View Full Version : Anyone had their gear die?
not5150
08-10-2007, 12:10 PM
Somewhat related to Who has the crud thread...
I always seem to have mysterious equipment failures after Defcon.
This year my Dell Inspiron laptop stopped working on Monday... I'm actually not too upset because it was a piece of crap anyways. Perhaps the Vegas heat killed it.
I had another scare with my Canon Rebel XT. It wouldn't turn on Monday. I recharged both batteries (I have the battery grip on it) and still no luck. I disconnected the battery grip and batteries and let it sit for two days. Yesterday I popped everything in and it turned on.
ASTCell and I were playing around with his insanely bright 125mw green laser at Defcon and I stupidly shot a picture while the laser was shining through the lens. When the camera would turn on, I thought for sure that the laser killed it.
Antron Robot
08-10-2007, 12:53 PM
The only thing that died for me was the badge. I then accidentally dropped my bag while the badge was in it, as was a glass bottle of whisky. The whisky began pouring through the bag and soaked the badge. At that point, the badge resumed working for at least 36 hours.
bloofar
08-10-2007, 12:59 PM
Strangely enough, my Inspiron laptop's power supply stopped supplying its normal 15V and now only puts out a puny 10V. Powers the laptop but the battery won't charge. However I think it's more likely to be a result of the power brick getting thrown around in my bookbag combined with poor design than anything else. Contacted Dell last night and they've got another replacement PSU on the way (this is the 3rd PSU for this laptop, and I've had it for about 9 months).
As crappy as Dell laptops tend to be, their support is excellent (_ALWAYS_ use their online chat or do support over email.. talking to people is awful. But when you can put your problem in the form of simple sentences using words containing no more than 2 syllables they're really on the ball). The extended warranty is completely worth it, especially when you didn't pay for it ;)
DJ Jackalope
08-10-2007, 01:20 PM
Somewhat related to Who has the crud thread...
I always seem to have mysterious equipment failures after Defcon.
You didn't take it to Cooncon and have us shoot at it again, did you?
blauman
08-15-2007, 01:55 AM
I had a nice experiment with a magnetron... but it died... a shame didn't get to show it.
Vyrus
08-15-2007, 05:51 AM
during the setup of actf, 1 hour and 23 minuets after day1 of con had started "and an hour behind schedule" we had...
1 switch
2 ports on another switch
1 port on ANOTHER switch
3 cat5 cables
and one of our contest computers (we fixed it around 2 or so hours into the contest)
die
Schuyler
08-15-2007, 05:59 AM
Nothing ceased operation for me, but my Schlage Primus fingerpin picks did go missing, along with a BiLock QCC control key.
during the setup of actf, 1 hour and 23 minuets after day1 of con had started "and an hour behind schedule" we had...
1 switch
2 ports on another switch
1 port on ANOTHER switch
3 cat5 cables
and one of our contest computers (we fixed it around 2 or so hours into the contest)
this happens pretty much every year :-P
panadero
08-15-2007, 12:02 PM
I was lucky enough to have my 360 die, right before the GH2 heats were going to start. Danny ran to Best Buy to get another one. No shit, straight out of the box, that one had the red ring of death. We got my old one running at least for the rest of the day. When we returned the one back to Best Buy, the chic said she was getting tired of seeing 360's...damn you Microsoft!
My 360 didn't want to play nice the 2nd day either, so Dan got an Elite at Fry's, used it for 6 hours and returned it Sunday, no questions asked :)
panadero
Schuyler
08-15-2007, 02:54 PM
I was lucky enough to have my 360 die, right before the GH2 heats were going to start. Danny ran to Best Buy to get another one. No shit, straight out of the box, that one had the red ring of death. We got my old one running at least for the rest of the day. When we returned the one back to Best Buy, the chic said she was getting tired of seeing 360's...damn you Microsoft!
My 360 didn't want to play nice the 2nd day either, so Dan got an Elite at Fry's, used it for 6 hours and returned it Sunday, no questions asked :)
panadero
Hah! Sounds like you won't even need to bring one with you next year.
panadero
08-15-2007, 06:55 PM
No kiddin...flying out of Dulles, they didn't hardly check my bags. Out of Vegas, I got to go in the 'special' line :D Carrying that stuff was the suck.
maelstrom
08-15-2007, 07:16 PM
I was messing around with my N800 to store the speaker schedules since I lost my paper schedule somewhere along the way, probably when i put it down to try and pick some locks in the LP skybox and destroyed both the browsers I had installed. So much for using the beta mozilla browser. On return the rfid reader from the Wifi Village stopped working properly, I haven't had the time to check the circuit but failing all else I'm probably going to try and play with John Westhues design sometime.
