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The Weirdest/Scariest experiance with your mac

Some friends and I decided that we would start designing our own hardware for our Apples //s.

We figured that we could make a better joystick. We couldn’t find any specs for the ports, so we used a multi-meter. We found out that the joystick worked with resistance and that the closed Apple and Open Apple were also registered as joystick buttons. This new knowledge gave us the confidence to make larger leaps, like soldering our own cards up. We found Apple ][ shaped blank cards at a local electronics store. He also found some board level specs for us. Our Apple MLX codeing was shoddy and my soldering and math was worse! Moments after powering up our little card (an attempt at a simple analogue interface) the computer made a noise similar to R2D2 being fried. It also started to smoke.

The card was not happy, but the computer was none the worse for ware (less the greasy black soot that took forever to clean off). Like R2, it didn’t seem to be phased. My parents never knew that I nearly destroyed the most expensive item in our home. Though they did toss the toaster after I explained that it was the source of the strange burning smell.

The guy at the electronics store was not surprised.
Neither was the teacher at the computer lab.

(Did I kill this thread?)
 
I've had three really scarie moments. I have a grape iMac DV running in OS X.
#1. Lately, OS X has been really slow so i restarted it. It took about thirty minutes to restart and scared the **** out of me cause i thought it was never gonna finish restarting.

#2. I was playing around with airport and the ethernet cable on my computer. I wanted to test airport, so I pulled the ethernet cable out. The second i did that, my computer shut down. I didn't know what happened and couldn't get it on again. After ten minutes of thinking i busted my comp, i checked the power cable and realized that i had just knocked it loose when i pulled out the power cable.

#3. I was typing a short story when the keyboard acted up. I went to save it with ? s, but instead of saving, it highlighted everything. Then i went to save again with ?s, it deleated everything. now, all i wanted to do was quit. i pressed ? Q, and it saved. I immedately went to the menu and quit, but by then, the damage had been done and i lost everything.

-Brian

P.S. Let this be a lesson to everyone, don't be lazy and use the shortcuts.
 
Originally posted by brianbobcat
I was typing a short story...i lost everything.
Click to expand...
Lucky it was a short story.

I read that former president Jimmy Carter once accidentally erased a huge section of a book he was writing.
 
I have owned a Mac since 1991 (Classic, 550CD, 6200CD, 7300, Beige DT, B&W) and last night was the worst. I've had a couple hard drives suddenly lose their brains, but I've always had backups (fortunately).

I was working on the B&W when the video signal died. Yellow light on the monitor. Hard drive still working....rebooted. Light grey screen with dark grey vertical bands :(

Shut down, switched the card (Radeon 7000) to another slot, rebooted. Same damn screen.

Shut down, put the old Rage 128 in, video fine. The 7000's 4 months old :mad:

Did the Warranty RMA thing on ATI's site, haven't gotten a response. Of course, they're located around Toronto - they probably don't have power!
 
My scariest story with my Mac....two years ago my roommate spilt a glass of water *all* over the keyboard of my PowerBook. The thing shut down automatically, thank God. I am not sure if it was a safety mechanism or a failure, but it shut down completely. I basically opened the keyboard and removed everythig and dried it all out. I decided to let it dry for a day and so the next day I checked to see if it was dry and started it up...it made a weird sound when it chimmed but it started up, so I shut it down and let it sit by the window for a while to dry off any more. I took it to the Apple Store for them to check it out and after a full lookover, they said it looked fine, so we turned it on, it chimmed like normal and it all seemed to work like it should. I swear, my roommate gave me a heart attack that day! Coincidentally, he also lost a rubber foot on the bottom of my PowerBook when he was using it while I was away for the weekend...he has the habit of turning and positioning it without first picking it up, so the friction basically pulled one of the feet off. So there is a good moral to this story for all you college freshmen out there...immediately instruct your new roommate that if they touch your Mac, they may learn a whole new meaning to "booting" up...
 
Originally posted by MacBandit
The whole experience would have been freaky on it's own but tie it together with a bad period in your life and you get a horrifying experience that you will never forget.
Click to expand...

