Post your horror stories

I suppose this would have been better prior to halloween, but oh well.

I bought a Compaq Portable off eBay. It came in today and I found that the seller used that brown paper stuff as the only packaging material....



What are some disasters you've have/witnessed? Doesn't have to be shipping related, just stuff going up in smoke or falling off a truck.

A few years ago I bought a Commodore 128DCR off of eBay. As usual, I kindly requested the seller to carefully package the computer for shipment. He didn't. There was ample packing material on the top and sides, but the computer was just sitting on the bottom of the box with nothing underneath. Of course, this is where the post office decided to skewer the box with something obviously rectangular and sturdy. The C128 arrived with a big ding in the bottom. Since the case is made of metal, there was a permanent gash which I was able to bend back out, but not completely repair.

Luckily the computer worked without issue, and I was able to bend the metal back out so the user port is usable.

The seller was a real jerk about it, too. He said he knew I'd be a "problem buyer" when I asked him to pack it carefully. The irony of his response nearly left me speechless. I was so ticked that I didn't buy a computer from eBay for years after that. To this day, I'm still hesitant.

Thanks for starting this thread - posting this gave me a little catharsis.

- Earl

When I bought an HP OmniGo 120 still in the original box, the seller actually used that box to ship it in. It was 2 years ago and I'm still pissed.

Actually yeah, that one reminded me of the same. I didn't realize until I had broken down the box and had it outside in the rain (was pending trash) that the guy shipped me a Columbia Data Products portable in the actual damn box (no real internal packaging though obviously). I couldn't believe it and still kick myself for not noticing that.

Other than that it's really just been one or two piss poor packaging jobs. One had no packing material but was a heavy steel system and didn't suffer any damage. The other was a nice set with a very important but delicate floppy drive (hard to find) that they just crammed it all in a flat rate box so the external floppy (which costs more than the computer) was damaged in shipping since it was effectively the padding.

Mine involves an XT System I bought off E-bay and later sold before moving to Washington.......

For about $35, I bought a hacked-together, abused XT clone in a flip-top XT style case in 2004. How that thing survived the trip to Opelika unscathed was a mystery to me as when the UPS man brought it up the drive, it was in a beat-to-hell box, leaking foam packing peanuts everywhere down the driveway, and zip-tied. I swear, I could have done a better packing job if I were blind and had one arm!

So I owned this machine for 2-3 years and it cleaned up quite nice. I found a 5153 CGA monitor for it for free at a garage sale, and pieced in other parts sourced from a little hole in the wall shop downtown full of surplus PC hardware. Then the fateful day came that I needed to move to find more lucritive work prospects, so I sold it on e-bay, and Packed it 1000% better than the nightmare above.

Well, both arrived at it's new home, the back corner was bent, at the hinge for the case, the 5153 was destroyed in transit as well, neck of the tube broke off and everything), the only thing that survived was the least packed item of all - the 83 key XT Keyboard! I wound up giving the poor guy a full refund and losing one of my most prized machines in the process. I still wish I had that thing now after that happened to it!

Damn you UPS!!!!!

Speaking of UPS horror, I've had multiple reports from my Fiancee of them dropping off presents at our door, some of high dollar value, without even bothering to knock! Or bringing them to the office without even trying delivery. It's one reason I don't buy/sell on e-bay or anywhere else anymore, I don't even trust a courier company as far as I can throw them.

Hmmm..now I'm thinking of more vintage computer related horror with shipping.....

Then there was the time I bought the case my current XT is in, it was shipped from Monterey California in late August 2005. It was a new-old stock SongCheer XT Chassis. That same month, the sweet old lady Drexel up the street died. So I am walking around the block and see a box on her porch suspiciously the size of my computer case, and with chinese lettering on it! I pick it up, sure enough, addressed to me, address is correct, and it had been sitting on her porch how long now? Yet another reason I don't trust courier companies.

I've had some good onves involving guitars too.....

Bought a CAsio DG-1 Digital Guitar (pretty darned rare) off E-bay 2 years ago. The UPS Guy knocks at 8am on a Sunday, and THROWS The guitar at my sleepy ass when I open the door! (shaking fists)....

Then there was the Bridge for a 1971 Fender Musicmaster I'm rebuilding. They (fedex) could have just dropped it off in the apartment office like they usually do....NOPE! I had to drive a hour in rush-hour traffc to Bothell almost 10 times to pick up the damned bridge! For s stinkin' Guitar Bridge! Heck, they could have put it in my mailbox, or shipped it via USPS so that would happen.....nope.

And lastly was the Hondo Paul Dean II....an apartment OFFICE fail, and a very rare guitar designed by the Guitarist from Loverboy in the early 1980's, that I bought 2 falls ago. The tracking said FedEx delivered it.......nope, no sign of the guitar in the office. I had to wait two days to pick up my "delivered" guitar because of one of two things.....either the Apartment Office was lying (and too dumb to know what size a GUITAR box was), or FedEx was closing their Queue before actually delivering it. Either way, this is the reason for my profound hatred of couriers.