I also found that an airlink card I picked up at Fry's was a dud, but for $15 I'm not really annoyed with that one.
Schuyler
08-15-2007, 07:31 PM
No kiddin...flying out of Dulles, they didn't hardly check my bags. Out of Vegas, I got to go in the 'special' line :D Carrying that stuff was the suck.
Anytime I fly for locksport stuff I get slammed at the airport. This time I had 100 padlocks in my carry-on and the guy pulled out each one, opened the boxes, laid them out in 4 different trays, rescanned and left me to pack everything up. I expect it though, and come early, and tell them what they're about to scan, as I can only imagine how it looks under x-ray. I felt bad for these guys though, as they had just closed the line behind me, so as their last guy I kept them there for almost 15 extra minutes. :P They were really nice about it though. Good guys.
Thorn
08-15-2007, 08:54 PM
On return the rfid reader from the Wifi Village stopped working properly, I haven't had the time to check the circuit but failing all else I'm probably going to try and play with John Westhues design sometime.
PM me an email address, and I'll send you a copy of the schematic and layout diagrams, so you can get it working again.
Diesel
08-16-2007, 05:54 AM
Same thing here Schuyler. No lock stuff but radio equipment, etc. The guy looked at me coming in line, smiled, and said come with me. Haha. "One of those hackers!" he said. I was like "What are you talking about?" but with a DEFCON shirt on it was hard to prove my case. Went through ALL of my shit. Anyway, he was really cool about it and we chatted about Military ECM since that is what he did in the Navy. I told him he should speak on it next year, he laughed and said "Give me you email and we can set that up." I said "Good luck with that." We both laughed and I was on my way. Cool guy though so not all of them are A'holes.
Diesel
astcell
08-16-2007, 11:46 AM
ASTCell and I were playing around with his insanely bright 125mw green laser at Defcon and I stupidly shot a picture while the laser was shining through the lens. When the camera would turn on, I thought for sure that the laser killed it.
I found a 500mw for about $7K. I think that would just blow a hole through your camera.
maelstrom
08-16-2007, 02:13 PM
PM me an email address, and I'll send you a copy of the schematic and layout diagrams, so you can get it working again.
It's ok, I talked with Parallax support and it seems that the components themself are damaged. LCD won't show text in test mode and the reader won't go red with just plain 5V. I just gotta get over this hump of work then i can dump it in the x-ray machine and look for cracked traces on the board.
For green lasers you should get out candlepowerforums. You can make some pretty impressive green lasers for 40-90mw by modding cheap $40-60 laser pointers. Mostly just turning a potentiometer!
astcell
08-18-2007, 04:04 AM
For green lasers you should get out candlepowerforums. You can make some pretty impressive green lasers for 40-90mw by modding cheap $40-60 laser pointers. Mostly just turning a potentiometer!
40-90mw? Nah, I'm never going under 100mw again. Too much fun. :>
No damaged equipment for me.
I however always get the special treatment at the Airport when I pull out two laptops. Then again my bag is filled with so much electronic wire from power supplies, and other stuff I am carrying with me (Wireless access point with a huge heatsink :P) that I don't blame them :D.
not5150
08-18-2007, 04:36 PM
It's ok, I talked with Parallax support and it seems that the components themself are damaged. LCD won't show text in test mode and the reader won't go red with just plain 5V. I just gotta get over this hump of work then i can dump it in the x-ray machine and look for cracked traces on the board.
For green lasers you should get out candlepowerforums. You can make some pretty impressive green lasers for 40-90mw by modding cheap $40-60 laser pointers. Mostly just turning a potentiometer!
Thanks for the candlepowerforums... for LED flashlight fans there's a post in there about the WISE LED flashlight - http://www.wiseled.com/index.aspx?articleid=927
Holy moly that looks bright...
axewater
08-24-2007, 07:54 AM
came home back in holland ... my internet connection died ... my wifi access point died, my xbox 360 died, and my data storage server died. it's so depressing i don't even want to get into the details of each of them, but it was NOT a power spike or anything coz some of the shit wasn't even connected to anything while i was away.