn’t make me feel much better in the end, and no better at the time when I sat in front of Grandpa’s old computer and realized I’d just killed both of his old hard drives.
The sense of mortification and stupidity. Try to fix something Rundy, and you break it irreparably.
And that is why I don’t want to go into this for a job. Grandpa was very good natured about it. After all, I got his new computer working, and it was free help, and the drives were old. So I didn’t feel required to throw myself off a cliff on that occasion, but what if I was supposed to be the “professional” earning big bucks to fix someone’s computer? What then?
Lachlan is going to take his A+ certification test shortly. Arlan (younger brother #1) recently decided he wanted A+ certification for expanded job opportunities, and he just passed his certification test. That surprised me a bit because he has done less work with computers than me. (But he is very good at taking tests.) I think, wow, if Arlan can pass the test with such little preparation, not even taking a course, maybe I could too. Computer jobs pay well . . .
Yeah, but remember those two dead hard drives?
I think I’ll stick to playing around with my computers. I don’t care to go confessing that I just killed someone’s expensive computers. I don’t care for the visions of smoke pouring out of corporate servers and someone screaming at me, “You’re in charge! What do we do? The company is going down!”
Wouldn’t happen, you say? Yeah, well you probably didn’t think sparks could shoot out the back of your computer either.
Things can happen in the computer world. I know. And I think I’ll just stick to fiddling around with my own computer.
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Interesting bit of historical family trivia:
Way back in the early days of home PCs we inherited an old AT&T server which had a big math co-processor (back when there was a separate chip called a math co-processor). For some reason we finally decided that we wanted to get rid of the AT&T box (It was huge . . . a 386 of some type). Someone (Dad, specifically, since I was too young and timid at the time) got the brilliant idea of trying to save the math co-processor out of the AT&T box and putting it into another computer.
I vividly remember us extracting the chip with a pair of pliers. I think I vividly remember because I was sure something would go horribly wrong. Things didn’t exactly go smoothly. Once we got it extracted, we straightened out the pins (yeah, it was in pretty stiff and came out a little rough) and we inserted the chip into the math co-processor slot in the new–I mean equally old–other computer that we were keeping.
Amazingly enough, the thing actually seemed to work.
At least, that’s what I remember.
It’s weird how some things that shouldn’t be successful actually work. And it’s amazing how tough those old computers were built. They were like tanks.
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