Crossposted to customers_suck, apologies if you've already seen

[chaobell]

I should have figured something was up when I looked at the back of the computer and saw a power supply that very obviously did not go there crammed in.

Or when I noticed that there was no bezel thingy on the back, where all the motherboard's orifices come out.

Against the voice of better judgement, I opened the case.

OH MY GOD.

Piece of cardboard holding the motherboard in place. Power supply that even more obviously doesn't go there. But the best of all...

THE HARD DRIVE IS SECURED TO SOME RANDOM PIECE OF METAL WITH ELECTRICAL TAPE.

I'm half considering calling these people up and telling them we can't work on their Frankenstein box.

UPDATE: We how have pictures, however crappy the quality...

Comments

[wildkard.livejournal.com]

I'm probably going to get yelled at by others but... um... well, it may be ugly as hell and just asking for abuse during transport and/or some evil electrical surge thingy but, there's no real reason why this system shouldn't work. It may not fit everywhere and cause the tech to groan but... it's really not that bad.

As a counter example, I have an old 486 case, wherein the only 'original' thing in it is the power supply and some screws. The motherboard's a lot newer, handing 486 K6^2 and between that and the existing hard drives, cdrom and floppy drive, there really isn't that much room. It's way more packed then any tech should feel comfortable with. In fact 2 of the hard drives are duct taped, just because their location doesn't have enough screws to hold it securely (guess the drive bay was designed for larger HD casings)
Does it work? Hell yes. And pretty well too. Aside from needing an extra fan where most people don't have one, and needing to be cleaned a bit more often (airflow's a bit *interesting*).

As I said, works great, but still, if someone brought this to me in the shop to fix, I'd be swearing at the pure inacessability of it, and the odd look it has once I open the case. I'll post pics if you like (and once I figure out who borrowed my digital camera).

Anyway my point was, that it may look ugly and 'not quite fitting properly' but it should still work. Still, I don't like a huge piece of metal blocking half the power supply fan.

[theducks.livejournal.com]

Hmm it's really like it was made by someone who didn't reaaaally know what a computer looked like, but thought they had an idea of what was supposed to go in one..

[chaobell]

Well, what really squicked me about this was a) the unshielded AT power switch, and b) the fact that the only thing keeping the motherboard from touching the outer case was that little piece of cardboard.

That, and the possibility that her modem problem (what she brought it in for) was caused by the hard drive partly lying on top of the modem.

Duct taping drives in and of itself doesn't bother me so much--hell, I've had more than one free-range hard drive--it's just that when it's done by someone who obviously has not Clue One what they're doing, it can cause some problems.

It turns out they bought it like this from a flea market. They were as horrified as I was when they saw it

[chaobell]

It used to be a Compaq. That much I can tell for certain.

What it is now, I'm not entirely sure. :)

[wildkard.livejournal.com]

Agreed.
Nothing like a fried motherboard though to warrent an upgrade.

And I didn't realize that hard drive was that 'wobbly' attached so as to be resting on the modem.

[chaobell]

Oh yes. Pretty much everything in there was wobbly, but the hard drive wobbled most freely of all. We amused ourselves for a few minutes making it rock back and forth while singing, "watch it wi~ggle...see it ji~ggle..."

We did manage to slide it a little further forward, but not far enough to get it completely off the modem.

And the mobo wasn't screwed down to anything. Just sort of leaning upright in the case, with that piece of cardboard wedged in there to keep it from wobbling too much.