26 replies to this topic

[Foebane]

This thread is for those crazy things you've ever done with your A8 that could easily fry it, or damage it irreparably.

My story is this:

I was bored to tears one evening and decided to see what would happen if I plugged in a cart, only to remove it slowly at an angle whilst the system was powered up (an 800XL).

The cart was Pole Position, and I managed to achieve some very funky and weird effects on the screen whilst the game was still in-race(!) before the screen went blank and I repeated the cycle.

I did this for over an HOUR!

Of course, I didn't know at the time that this is usually a recipe for disaster, but everything was fine afterwards - maybe I was just lucky.

Then again, just last week I managed to totally screw up a TV set just by plugging my PC's TV output into the front AV socket (which is what it's DESIGNED for, right?) I think the only difference is the TV was ON at the time.

But then, obviously, so was the Atari.

Have any of you ever done stuff like this out of boredom or just curiosity?

[Rybags]

I somehow managed to damage the internal power supply of my Atari 400 over 20 years ago. Luckily, I got it fixed for free by a friends father.

I managed to fry a TNT2 with TV-out by plugging it in to the VCR. Luckily it was still under warrantee and got replaced the same day.

Worst story: I simultaneously touched the metal shaft of my Wico joystick and Amiga montior and zapped the system. Now that computer thinks that the joystick is permanantly pushed forward.

[Wrathchild]

Only in early 80's when we had the Zx81 did I once
wonder what would happen if I put the power jack into
my mouth rather than the computer...

Needless to say I never needed to wonder about, or try,
something like that again afterwards.

(I would have been around the age of 12 at the time)

Mark

[Goochman]

I accidently plugged the power plug into the tv RCA connector on the 5200 (who knew it would fit) - luckily I only blew the Pokey chip.

[carmel_andrews]

I electricuted myself at 18 i think, i was wiring up a standard plug for my Speccy 128's PSU, i forget to put the plug cover on, switched on the plug at the mains, my finger(s) accidently rubbed against the exposed wires and got a nasty shock (now i know how lon chaney jnr felt)

[drac030]

Foebane, on Thu Nov 3, 2005 5:48 AM, said:

Of course, I didn't know at the time that this is usually a recipe for disaster, but everything was fine afterwards - maybe I was just lucky.

Well, Atari is not a Commodore 64 - pulling a cartridge out of the socket and plugging it in back while the machine is on, usually doesn't do any "disaster", and such an action is even foreseen and covered by the code in the operating system: the OS detects that the cartridge has changed at runtime and locks the system (jumps to an infinite loop).

Obviously, this is not a recommended way of changing cartridges.

Edited by drac030, Thu Nov 3, 2005 8:27 AM.

[Cybernoid]

Yup, I had a 3-in-1 OS switch on my 130XE (switch between standard ROM, Omnimon and another version... I think modified to be OS/B compliant but with fast Math)... anyway, I would switch that while the machine was on to see what it would do to the screen or the sound... most of the time the screen would repeat 4 characters down the whole screen.

Other crazy things I did:

Soldered a 1/4" jack into my ST to connect to the stereo. Little did I know that you do not want to work with an open motherboard on shag carpet in the winter. ST did not work after that.

I created an "autofire" joystick by soldering an alarm clock speaker to the fire button of a joystick... whenever the alarm when off, the joystick would fire. Not very useful, but oh well.. it worked.

I electrocuted myself by messing with a radio with the back off, while it was plugged in. I remember feeling the current through my thumb and foot...

Fun, Fun, Fun!!!

[Foebane]

Other stupid stuff I've done, as a teenager:

Fried my Atari 1010 tape deck's motherboard by poking around blindly with the power lead (which was a female connector) which connected with the SIO (male) port. Oops!

Fried my old Texas Instruments Speak 'n' Maths by inadvertantly plugging the power lead into the earphone socket. Oopsy again!

But the STUPIDEST thing I ever did was connect two Lego light bricks to the mains - BOOM!! One of the lights was totally destroyed (of course) but the other one still worked! The irony is, the pins for the lights' plugs were exactly the same size as the holes in one of those small mains leads for cassette decks.

That's asking for trouble, really.

[NightSprinter]

I tried to play my XEGS that I won for under a buck-thirty off eBay with a C64 power supply.. now I have 11 cartridges and no system.

[birdie3]

Cybernoid, on Thu Nov 3, 2005 12:10 PM, said:

I created an "autofire" joystick  by soldering an alarm clock speaker to the fire button of a joystick... whenever the alarm when off, the joystick would fire.  Not very useful, but oh well.. it worked. 

