[ILUG] Nice linux 3D game: http://www.parsec.org/

[John P . Looney]

On Mon, Oct 04, 1999 at 11:04:06AM +0100, Philip Trickett mentioned:
> My condolences.................................
> 
> Tell me though, how did you do that,  and should I know something, as a soon
> to be new owner of a BP6?

 It's more of a warning to all ATX owners. I've been playing with, and
breaking hardware for years. I've blown up at least three hard drives, and
Amiga CPU, a VGA ISA card, and a sound card. 

 I thought I knew all the interesting ways of blowning stuff up, from highh
voltage, to static. So, I used to always connect the power cable of a
computer I was working on, so the case would be earthed. That way, you
don't need to worry about static electricity (ok, there was once when I was
fitting the power to the switch at the front - really should have taken out
the power cable, but I'm sorta immune to 220V shocks by now).

 Anyway, I was fitting the heatsinks, and it turns out that Socket370 is a
tad bigger than Intels's old Pentiums. But if you ask for a "Celeron"
heatsink, you get a pentium one. The clip just needs to be streched a
little. And the BP6 has very little room around the CPU, for a big heatsink
- it's a crowded board. I wasn't putting enough force into pushing the ckip
down, and it slipped out, and touched the board itself. I saw a little
spark, and thought "That's odd - it's powered off".

 Turns out that ATX cases provide power to the motherboards, even when they
are powered off, to allow for boards with "wakeup-on-dial" functionality.
So, though it's completely silent, your ATX board has 12v going around the
edge. One touch of metal off that, and "sayonara motherboard". I no longer
will leave the power cable in when doing hardware stuff on a machine.

Kate

-- 
Microsoft. The best reason in the world to drink beer.
http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~valen