OT: Give-away - WE HAVE A WINNER!!!

[Snelski]

Mods please allow this, I know this is off-topic but hey...so am I - I am merely giving stuff away so that can only be considered a group giveaway - not a group buy ...

I have been around since the ol' days and would like to thank some of you personally for trading with me - some of you may not even be around anymore (these are in random order people!!!):

* blade - Thanks for working tirelessly on keeping our community together, there's not enough I can say for how much you've done for all of us ...(obviously sucking up to da massa!!!)
* Murray (I consider you a good friend - thanks for everything - your nick should be "Da Gadget Man!!!")
* DaveJ (same in terms of considering you a friend and fellow local-cannot-stop-upgrading-no-matter-how-much-I-try-hardware-junkie)
* Nitro237 - Thanks for being a totally reliable trader and I hope someday you do make it here for the First Saturday swapmeet in Dallas
* Red Dawn - first trade and always a great trade, thanks for some great deals Willie
* compuwiz1 - thanks for all the deals, they've been great and I'm sorry that you're biz did not work out the way you had hoped
* klee - thanks also for all the great deals and always coming through
* Emo - you're not around anymore but I still appreciate all the deals and conversations
* billgerr - great deals, no fuss, thanks for not being just another Bill
* Topshelf - not around much anymore, but still the PCA CEO...well...maybe
* Dogman - NORM!!! nuff said, great trader
* Laputa - Vince - you da man, you've been great to deal with
* smb - great deals, patient to no end, thanks for everything Sal
* clarkse - class act and keep da thumbsucker happy will ya? Hope your son is doing well, don't let the kangies get 'em
* Underclocked - thanks for putting the trading guidance together Richard, and I hope everything is well with you
* golfreak - well...you're sorta around, but you'll always be known to us as the one as "Quickfinger" since you (stop thinking in the wrong direction here folks...) always beat (hey!!! I said stop thinking in that direction!!!) everyone to the punch when great deals were on the ol' board. There have been many times that I wanted something only to see you post first
* bamavoo - I miss the insults that you and Murry...uhm, that's Murray used to throw at each other
* Askalon - Class act in my book, honest trader to the core
* nexus_7 - Thanks for speeling everything correctly - and for ALWAYS having the latest and greatest vid cards up for sale here

***If you're not on this list please realize that I appreciate anyone that I've dealt with and also realize that I have brain damage...yeah...dat's da ticket!!!***

So, I would like to give away something cheap and something that I don't have to pay extra for - because I'm a cheapskate just like the rest of you here!!! Bwuhahahahaha!!! It's the only way to be!!!

Up for grabs: a mystery box of stuff that could contain everything and (then again) nothing that you would want . You can imagine after trading as long as I have that I have collected some extra parts from anything to anything. Some of it might be good and some of it may be bad. It will probably contain some older modems, hard drives, other drives, possibly some software, heatsinks, nics, etc. Probably none of it will contain drivers, but if you're posting here you're 'probably' smart enough to get those somewhere yourself - LOL . You get my drift here, basically stuff that may or may not be useful to you - nuff said!!!

I will even pay shipping probably per UPS due to the weight, give me a little slack on gathering the stuff up and sending it - but rest assured that it will be done within the week.

Rules: The funniest (and probably dumbest) short story about something that happened to you with building computers - nothing perverse or off-color here, just computer-building related stories. Any one person (except for me of course because I'm special) can only post 2 times in the thread so that we don't get someone rigging this deal to further their own chances. I will decide the contest by Wednesday 10/31/01 and I might just take a poll who won. Why? Because I said so and apparantly I like making up my own rules!!! - LOL

I'm also posting this so some of the new members and lurkers can see something positive and realize that there are a LOT of good traders in this community. Please don't be afraid to try and post here, there are no losing stories to tell .

PS> Murray, you're not allowed to win because some of this stuff is stuff you don't want to get back - hahaha - some of this is still from the box you gave me with odds and ins that I'm just not ending up using. (Just had to post that since you may sit there and go "Hey!!! That stuff looks familiar!!!" Not only that but you just have TOO MUCH STUFF already!!!

GOOD LUCK EVERYONE and thanks for your interest!!!

[Snelski]

It can be as simple as: "Well, I once decided to pour water straight on my processor because I thought that's what they meant with watercooling...needless to say it was not a pretty sight when the paramedics brought me back to life due to electrocution...I was holding on to the processor when I poured the water on it...now I know better and use a hose while being a safe distance from the PC."

See? Not difficult at all ...

[Sean]

I have only built one computer, and well, I don't have a very funny story. Can I make one up?

[bitSLAP]

Okies. It doesn't have to specifically building them does it?

Like back at my highschool, the admin and I used to go and totally rip the board office off! We'd show up with his nissan pathfinder, and a cart. We'd totally pack that thing with computer stuff from the IT department, and be gone before the boss showed up. If the boss was there, we'd just "lose count", or take 8 gig hard drives instead of 3 gig ones, and make away laughing. They were complete morons! Our student to computer ratio was 1 to 3, which is about as good as it gets

Anyway, that's my funny story

[Danielm7]

One time, at computer camp...