Now, anytime I order or send something, it's paranoia till it arrives at it's destination.

arrow_runner said:

What are some disasters you've have/witnessed?

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I bought a roll of RG-59 coax cable and USPS managed to drag it under something
for so long that the wooden spool was worn down to the point that every wrap had been
cut through, so I ended up with nothing but 4" long chunks of cable.

I've had XBOX 360 games shipped in express bags with no padding, sometimes it was possible for them to survive unharmed, when they used real DVD cases but now they skimp on the plastic, so the cases are even weaker than they used to be. Not a huge deal, it's easy to replace the cracked case but just a tiny bit of bubblewrap would protect them.

Just this year I've had 3 items go up in smoke during testing. The most valuable was an Amstrad PC4386SX power supply, I think one of the filter caps blew, it smelled horrible (that was after it was working fine for a few hours). I plugged in an MFM or RLL old Western Digital hard drive and it instantly went bang and poured out smoke but that was entirely my fault for not cleaning it properly before turning it on, those are mostly worthless anyway since they break down easily.

After that I started filming every vintage hardware test since if something is going to burn, I might as well get a video out of it. Here's my 386 motherboard test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNYDZVAKh-0

Wormetti said:

I plugged in an MFM or RLL old Western Digital hard drive and it instantly went bang and poured out smoke but that was entirely my fault for not cleaning it properly before turning it on, those are mostly worthless anyway since they break down easily.

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Apart from being factually incorrect, that has got to be one of the oddest statements to make in the company of vintage computer enthusiasts. Worthless? Hmm. Perhaps you want to rephrase that.

Yes worthless was the wrong word to use but they are very unreliable and usually don't sell for much (checking feebay history, there are some MFM drives that have gone for insanely high amounts but none were Western Digital). There's a reason modern XT-IDE boards needed to be made, not just for speed or easier transfer, I'd say mostly because those old drives easily fail and get bad sectors (they were unreliable even during their prime, some brands more than others). Most people don't bother parking them before every shutdown and it's annoying that you have to do that. Modern drives don't make the cool retro noises that the old drives make, I miss the sounds the most.

Anyway, back on topic, any more horror stories?

arrow_runner said:

I suppose this would have been better prior to halloween, but oh well.

I bought a Compaq Portable off eBay. It came in today and I found that the seller used that brown paper stuff as the only packaging material....

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What's especially horrible about this is that I just threw away a Compaq Portable III screen :-(

PM me privately; I might have another one, and I also have a working PIII in excellent condition that I can part with for cheap.

I've been pretty lucky with hardware; my horror stories have mostly been with software. Case in point: http://trixter.oldskool.org/2006/10/25/government-workers-are-so-very-helpful/

I once bought a C/MS used but complete in box. I asked the seller to ship it "carefully, boxed, as I was a collector". He shipped it using the original box as the box, but worse, wrapping the entire box in multiple layers clear shipping tape. That was his idea of shipping it carefully.

I spent four hours slowly and carefully peeling the tape off, and only managed to rip a tiny corner; everything else looks pretty good all things considering. I was proud of myself for pulling that off without needing a heat gun or goo-gone. The first N layers took 15 minutes; the last layer took 3.75 hours

Wormetti said:

Just this year I've had 3 items go up in smoke during testing. The most valuable was an Amstrad PC4386SX power supply, I think one of the filter caps blew, it smelled horrible (that was after it was working fine for a few hours). I plugged in an MFM or RLL old Western Digital hard drive and it instantly went bang and poured out smoke but that was entirely my fault for not cleaning it properly before turning it on, those are mostly worthless anyway since they break down easily.

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I've had a few of those, most of them were stupid or funny though.....

Got a Dell 25 MHz 386 (325p) from Salvation ARmy that was going for $8 almost a decade ago, it said "as/is"....so I bought it for $2, brought it home. When I powered it up at home, something did not smell right....so I opened up the case, and saw a corroded/exploded CMOS Battery, and right beneath it were the data-lines for the PS/2 keyboard and mouse....and the data lines themselves? Anybody ever played The Secret of Monkey Island while trying to get into insult-driven swordfights......the mobo was Melee Island, and the little flashes of light burning the traces up were the 5 pixel Pirate sprites!

The other was when I stupidly dropped a screw in my case-modded PIII (it was a PIII in an old GEM 386 Compaq Deskpro clone chassis) and it shorted out one 128MB MEmory module....never had a computer moment where my heart sunk more.....even if it was only a days wait and $65 away.

Nothing terribly dramatic other than one riscPC I aquired was shipped without any of the major components being secured. Motherboard, PSU, hard drive etc just sitting in place. The clue was the rattle as I removed the machine from the box it was shipped in. Half hearted cmos battery replacement done as well. On the plus side there were "FRAGILE" stickers on the outside of the box.

