So how long would your PC work, if you started pulling components off the Mobo at random? And would it work better? …

Pete Jenkins

When I arrived at my folks house I noticed a DVD player yanked out of their TV stand sat on the floor. “It’s Alice’s and its broken” I was told by my Mother who proceeded to tell how my Sister, Alice, had removed their DVD player the previous evening to watch a film with a friend in her bedroom. Being a the son of an electrical engineer I immediately thought to myself “yeah right it’s broken, I’ll give it a sharp tap later and see if I can’t get it working”.

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Then my dad had a brainwave, if we were going to destroy it, why not play “component roulette”?

He suggested we could remove a component from the circuit board while a film was playing and see if it continued to work. We thought this sounded fun so we took it in turn to remove a component with a pair of pliers. There were a few ground rules, firstly to avoid the mains area, and secondly the objective is to keep the thing working on your turn (think Jenga or Buckaroo).

Dad took the first go and grabbed a small capacitor in the middle of the circuit board. He twisted, tugged and pulled, then … BOINK! it came clean off in his hand and the disk kept playing. We fell about laughing, and then it was my turn. I picked another capacitor, BOINK! it came out and the thing kept playing. Alice had a go, BOINK! Film still going!

We managed to have another two rounds each, removing a total of nine parts. By this point we were crying with laughter and were amazed the thing was still working.

Dad took the pliers and went to take his turn, he selected another capacitor, took a firm grip, pulled, tugged, wiggled, pulled some more then … BOINK! … at that same point the sound of the film blasted out of the telly, clear as day! We’d removed 10 components and fixed the fault!

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