Not Quite Toast [Dell laptop]

OK, here's a fine tale. Believe it or not - this story, and the accompanying photos, are absolutely true and unaltered.

In another life, I was an I.T. Support engineer in an academic institution. Although it wasn't strictly part of the job, I would often undertake minor repairs to the staff kit, such as mending frayed power cables or fixing broken connectors. There are quite a few tales there too, but I digress.

One day, a staff member came into the Helpdesk office bearing a carrier bag and a very sheepish expression. He had, he said, had an accident with his laptop, and it wasn't working, and did I think I could fix it? He opened the bag to reveal this mess:

After I stopped laughing (cruel, I know) I had to inform him that there was a chance that it might be beyond even my legendary abilities to resurrect this unfortunate item, and that he should bid a sorrowful farewell to his files and seek laptops new. This suggestion was accepted with a degree of rueful acknowledgement that in truth, he hadn't held out much hope anyway.

The full sequence of events was related. He had needed to go out of the house for a short time, and being conscious of the possibility of burglary he had looked around for a suitable place to conceal the laptop in his absence. As he was in the kitchen, the oven seemed to be a place that any thief would never look for a laptop, so in it went. Shortly after that, his wife came into the kitchen and proceeded to prepare the dinner, consisting in part of a nice apple crumble (you can see where this is heading). I suppose a black laptop does look a bit like a baking tray, but anyway for whatever reason she didn't realise the situation and switched on the oven to heat up while she mixed. After a while she noticed a distinctly un-crumbly smell and opened the oven....

Credit where it's due. Although the oven temperature clearly exceeded the melting point of most of the plastic components and turned them into a Dali-esque sculpture, this Dell has an alloy frame and top and bottom covers - these were surprisingly unaffected but the rest was, well, toast. The screen had melted and all the keys had evaporated from the keyboard, and everything was in a sorry state. I took the above photos just for the record because it's a sight you don't see often (although with Lithium Ion batteries becoming ubiquitous in cheap kit and charging not always sensibly controlled, we may see more incendiary incidents).

My colleague having gone off to throw himself under a handy train, I put the remains on a shelf and got on with something else.

Some time later I was poking at the pile of ash and I began to wonder what would happen if I connected a power supply to it. "Nothing" was the most I expected, although "lots of smoke and sparks" was also a possibility. Anyway, I went ahead and with the fire extinguisher close at hand, I connected the power unit and switched on. To my utter amazement, this is what I saw...
 

Phoenix or what? Way to go, Dell!

 Not only did it not spark or catch fire, it actually booted as far as the command line and (rather superfluously) informed me that it couldn't see the hard drive, it couldn't understand the power supply parameters and it might not feel like charging the battery. It told me to strike the F1 key to continue but as you can see, there no longer was any F1 key. In fact if the key switches had not melted, it may have got further, but in the event I thought that it had already gone far beyond the call of duty, so I switched off.

The upshot of all this was that I chiselled out the hard drive and found that it was still operational, and I was able to recover my colleague's data for him. He was overjoyed and promised to tell Dell how impressed he was with the durability of their product, and he took away the bag of ashes for a decent burial.

Actually, it was a bit sad. This sturdy little machine was nobly doing its job and didn't ask, or deserve, to be baked to a crisp. I thought it was an effort worthy of high commendation that, with its last breath, it mustered enough life energy to let us know that it wasn't quite beaten. If it had not managed that, I wouldn't have attempted to remove the hard drive and try recovering the data, and all my colleague's work would have been lost.

Rest in peace, little champion.

Who's bin naughty then? [Brabantia]

I always wanted one of those lovely Brabantia waste bins with the soft-touch latching lid. After trying the pedal, swing-top, lift-top, no-top and goodness knows how many other types, the idea of just touching the lid for it to open smoothly by itself and latching it shut with a gentle push-click was heaven. Also, they come in stainless steel and have a removable inner bin. They were always well out of my budget range, but I was lucky to find two at once - one 40 litre one for the kitchen, with a flat back to save space, and a smaller 35 litre cylindrical one for the bathroom, at a very reasonable price second-hand on eBay.

The lid in question

All went well for a few years. The main weakness with these is the peg onto which the spring latch grips, which can break if the lid is slammed carelessly. The mating spring catch is also consumable but is available as a spare part; on the early bins the peg is moulded in one piece with the whole lid frame, which is in turn hot-welded to the stainless steel outer. Thus, a broken peg means a new lid assembly which is a significant proportion of the cost of a new bin. These days I think that the peg is made separately and in any case there are third-party suppliers offering replacements in clip form, which will also fit the old style lid. However, as befits this mad household, my family were unwilling to break the bin in the conventional fashion. We waited until something was jammed over the peg and then tried to close the lid - when it wouldn't close, it was forced until it did, in the process twisting the lid and breaking the hinge at one end. The lid is supported by quite a strong spring acting on the hinge axis, The hinge can't be dismantled without removing the lid frame from the steel, which means breaking off all the moulded weld points and re-fixing the frame after repair with another method. So, I was faced with either buying a new lid assembly or repairing the existing hinge in situ against the spring pressure.

The form of the lid is like a plastic plate with the back edge rolled  into a half-tube, inside which is the hinge pin (full-length axle joining both sides). The plastic had cracked so that the plate was separated from the remaining part of the half-tube attached to the spring.

