Hardest, IDK. Most clever, the first that springs to mind is a power supply unit (PSU) replacement on an old HP server. It went down over the weekend, and HAD t

Hardest, IDK. Most clever, the first that springs to mind is a power supply unit (PSU) replacement on an old HP server. It went down over the weekend, and HAD to be back up. It also had a proprietary pin setup with more than the standard ATX plugs. I popped in an ATX replacement, and it wouldn't go. If you've never seen a PSU plug, it just has a bunch of cables placed into a plastic block for socket standardization - you're plugging in a chunk of plastic, which is physically assuring that each cable will go in place. Since I had little to lose, I severed the plastic block on the OEM PSU as to create two plugs: one ATX/standard, one proprietary. I then tried firing up the system with a standard ATX PSU in the ATX sockets, and the proprietary plugs (connected to a dead and not even power-connected) into the proprietary sockets. And it worked! I let the system run like this with a dead OEM PSU plugged into it with an open case as I waited for a proper part replacement. I'm still not sure what those cables actually did. I posted about this on Usenet, and got 1-2 emails over the years about how it had saved someone else's bacon. Sadly, I can't even find it after the Deja News -> Google Groups -> offline transition of Usenet search.