Once I got a trs 80 model III shipped in a box that had zero padding and not even a tight fit, just rattling around. It arrived with no damage and still works to this day.

Ok... Not a horror story. The worst was when I knocked over teletype...nooooo! Crash!

billdeg said:

in a box that had zero padding and not even a tight fit, just rattling around.

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I recently got a hard drive shipped like that. I was really surprised since it was from a computer type of guy. Oh well, it works. As far as I know, the post office expects packages to take a 3 or 4 foot drop to a hard floor, which I think is totally reasonable. This HDD had obviously taken some kind of drop on the corner, but who knows what the long term, if any, damage a drop can do.

My worst horror story is buying an off-the-shelf computer. I will NEVER do that again - I just don't trust OEMs to do as good a job as I do. I'm still kicking myself, especially considering that after 6 years of operation it had gotten relegated to backup, and was trusted to keep the data for only a few days while another was being worked on. When I got to get the data back, both drives only clicked. They had died in the night. This was a Biostar K8BGA-M motherboard and it was so cheap they couldn't even afford to add wakeonlan to the BIOS although the pads were on the board. I think I'll just throw it out and keep the AMD Semperon 3300+ as a memento to many bad experiences.

I had purchased this machine for my wife and it was because I had not been playing with computers for a couple of years and felt this might be a quick fix. My confidence was down. The machine had come with XP which we upgraded to the third service pack. XP is a great OS, but not very good at multitasking so she outgrew that one pretty quickly. Several versions of Linux wouldn't install, which is something I had never seen before, but I finally got it to limp along. In retrospect, I see that the problem could have been with the power supply, which (after the HDD incident) I measured to be just over the high limit. I'll have a second look, but I'll probably throw that out too. All in all this was a sour experience. I finally built her a dual core all-Intel with 8GB ram and she can run as much as she wants without the machine getting in the way. It also has a higher class power supply than those expensive 10 dollar ones they put in off-the-shelf computers.

PS: Most of that lost data was also on other machines from previous backups, so not all was lost.

About 9-10 months ago now, I bought a almost brand new Focus 2001 keyboard complete with original cover. Arrived here with the cover smashed and of vourse, I made a claim, and still 10 months later, am waiting for my money. It was also registered post too. I just hope my 5170 arrives in one piece, it already had a small chip on the front when I bought it and could potentially weaken the structual integrity of the front plastic bezel.

I am totally fed up of well packed stuff getting dented. I have a couple of Thin Client (in reality of course they are small 386 PCs) both with broken front panels. One has a huge dint in in it, but at present they are not really vintage. They were both well packed with multiple layers of bubble wrap round them, but it looks like this is a challenge to the courier to dent it if at all possible.

Same thing happened with an old Cisco 2612 router I got to build a token ring/ethernet gateway. Thats now got a dent in the case. It 18-gauge steel! They must have driven a truck over it.

Lastly just taken deliver of an analogue XY plotter table. Again the Courier has managed to but a dint in it. Again well packaged with multiple layers of bubble wrap....

These days wherever possible I try and collect myself, as I did with a recent acquisition of a Roland Plotter and a CoCo II.

I guess I should advice vendors to mark the goods:-

"Delicate Computer Equipment :- Please feel free to drop from a great height, stack under crates containing Hippos and Elephants, and Rhinos, or drive over it with your heaviest truck"

as marking them with "Fragile" seems to ensure destruction...

... but it's not limited to E-bay. I have a set of new IBM server rails in the office which have a 90 degree bend in them about a foot from the end. A friend who orders from a TV shopping channell is sure the just throw the boxes over his 6 foot fence, some times takes three or four goes to get the goods delivered intact......

Right now that's off my chest better go and have a nice calming Valium....

I had a CGA monitor break when it was shipped to me. If I remember correctly, this IBM 5153 had a serial number less than 1000, and I know for sure it was from early 1983. I tried to tell the one that shipped it to package it in bubblewrap before he sendt it, but he left it all to the shipping service and they decided to use foam peanuts instead.

I've also had exploding caps in my Compaq Portable, and some caps in one of my XTs are curently short too. Otherwise most full height FDDs I've been in touch with have somehow gotten out of alginment or stuck after not too much usage.

Last Friday I received an SGI Indigo 2 setup I won off of ebay. Both the monitor and computer arrived in really flimsy boxes. Somehow the monitor came in one piece, but the computer wasn't so lucky. The top plastic case for the computer was nearly shattered. One side and the front were broken completely off and the other side was broken in half. I knew it was bad as I saw pieces falling out of the box where it was torn wide open. Usually it's FedEx that destroys my items, but this time UPS was the culprit.

Luckily the seller refunded all of my money. I sent some back to cover shipping for the monitor and some from the auction price since everything still worked, it's just ugly now

Along those lines...I from time to time sell things on Ebay. Even if the packing is excellent items sometimes arrive damaged. Very frustrating problem. I try to pack everything to survive a 2-foot drop onto a cement floor too.