Freakiness and bad life time are never, never helped by the wee hours of the night/morning. Mmmm, 3 am conversations.

I nominate myself for the absolute dumbest scare story on the thread. I should be ashamed of myself, I really should. :eek:

I think I've mentioned that I'm a switcher, yes? Well, one of the first things I did when I got my brand new shiny TiBook was to download Mozilla for it. The .sit file downloaded fine, of course, and un-stuffed itself. And then a thing appears on the desktop with .dmg on it, out of nowhere! I had absolutely *NO* idea what this was, had read no guides to the Mac OS, and as .dmg sounded like "damage" in my sudden state of panic, I was afraid to do anything to it.

So I brought the computer, in sleep mode, with me to visit my sister, where her Machead husband laughed at me for a minute before explaining Mac software installs to me. Oh! Duh.

As a person with a BS in computer science (though outdated) it was a new experience--and a hearty embarassment--to know so little about my own system. I went right out and bought Coursey's Switcher's Guide to the Mac and read it through.

No problems since--except in getting my friend's XP laptop to access the internet over my Airport/DSL connection. But that's a frustration story, not a scary story. :D
 
The .dmg file thing is actually understandable, because on the PC side, .dmg actually refers to a file that is marked as damaged (I think it is Norton? I don't remember) but when it finds a file that seems to be corrupt, it apends that extention to the file.
 
this one is worst...or dumber

The first week with my tablet,
i was toying with the "eraser" end of my graphire pen, turning it etc. and left it in a different position than it was...

next thing i know i can´t pick nothing with it, no clicking nothing,
can´t control my machine, so i perform a Clean Install out of panic and ignorance,
to find later the problem persisted, go back to my puck mouse and it works well!!

It was the slightly rotated eraser cap of my pen... i found out 24 hours later

In my behalf i should say this was my first computer ever...
:D
 
when i was on my mac plus back in the 90s, I had just discovered Desk Accessories. One of the types of accessory was similar to a screen saver. I decided to run like 10-12 of these at once! It totally destroyed the screen and I couldn't restart the computer until we got it fixed 2 or 3 weeks later. Scary!
 
I turned on the option in OS X to read warning messages to me... I figured I might start some long process and be sitting there watching TV oblivious that something had gone wrong or user input was needed... good idea... in theory...

I have Backup set to run at 4am... there's a *good* chance I'm asleep at that time and so it'll never intrude... until of course...

Sleeping.. sleeping... internet connection goes down sometime before 4am... all of the sudden my life goes from dream to something in the nature of "Excuse me! Back cannot connect to the iDisk server!" echoing throughout your apartment. That pretty much freaked me out enough (especially since I had been rocking out with iTunes before I went to bed and the volume was up loud). I think it need not be said that that option is no longer enabled.

:D
 
My moment made my heart skip a couple of beats....

I have a G4 hooked up to my living room stereo set, where iTunes Radio gets to be played quite loud when I have friends over.
One night I had a girlfreind over, and we had the usual iTunes Radio LOUD screaming over the stereo, and after some time I quitted iTunes so we could watch a movie.
Usually I have iChat active. And this night was no exception...
After watching this movie, the girlfriend and I became kinda romantic... it was nice and quiet... no-one around.... sitting on the couch... looking in eachothers eyes... starting to kiss.... getting more serious....
...G4: " YOU'RE BUDDY <NAME> HAS LOGGED IN ! ! ! ! "

Hotdamn!!!!

I forgot: my iChat was still active, yep the pref setting: "speak text when buddy logs in"
 
I've noticed that having your Mac speak to you almost always results in a minor heart attack...I turned that option of for much the same reason since it always happens when you least expect it.
 
Originally posted by Powerbook G5
I've noticed that having your Mac speak to you almost always results in a minor heart attack...I turned that option of for much the same reason since it always happens when you least expect it.
Click to expand...

Indeed.
If you EXPECT it to speak, its cute and amusing, when it does.
If you DON'T EXPECT it to speak, it will shorten your life considerably.
 