[Zybex]

This was very stupid

I use a PC power supply (5v) with an Atari 2600. I test the voltage with a multimeter and i get 5v, i think this is okay!, i plug it to the 2600 and "woooooooooooooom", the 7805 regulator fly in pieces.

[Allas]

This is not an accident, but is a bad desicion.

There is a time that I need money to buy diskkettes for my 800XL. Some day I didn't think a better thing than to change my old Atari 2600CX console for a box of 10 diskettes.

Edited by Allas, Fri Nov 4, 2005 12:27 AM.

[carmel_andrews]

There was Also the time wher a bought a cheap and nasty second hand apple ii with disk setup, there was a voltage switch on the back of the apple ii for 110 and 240 volt settings (i thinks), not bothering to change the setting, i set up the apple ii, switch on the power and BANG, a big puff of smoke dissipated from the apple ii, one dead apple ii later and 20 odd squiddly quid down the drain (albeit this was many years ago, v. late 80's)

[Cybernoid]

birdie3, on Thu Nov 3, 2005 7:25 PM, said:

Cybernoid, on Thu Nov 3, 2005 12:10 PM, said:

I created an "autofire" joystick  by soldering an alarm clock speaker to the fire button of a joystick... whenever the alarm when off, the joystick would fire.  Not very useful, but oh well.. it worked. 

Hehehe. Also, don't try drinking alcohol with your girlfriend while looking at electrical equipment. My girlfriend and I were drinking and she was looking at a 15" multisync monitor I was using to connect Arcade JAMMA boards to (as well as the ST2JAMMA project I was working on). She somehow spilled wine cooler into the monitor.... poof!!!

She managed to let the smoke out of that monitor. Little did I know that she would become my wife. I should have taken this as a warning to how she would treat my Atari stuff!

[Shawn Jefferson]

When I was about 12 years old I hooked up my door to my Atari computer so that when someone opened the door to my room, my computer would say (via the SAM software), "Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!". I taped two metal plates, one to the door and one to the door jamb and connected them to the joystick button of the computer via some long wires.

No that wasn't the stupid part, that was pretty cool actually. The stupid part comes in later.

I figured this was pretty cool and I was pretty clever, so I decided to hook up my computer to the phone line in a similiar way so that I could get my computer to do something when the phone rang. Ooops. I guess what I didn't realize back then (or it slipped my mind) is that there is quite a bit of power running through the telephone wires and that power isn't supposed to be fed into my joystick ports. I had to get the local Atari electronics guru to fix it for me.

I don't know if its a coincidence or not, but that particular 800XL (which I still have) has a keyboard mylar that has traces that look very burnt up one side.

[Almost Rice]

Foebane, on Thu Nov 3, 2005 12:41 PM, said:

Other stupid stuff I've done, as a teenager:

Fried my Atari 1010 tape deck's motherboard by poking around blindly with the power lead (which was a female connector) which connected with the SIO (male) port. Oops!

I did the same thing to my 800xl and 1050 setup. Luckily those were the only 2 things in the chain. I have learned never to just poke plugs in blindly on the back of the atari. Recently I removed the POKEY from the 800xl and used it. I just noticed that 800xl now works. I guess only the I/O was damaged since the sound worked when installed in another system.

Edited by Almost Rice, Sun Dec 11, 2005 11:39 PM.

[Artlover]

carmel_andrews, on Thu Nov 3, 2005 9:20 AM, said:

I electricuted myself

Cybernoid, on Thu Nov 3, 2005 12:10 PM, said:

I electrocuted myself

I think you fellows may mean "shocked", as electrocuted means being killed by electricity. Unless you guys are some kind of ghost or haunted entity.

[Cybernoid]

Artlover, on Mon Dec 12, 2005 12:14 AM, said:

carmel_andrews, on Thu Nov 3, 2005 9:20 AM, said:

I electricuted myself

Cybernoid, on Thu Nov 3, 2005 12:10 PM, said:

I electrocuted myself

I think you fellows may mean "shocked", as electrocuted means being killed by electricity. Unless you guys are some kind of ghost or haunted entity.

Yes, you are semantically correct, but it was a really BAD shock, and I wished I was dead afterwards.

[doctorclu]

Cybernoid did say...
"She managed to let the smoke out of that monitor. Little did I know that she would become my wife. I should have taken this as a warning to how she would treat my Atari stuff! "


Having met her... meh.. you could have done worse.

