17 thoughts on “Igor’s favorite repair technique…”
I used that quite a bit back when I was working on computers with disk drive problems. The older disk drives would often fail to spin up because they would stop at a “dead spot” on the spindle.
I remember one time when I was called to fix a large server in an emergency. One of its disk drives had stopped working, and they asked if I could somehow copy the data from it to a replacement disk drive. After I had the replacement disk drive hooked up, I powered on the system, and the old disk drive refused to spin up. Since the server was sitting on the floor, I took the old disk drive and smacked it flat against the carpetted floor. The look on the customer’s face was priceless. I simply replied, “What? It’s alread broken.”. On the second smack against the floor, it spun up, and I was able to get the data copied off of it.
I can’t tell you how many things I’ve “fixed” by opening up the case, wiggling things around, can’t spot anything obviously wrong, and close it back up again and everything works fine. I didn’t “do” a damn thing to fix anything.
My latest was a computer that hung up in the boot process, “cannot find C drive”. Oh shit, a dead hard drive. So I did just that, unplugged everything that had a plug, reconnected it all, and it booted right up. Been working fine ever since. Was it just a corroded contact in a plug, or an intermittent contact in a ribbon cable? I’ll never know.
I’ve seen people make a career out of doing that. Unplug every plug and plug ’em back in. The important part is to do it one at a time so you don’t accidentally swap plugs around. With PC boards that had gold fingers and plugged into another board, cleaning the fingers with a Pink Pearl eraser got the big plugs working.
If that isn’t enough, using canned air to blow the dust bunnies out of the thing usually helps.
I had a TV station that called me – frantically – and said their HDD had failed. This was back in the day when Sony made drives, and the failure rate of one of the phases for the spindle motor would crap out.
They were desperate. I told ’em I had found a way to get the drive to spin ONE TIME, and after that the drive was toast (I had a customer that had the same problem, I applied the same fix, and then it failed a week later and they tried to blame me!). What I did was unmount the drive, keeping the cables connected (this was back in the X3T9 interface dual cable days!) and when the unit was powered on I very quickly twisted the drive on the spindle axis without unplugging anything. The drive would usually spin up because there were enough “phases” of the motor left to spin the disk but not start it up when powered on.
I spent the next 6 hours backing up the disk, TWICE, to floppies. Then I checked to see if the backups got written to properly. The TV station was a bunch of happy campers… and had 60+ 5-1/4″ backup floppies but nary a complaint outta them. The restore went perfectly well when they got a new HDD. NOT a Sony!
The secret is knowing which hammer to choose, or whether to use your fist or boot.
Can’t remember which starters I hit more. GM or the one on the Mitsubishi truck. Worked right up until it didn’t & it was time to replace the starter or solenoid
I had a Taurus starter motor that had a “flat spot”: in the starter. Had to wait until I got enough money to replace it – about three weeks.
Got real, REAL tired of banging on it.
Ford bwahahaha
Hey, had to do it on Chebbies as well. Ain’t endemic to Fords or any other starter/brand for that matter.
Years ago I was flown up to Washington by a Japanese business group who had purchased a nearly defunct sawmill. I enquired as to the problem and was told “Computer no work”. Walked over to the sawdust-encrusted 19 inch rack, 6 feet of it, and kicked the shit out of it one time. Hit the power and it fired right up. Then I spent a half-hour pulling and replugging the nearly 50 circuit boards. The looks on their faces was priceless, especially when they saw my bill.
I had a sawmill in northeastern Washington where the PC that collected data from the PLC stopped working. Believe it or not, the fan in the power supply had quit working and while the weather was cold it never got hot enough to blow the fuse. Weather warmed up, BAM!
I replaced the fuses, replaced the fan in the PSU, everybody was happy.
P.S. – why didn’t I just replace the PSU? It was an oddball PC with oddball parts, that’s why.
As a builder/cabinet maker I can attest that a hammer will fix almost anything.
Sometimes permanently, ask me how I know.
Look, with the suitable and proper application of a small amount of C4, you can fix ANYthing!
So is “hitting it” the default #1 corrective action” because I tried that with my chipper a few times and it didn’t work
, so I tried filling it with gas and it seemed to work better than hitting it.
Used to occasionally replace gear doors on Brit airplanes. Tech direction said to “fit using beating technique”. I loved signing it off verbatim. Crazy assed Brits. “… using an explosion-proof torch..”