Yesterday. I was installing RAM in a client's computer when the power went out. He thought I blew up his computer or something. It was pretty funny, but the walk home SUCKED.
 
When I accidentally hit the power switch on my Mac stopping Mac OS X from booting up, restart it up, and it won't start up, so I hold command-S to get to single user mode but three letters on the left side scroll up the screen in grey (the background was white) C L R...

Dunno what happened, restarted off the hard drive i use for Classic then rebooted back into X and it was right as rain.
 
This is a different type of "scary"...

Perhaps it was 6 years ago, but it was during the days of System 7. My father was using his Performa with speech enabled.

My father told the computer speech character (a robot) to "shut down". As soon as my father said this did, most of the other houses down our street lost power.


A recent one, but not so scary...yesterday I had a kernel panic when trying to print something out.


Edit: Yesterday (this time, Aug. 28) I unplugged and plugged in my USB extention for my audio with the dial off and I received two iTunes unexpectedly quit messages in a row.
 
When I spilled coffee on my iBook before it was one year old.

That was horrible, and cost $121.
 
One scarry thing: I was at a clients house, and was printing off a bill for him on his printer, the USB cable was almost too short. My TiBook was leaning up to the side of the desk. I went out to his living room to give him the bill, when I heard a huge crash. Well his daughter had gone into the room to get something and hit the desk, causing my TiBook to crash onto the floor. No real dammage, just the spacer in the USB port was broken. The port was still usable for my mouse, but a few days later, I called Apple Care, and they replaced the MB no questions asked.

Another Scarry thing.... I was driving to Seattle, WA from Portland, OR on I-5. I had my TiBook on the passenger seat of my car (Not in my satche where is usually lives durring travel). Well, a Mercury Couger cut infront of me and slammed on his brakes, I followed suit, and my TiBook ended up on the floor of my car and now has a small wowie on the left side behind the screen. Still works great though.

PC Scariness.

Had a P-166 and replaced the fan and heatsink with a better model, when I put the CPU back in, and started up, I smelled burning, and error sounds, shut down and found that about 5 pins of the CPU were missing, and later found them in the socket. I had to by a new MB and Proc. $675 total cost.

In 10th Grade was fixing a screwy 486, and while running, I was screwing in the video card, when I dropped the screw inside. A burning smell, but the machine continued to work, because I powered it off.

TEG
 
my family got a new power mac g4 and then a few weeks later one morning i spilled hot tea on the keyboard. the cd tray was opening and closing..i pulled the plug, went to class, had to wait all day to get a new keyboard and get home. plugged it in and it worked fine. my dad had taken a grape iMac keyboard home from work and plugged it in and everything was ok, but while i was gone all day i was a nervous wreck.
 
for a good couple of weeks, my iMac G5 would turn itself on by itself in the middle of the night. I posted my problem on the Apple forums and opened up the iMac and reset the SMU. Nothing worked. Turns out my eyeTV was set to turn the iMac on to record a show (stupid me).

A scarier moment was when I used some application to remove unnecessary languages from my computer. I thought, "I'm never going to need Japanese.." or a handful of other languages. I saved myself aroud 230 MB and caused myself a whole lot of anguish. The iMac would not start up. I had to archive and install 10.4 and for some reason, all of my preferences and settings were saved... weird.
 
Had a PowerBook 190 start smoking right in front of me. I hadn't booted it in months, as it has some problems, so I decided to try booting it again and it caught fire!
 
I had installed a new DVD burner in my G5, and after it was installed and I hooked everything back up, the Mac wouldn't boot. Nothing, not even a startup bong or any sign of life. I thought I must've accidentally killed it with static electricity or something and was scared ********.












I forgot to plug the power cable back in :D
 
Once in a great while, for whatever reason, I will login and I my Dock & Desktop Picture will be 2 years out of date. I cannot for the life of me figure out WHERE it's getting the info. A logout and log back in fixes it. It's like the ghost of a 2 year old login. :eek:
 
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