[PLUG-TALK] Busted motherboards
Paul Mullen
pem at nellump.net
Sat Jun 12 19:42:39 UTC 2004
On Wed, Jun 02, 2004 at 10:39:20AM -0700, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
>
> If the case was not packed with a couple of inches of corner foam or
> cardboard equivalent, it could very easily be bent beyond usefulness,
> and the motherboard also. The traces of a motherboard are extremely
The seller seemed to have packed it fairly well, but the box appeared to
have been subjected to serious abuse at the hands of UPS. I tried
several times to unseat and reseat PCI cards, alternatively remove
various combinations of cards, drives, etc. Nothing helped. I finally
figured that even if I did get the PC to boot properly, there was no
reason to expect that it wouldn't develop mysterious issues some time
down the road.
> Metal is more elastic than FR4 circuit board material, so if the
> motherboard was mounted on a load-bearing portion of the case, most
> of the case stress was actually taken up by the motherboard.
Not exactly load bearing, but the motherboard is directly connected to
the rear face of the case via the connectors (serial, parallel, etc.)
being fastened to it. There was a noticeable "bow" as the motherboard
left the case stand-offs to meet the rear face. :-(
> I betcha that the case fell, perhaps just a foot or two, and landed
> on one corner.
I'm thinking it *had* to be more than a foot or two for the case to be
permanently bent by that amount. Wouldn't it?
> Good luck on getting your insurance money. If there weren't suitable
> corner cushions inside the box, UPS may well claim improper packaging
> and disallow your claim.
UPS picked it up yesterday, after the usual red-tape runaround for a few
weeks. We'll see what comes of it. Luckily, I paid with my credit card,
so I have some sort of recourse in the case of a dispute with the seller
(I did, after all, request FedEx... in writing).
Thanks for your thoughts.
Paul
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