I used that quite a bit back when I was working on computers with disk drive problems. The older disk drives would often fail to spin up because they would stop at a “dead spot” on the spindle.
I remember one time when I was called to fix a large server in an emergency. One of its disk drives had stopped working, and they asked if I could somehow copy the data from it to a replacement disk drive. After I had the replacement disk drive hooked up, I powered on the system, and the old disk drive refused to spin up. Since the server was sitting on the floor, I took the old disk drive and smacked it flat against the carpetted floor. The look on the customer’s face was priceless. I simply replied, “What? It’s alread broken.”. On the second smack against the floor, it spun up, and I was able to get the data copied off of it.
I can’t tell you how many things I’ve “fixed” by opening up the case, wiggling things around, can’t spot anything obviously wrong, and close it back up again and everything works fine. I didn’t “do” a damn thing to fix anything.
My latest was a computer that hung up in the boot process, “cannot find C drive”. Oh shit, a dead hard drive. So I did just that, unplugged everything that had a plug, reconnected it all, and it booted right up. Been working fine ever since. Was it just a corroded contact in a plug, or an intermittent contact in a ribbon cable? I’ll never know.
I’ve seen people make a career out of doing that. Unplug every plug and plug ’em back in. The important part is to do it one at a time so you don’t accidentally swap plugs around. With PC boards that had gold fingers and plugged into another board, cleaning the fingers with a Pink Pearl eraser got the big plugs working.
If that isn’t enough, using canned air to blow the dust bunnies out of the thing usually helps.
I had a TV station that called me – frantically – and said their HDD had failed. This was back in the day when Sony made drives, and the failure rate of one of the phases for the spindle motor would crap out.
They were desperate. I told ’em I had found a way to get the drive to spin ONE TIME, and after that the drive was toast (I had a customer that had the same problem, I applied the same fix, and then it failed a week later and they tried to blame me!). What I did was unmount the drive, keeping the cables connected (this was back in the X3T9 interface dual cable days!) and when the unit was powered on I very quickly twisted the drive on the spindle axis without unplugging anything. The drive would usually spin up because there were enough “phases” of the motor left to spin the disk but not start it up when powered on.
I spent the next 6 hours backing up the disk, TWICE, to floppies. Then I checked to see if the backups got written to properly. The TV station was a bunch of happy campers… and had 60+ 5-1/4″ backup floppies but nary a complaint outta them. The restore went perfectly well when they got a new HDD. NOT a Sony!
The secret is knowing which hammer to choose, or whether to use your fist or boot.
Can’t remember which starters I hit more. GM or the one on the Mitsubishi truck. Worked right up until it didn’t & it was time to replace the starter or solenoid
I had a Taurus starter motor that had a “flat spot”: in the starter. Had to wait until I got enough money to replace it – about three weeks.
Got real, REAL tired of banging on it.
Ford bwahahaha
Hey, had to do it on Chebbies as well. Ain’t endemic to Fords or any other starter/brand for that matter.
Years ago I was flown up to Washington by a Japanese business group who had purchased a nearly defunct sawmill. I enquired as to the problem and was told “Computer no work”. Walked over to the sawdust-encrusted 19 inch rack, 6 feet of it, and kicked the shit out of it one time. Hit the power and it fired right up. Then I spent a half-hour pulling and replugging the nearly 50 circuit boards. The looks on their faces was priceless, especially when they saw my bill.
I had a sawmill in northeastern Washington where the PC that collected data from the PLC stopped working. Believe it or not, the fan in the power supply had quit working and while the weather was cold it never got hot enough to blow the fuse. Weather warmed up, BAM!
I replaced the fuses, replaced the fan in the PSU, everybody was happy.
P.S. – why didn’t I just replace the PSU? It was an oddball PC with oddball parts, that’s why.
As a builder/cabinet maker I can attest that a hammer will fix almost anything.
Sometimes permanently, ask me how I know.
Look, with the suitable and proper application of a small amount of C4, you can fix ANYthing!
So is “hitting it” the default #1 corrective action” because I tried that with my chipper a few times and it didn’t work
, so I tried filling it with gas and it seemed to work better than hitting it.
Used to occasionally replace gear doors on Brit airplanes. Tech direction said to “fit using beating technique”. I loved signing it off verbatim. Crazy assed Brits. “… using an explosion-proof torch..”
At least they were honest.