2 ms·

Mine was plugging in the power connector backwards on a super important ide drive (it was the only backup for an already failed server) and watching smoke issue

Mine was plugging in the power connector backwards on a super important ide drive (it was the only backup for an already failed server) and watching smoke issue from its controller board. Having to explain what I'd done to the boss was so scary, I slunk home with the drive and traced the power circuit with my oscilloscope until I found a capacitor that had blown short. I soldered on a through-hole replacement and it worked! I pulled the data and felt like king of the whole frikkin world for the next week or so.

mkramlich 15y ago
>Mine was plugging in the power connector backwards on a super important ide drive (it was the only backup for an already failed server) and watching smoke issue from its controller board. yep this could cause you to lose a job. > Having to explain what I'd done to the boss was so scary, I slunk home with the drive and traced the power circuit with my oscilloscope until I found a capacitor that had blown short. I soldered on a through-hole replacement and it worked! pulling this off, however, could land you a job! lesson: mistakes are human. talent and initiative are rare.
bphogan 15y ago
My gosh that's one of the best stories I've heard in a long time. The thing that worries me is that things like this are going to me rarer and rarer - there seems to be less interest in electronics, and less electronics that can be hack-fixed like that.
- X-Istence 15y ago
  I am a software engineer by degree, but also took many electrical engineering courses in uni, and I can honestly say that it is starting to make a comeback. Sparkfun, Adafruit, MAKE and many other places are starting to make it more accessible, cheaper and easy to learn. The Arduino has been a boon, providing people with a cheap but powerful microcontroller to get started. While yes technology is getting smaller I have found that with many parts I can now easily find replacements online, I can get advice from other professionals, I can easily figure out how something works so that I can fix it. I've currently got a power supply sitting on my work bench that has a weird issue and I am slowly going through, making a net list and building a schematic with part numbers in an attempt to isolate the fault. Maybe I am a rare breed, but seeing as how the interest at Maker Faire keeps going up, and interest in electronics also keep going up I will assume that eventually more and more people will get into experimenting in this field. At least that is my hope.
  - axelator 15y ago
    arduino FTW! just getting into it and caused my first electrical fire. :-) good stories.

mkramlich 15y ago

>Mine was plugging in the power connector backwards on a super important ide drive (it was the only backup for an already failed server) and watching smoke issue from its controller board. yep this could cause you to lose a job. > Having to explain what I'd done to the boss was so scary, I slunk home with the drive and traced the power circuit with my oscilloscope until I found a capacitor that had blown short. I soldered on a through-hole replacement and it worked! pulling this off, however, could land you a job! lesson: mistakes are human. talent and initiative are rare.

bphogan 15y ago

My gosh that's one of the best stories I've heard in a long time. The thing that worries me is that things like this are going to me rarer and rarer - there seems to be less interest in electronics, and less electronics that can be hack-fixed like that.

X-Istence 15y ago
I am a software engineer by degree, but also took many electrical engineering courses in uni, and I can honestly say that it is starting to make a comeback. Sparkfun, Adafruit, MAKE and many other places are starting to make it more accessible, cheaper and easy to learn. The Arduino has been a boon, providing people with a cheap but powerful microcontroller to get started. While yes technology is getting smaller I have found that with many parts I can now easily find replacements online, I can get advice from other professionals, I can easily figure out how something works so that I can fix it. I've currently got a power supply sitting on my work bench that has a weird issue and I am slowly going through, making a net list and building a schematic with part numbers in an attempt to isolate the fault. Maybe I am a rare breed, but seeing as how the interest at Maker Faire keeps going up, and interest in electronics also keep going up I will assume that eventually more and more people will get into experimenting in this field. At least that is my hope.
- axelator 15y ago
  arduino FTW! just getting into it and caused my first electrical fire. :-) good stories.