Firstly I allowed the lid to open fully so that the spring was in its least stressed position. This allowed the two broken parts to be aligned and glued, but the joint was not nearly strong enough to cope with the spring force when the lid was being closed; so I clamped the joint in position and used epoxy glue (Araldite) both to join the pieces and to fix a short steel pin over the break at each end (along the edge of the plate/tube). Shortened panel pins were ideal for this, strengthening the joint without projecting on either side of the joint - if they did it would interfere with either the hinge action or the next phase of repair.

I looked for a length of steel or plastic pipe of the same diameter as the 'rolled half-tube' section. As it happened I had just replaced a shower curtain rail because the plastic coating had disintegrated; under it was a plain mild steel tube (a bit rusty) of 1" diameter. However, this was a little small for what I had in mind, which was to cut and shape a section to fit over the plastic rolled half-tube. When glued in place all along the length, it would sheath and essentially replace the function of the plastic half-tube and support the broken part completely. As it was all I could find, I cut the steel tube to length, de-rusted it and used emery paper to give it a brushed appearance like the bin surface, then cut it down its length in two places to give a part-cylinder. Then I needed to gradually open up the cylinder to a larger radius, until I could clip it firmly over the plastic tube. I then coated the whole inside of it with polyurethane glue (Gorilla Glue), wiped the plastic tube with water to speed the cure, and clipped it into place over the plastic tube. I clamped it in various places and left it overnight to cure, and when ready I tested the action with complete success.

 The only remaining job was to give the bare brushed steel a coat of polyurethane laquer to protect it from the horrid bin contents, and to make it look like part of the original equipment.

It's bin mended!

Return of the Were-Rabbit* [Dutch Dwarf Lop]

Rabbits are very cute, I suppose, although skinny - when I handle a rabbit it always reminds me of a velvet pouch full of bones - but they have ferociously efficient teeth. I haven't been fully bitten, only nipped, but having seen what they can do to thin aluminium sheet and copper wiring, I don't want to have those chisel teeth anywhere near my flesh.

My daughters have for years had two pet rabbits at any one time (in rotation - one of the first pair had to be replaced as too aggressive, another disappeared overnight probably to sustain some nocturnal predator, and two died) and they had occasionally been allowed in the house. She Who Must Be Obeyed likes the idea of "house rabbits". I let this happen assuming that at least the poop would be cleaned up - not always the case, unfortunately - but I stopped it after discovering that the new sofa was ripped and the Christmas lights and my computer power supply lead had both been sliced into several parts by rabbity dentition. The power was on at the time, yet the perpetrator was unharmed. Maybe their teeth are made of a ceramic non-conductor.

Our first pair

Anyway, after an interval long enough for me to forget the above incident, Bagel - one of the current pair - was found demonstrating rigor mortis one day. The pair were well bonded and it was clear that the survivor Thumper would pine after his departed friend during the night, and the weather was cold with no cosy partner to snuggle up to. So my elder daughter decided that she would take him into her bedroom overnight until either a new partner was found or he was re-homed. I thought little about this as she is now old enough to deal with things like animal care. Or so I thought.

After a couple of weeks, one day when I eventually surfaced from my bed I was informed that there had been a power cut for several hours. On investigating I discovered that the 'power cut' was restricted to our own house, and no-one had thought to check the fusebox. In fact, the main safety RCD had tripped and resetting it restored the power immediately. A few days later it happened again, this time taking out the RCD and the Miniature Circuit Breaker protecting the mains power outlets. Resetting both restored power again, and I checked every item connected to the mains circuit downstairs but could find no problem. The next time it occurred I found that on resetting the trips they immediately dropped out again (but intermittently) and I spent the next two hours carefully inspecting every outlet in the house and its associated loads.

The fault, when finally revealed, was horrifying. In my daughter's bedroom, she had  a four-way power extension plugged into the wall outlet and had routed the cable under her desk, round the back of her high bunk bed and up to her bedside cupboard to supply lights and phone charger. She had created a curtained-off "den" under her bed into which she used to retreat to read in privacy, and she had lined the den with spare bedding and pillows and a bookcase. When I looked into the den I discovered that she had been using it as a rabbit hutch for Thumper , and she had not been cleaning up the rabbit poop and uneaten food. The bedding and carpet were soaked with urine. There were shredded books in evidence, and on lifting the bedding I found that the extension cable had been extensively stripped - all three wires were bared and had been sparking together. How a fire was avoided I shall never know. Even though the short circuits had tripped the MCB, the sparking could have caused the bedding/paper to smoulder and burn undetected.

Rabbit food?

The damaged wiring was removed and repaired but I kept it back until the room had been fully cleaned by my daughter and inspected for approval by parents. Needless to say, the rabbit was banished back to its usual accommodation and is now awaiting return to Rabbits 'r' Us to await a new owner.

This is posted as a cautionary tale, because we were lucky to escape more serious consequences (as was the rabbit). I have found that rabbits are able to bite through most materials and ours stripped out the carefully-fitted insulation in their hut and did considerable damage to the woodwork. They also kept digging tunnels under the fences, and undermined the foundation of our garden shed twice. Rabbit poop is relatively innocuous but is unpleasant when it is allowed to build up to six inches deep. During their stay ours have also seriously damaged a new sofa and several cushions, pillows and towels - plus the various electrical and other items. To add a final sting, when we contacted Rabbits 'r' Us to arrange his re-homing, they insisted on his having his immunisation renewed at our expense (and expensive it certainly was). All in all - I do generally love animals and the rabbits were cute, but I shall be heartily glad to see the back of them. We had a lovely cat but she had to go as my wife is allergic to the fur. We still support a dog, two goldfish and a horse; and my wife wants to keep chickens again...

[Names have been changed to protect the guilty]
  * With grateful acknowledgement to ©Aardman