While interviewing a technician candidate in my previous company, my partner and I asked him what was a difficult problem he faced in his work and how he overcame it. He answered that sometimes the PCI interfaces couldn’t be detected by the motherboard, so what he did was clean the contact points of the PCI card with an eraser. Logically of course you’d think that that wasn’t a good thing to do because you could accidentally scratch off the contact points.
Last week however I was encountering some problems with my SDRAM because my computer would reboot unexpectedly. Reviewing the system logs via the Windows Event Viewer the error messages showed that memory could not be “read” thereby pointing to a hardware problem in the RAM. I unsnapped and re-snapped the offending RAM module a couple of times (be sure you are properly grounded when you do this) and still had reboot problems.
So I swapped the 512 MB RAM with a 128 MB module and everything worked out fine, no more reboots. But who would want a PC with only 128Mb RAM? Suddenly remembering what the technician said, I took a trusty Mongol pencil on my desk and gently started scratching on the RAM’s contact points. To tell you the truth, I didn’t notice any difference between the before and after scratching state. But would you believe that 512 MB RAM was working fine afterwards?
Don’t you just love the ingenuity of Pinoys?, try at your own risk though 😀
8 comments
been there, done that.. and sometimes, if my sdram is just being stubborn, i stick a headless matchstick between my sdram against any wall adjacent to it because sometimes sdram needs to be “pushed” in order to be detected..
also done that, but not limited to RAM, you can do that mostly in video cards..
my other experience also is when we call a tehcnician to fix our dot matrix printer, do you know what they do? they just apply oil to the metal where the printer headers slides everytimes it prints.. …
also done that, but not limited to RAM, you can do that mostly in video cards..
but sometimes my hubby use blower for this which is i think is not a good idea
my other experience also is when we call a tehcnician to fix our dot matrix printer, do you know what they do? they just apply oil to the metal where the printer headers slides everytimes it prints.. …
You can also do that on the contact boards of keyboards and other appliances (like your remote control) when the keys don’t respond properly anymore…
Thanks for the additional tips 😀
yup, the eraser trick works for cleaning the metal contacts.
I also use the “makuha sa tingin” technique. Take out the erring hardware part, take a look at it (as if saying “shape up, boy!”), then slip it back.
and what do you know, it works!
If not, the blow, the dasal, and the carinyo (“sige na~ please~”) techniques sometimes work too.
I usually bang the erring computer part against my head. That usually works.
i agree with Punzi,,, you can use the eraser at almost all pc boards and contact points you encounter causing different troubles in your gadgets.
i am an amusement tech and an eraser is one of our most valued everyday tool in troubleshoting every game board we repair.