[smb]

Hey man, no problem


Here my story:

When I bought my first computer, a Packard Bell Pentium 75mhz. I bought Wing Commander the same day so I could get in on some gaming action. It required 520k's of free memory in DOS to run with sound, and not crash. I installed the game, and could not for the life of me figure out why the game wouldn't run, even tho I had 540megs of free disk space. I deleted program after program off of my hard drive, but still couln't get it to run. I got mad and threw the P.O.S. game away.

[Fu Manchu]

i put windows 95 on my computer one time just to see how fast it would boot

dont know f thats funny or not ... buti found it funny watch win95 boot in like 2 seconds

[Sean]

Ok, well here's my first story:

I was trying to install an OS on my brand new, just made, first home built computer. I was getting really pissed. Looking in all the Tutorials I could find to figure out why the hell my computer would freeze when it said it need 320914009k (something like that) of dick space. Then, someone finally mentioned, "did you format the hard drive?" Well, guess what? I DIDN'T! LOL So, I did, and whala, loaded on as smooth as come be.

[NascarFool]

Installed XP for a test run. The PCI to AGP controller didn't work due to my ASUS A7A266 has no XP drivers available. So, I found the 2k driver and overwrote the XP driver. I'll be damned if XP didn't restore the file right back in a matter of seconds. I spent 3 hours messing with that driver. I moved the folder containing the back up driver and it still restored the replaced driver. I finally realized that the XP CD was still in the drive and XP was restoring the driver from the damned CD. After 3 hours and successfully replacing the driver, the Voodoo5 5500 sucked. So it was format C: and restore to 98SE from a ghost image.

[Reg Kmet]

well when i built my mighty AMD crapbox about 4, i forgot to remove the piece of plastic from the heatsink and for the life of me couldnt figure out why the hell it was overheating! oh, that combined with the fac that i read the motherboard manual upside down, so i ended up feeding the chip 3.5 volts!

umm after a complete hardware reinstall i couldnt get the modem to work, i was so pissed and mad, i took it to a tech to install... took him 3 days, paid him 45$. 3 months later i reformat and found out that all he did was add new hardware instead of add new modem...


needless to say i was pissed and imbarassed!

[PreDatoR]

LOL some of these story's are good....


This one time i thought it would be really cool to hook up my 300 watt car amp to my computer and power a 12 Inch Kicker Solobaric Sub..... Which it was damn cool.... I spliced into the 12v lead for the power to the amp and jumped it over to the remote... When the comp came on so did the amp... Had a AWE 64 sound card with a line out that i ran a set rca's to headphone jack too.... Well while hooking up the amp i had a major brainfart and forgot to turn the computer off.... This was back in the cel300a/450 day's.... I had 3 fans running but never heard any of them.... Well needless to say when i cut through the wire i got lit up like a xmas tree. My computer shutdown... Sitting there twitching cause i got a shock from hell i couldn't get the damn computer to boot up for the life of me.... Well the bare 12v wire which i had just cut through was grounding out on the case and the PSU wouldn't kick on... DUH! took me about 10 min to figure that out.... So i left it off hooked up the amp got all the wires covered up. Hit the power button and i had Bass from hell!!! Winamp kicked serious ass as well as HL TFC did too.... It felt like u was in the game almost with the ground shaking from the sub.... Well thats my stupid story....

[Snelski]

Allright!!! Now we're talking!!!

Yeah, I do think I'd like to keep this to real stories this time - maybe next time fictional would be okay, but I think there are plenty of funny stories - thanks for participating guys!!!

This was back in the cel300a/450 day's

That scared me since I am still running a file server with one of these 300A/464Mhz/FAB28 jobbers - back in the ol' days...LOL

Keep 'em coming guys!!!

[Snelski]

And btw Danielm7, you never finished yer story dood...hehe

[BillyGoat]

a long long time ago ,in a operating system far far awy (windows 3.1 to be exact)
i had a intel 486, and my buddy had a 586 100 chip he wanted to sell me, so i reset the jumpers poped in the old amd and went to town testing out its speed , wasnt impressed so, i poped back in the intel with out reseting the voltage and roasted it b4 post, i mean theyre was een a burnt smell, might not seem like a big deal, but back then it was a 150$ cpu and i went without a computer for close to 3 months before I could replace it

[Laputa]

You guys can have the free stuff; and here's just for the fun of it

oformat c:/q/s <"y" Do'h!

Delete Primary partition <"y" EscEscEsc...Reset....there goes three years for ya... Do'h!

Just installed a new power supply and PC won't come on anymore. Guess what; forgot to plug in the power on cables...Do'h!

Bang!...then jumpping away in a speed that I couldn't even believe....burned the AT on/off switch when I accidentally short it......Do'h!

Have you ever drop a hard drive, well, it's like this. Click...click...click...Click...click...clickDo'h!