I get bored with hardware a lot and try many things.

First off, I have it on pretty good authority that if want to short out a Commodore 64 just stick a penny in the cartridge slot and turn it on. This was something a friend of mine did to the school's Commodore computers.. a lot.

Personal experience:

-Took a 1040 STE and recased it, floppy drive, CD rom drive and hard drive all in one AT PC case. With a little help from dad managed to get a AT power supply to power everything.

Stupid part:

-When trying to hook up an led I hooked up the wires wrong.. pow!


-Once had a hard drive that a surface mounted resistor was knocked off. I applied some crazy glue and stuck it back on. It worked!

-Worked to make a Macintosh tablet out of a Duo 230 laptop. Afer a lot of dremmel tooling, super glue, and a soldering iron to melt plastic just right in some spots, managed to have it where the screen bezzel was where the keyboard was. The front and back combined roughly well, and the computer powered up!

Stupid part: While the computer worked enough where I could see what was going on, in truth, a part of the screen was damaged when I was cutting around the screen. This of course was no big deal since the screen had a line that was wrong on it before, but at that point half the screen was not working. Not a bad trial run though.


- I liked the Sanyo 4900 phone with the exception of the antenea on the right side of the back. It made the phone feel odd, made it sit odd, etc. This was especially annoying when the antena part that screwed on broke off, leaving this bulbous part that served no purpose.
So after much dremmeling tooling, super glue and other things, I managed to removed the antena bulb and have a symethically even phone.
Phone reception was about as good as it was before strangely. Experimented with a couple of less bulky (and sometimes more bulky) antena designs to improve reception.

How about this interesting one to finish off this set...

In the early 80's my dad used to take me to the Atari Service Center in Arlington, TX to dig through their trash. While digging through it one day we got ahold of an Atari 2600 which had two hammer blows through the top of the case and through the motherboard. (Atari tried to destroy the merchanidse they tossed.)
After some apoxy, and jumpering some broken leads my dad had that Atari 2600 humming again in under a week. Thanks to that, we not only had the 2600 in the living room, but one for my bedroom as well. (At a time when 2600's were still going for a bit of money.)

Hmmm... after reading all this I'm starting to realize I haven't blown up near enough stuff in all my tinkering....

[Foebane]

I've had close shaves in the PC world as well:

One thing I've learned, is to always keep the PC earthed during the installation of cards, etc, but not to keep it connected to the power (ie, turn the power off but keep it plugged in).

I didn't obey this, and was once in the middle of installing an Ethernet card when the PC decided to turn on!! Cue frantic scrabbling to unplug it before any damage was done!

Luckily, I was fortunate.

[Cybernoid]

Foebane, on Tue Dec 13, 2005 2:27 PM, said:

Luckily, I was fortunate.

I would say that fortunately you were lucky!

[emkay]

Foebane, on Tue Dec 13, 2005 9:27 PM, said:

Luckily, I was fortunate.

Not luckily .... technically

It seems, your PC started after a "wakeup signal" given by the PCI card.
This means, the card was plugged already when the PC started.

Edited by emkay, Tue Dec 13, 2005 4:19 PM.

[Almost Rice]

Foebane, on Tue Dec 13, 2005 3:27 PM, said:

I've had close shaves in the PC world as well:

One thing I've learned, is to always keep the PC earthed during the installation of cards, etc, but not to keep it connected to the power (ie, turn the power off but keep it plugged in).

I didn't obey this, and was once in the middle of installing an Ethernet card when the PC decided to turn on!! Cue frantic scrabbling to unplug it before any damage was done!

Luckily, I was fortunate.

That is one of the reasons I hate soft power buttons. I miss having direct control of the power when you wanted to turn it off and on.

[Foebane]

emkay, on Tue Dec 13, 2005 11:16 PM, said:

It seems, your PC started after a "wakeup signal" given by the PCI card.
This means, the card was plugged already when the PC started.

Possibly, but it was a LOONG time ago and I was panicked at the time, so I don't remember!

[pkblack]

I poured soda in the cartridge port of my brothers genesis. A friend dared me to so I did just for laughs. we also put a gameboy in the school pool to see how long it would work under water. we let it dry out for a week and it still worked but the screen was messed up. The first laptop I had was this old junker and if it was cold it would take for ever to start up. one time I leave it out in the car during the winter and I needed to use it so I put it on top of a kero heater and forgot about it until it blew up