An ode to stupidity.

[bonestonne]

Ok, heres how my friend caused the trajic death of his computer.

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g142/bon...er/IMG_0898.jpg

my friend was troubleshooting his computer i suppose. See anything wrong yet? most people who've built there own computer should. if you haven't, this picture may mean nothing to you.

What does happen when you insert RAM backwards in the slot? is a question some n00bs may ask.

the answer: you fry your ram and your motherboard.

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g142/bon...er/IMG_0899.jpg

blurry, but gets the point across. you see the notch on the RAM, you don't see it in the same spot on the board do you?

heres all i have to say:

in doing this, you lose all chance at getting your board to work again. the other slot may work, however i have no way to test it, as his only stick of DDR ram is now fried.

never push the power button unless your RAM is securely seated properly and both clips are holding it in place. the only parts easily taken from the system that are still good are his optical drives [CD-RW, DVD] his hard drive, his Visiontek Radeon 9200, his SB Live, processor, heatsink/fan, and PSU. the case is marginal for being useful.

can i rebuild the system? well, maybe. the closest i can come is a system with SD RAM, no firewire, no USB 2.0, and no DVD drive, and a PSU that puts out 100W less than what he had.

at this point, the question is whats cheaper, a new system, or a rebuilt system. and when you work it out, for the problems source, neither.

comments are welcome, my friend will get the news tonight after i help another friend build their C2D rig, 2.4ghz C2D, 2gb DDR, 300GB SATA-I, X-Fi, DVD+/-RW.

if i do end up rebuilding his system, it wont be as good, and it'll cost him for this job, the last time i fixed the computer i did it free.

[DigeratiPrime]

The pic was taken with a Canon S410 and should not be so blurry, try holding the camera steady and using flash.

You don't have another (cheap) stick of memory to test with?

[bonestonne]

excuse my oldschoolness, but i have no computers that use DDR, thus my lack of it has caused the inability to test it.

soon i may have a stick to use to test it, but no promises. my newest computer is an Athlon 2200 system that uses SD-RAM...if i had DDR ram i would have at least a 2ghz CPU...

don't blame me, blame my parents for having the philosophy of "what you have is good enough, you don't need another computer"