Ehh…I just fried the secondary IDE port on my motherboard. My sister bought a CD-burner at a yard sale for $5, and the only thing wrong with it is that the tray wouldn’t close all the way. I took it apart and found that the loading mechanism was a little off-kilter, so I fixed it, but I didn’t put it all the way back together. I took the cover off my computer and set the burner next to it, then unplugged my CD-ROM and plugged the cables into the burner. Then I booted my machine up, but Windows wasn’t reading the drive. I moved the burner to make sure the cables were plugged in all the way, but when I touched it, the bottom of the case on the drive touched the circuit board, and my computer just turned off completely. After that, the power switch wouldn’t even turn it on, so I waited a few minutes then tried again. It booted up, but still wouldn’t read the drive. So I shut down, plugged the cables back into my old drive, and when I booted up again, it still wouldn’t read it.
I rarely use my CD-ROM drive, so I’m not too worried about getting a new board soon, but if the occasion arises, Ty said he has a PII board I could borrow. I think I’ll just wait ’til I get enough money to build a new system, but this time I’m definitely not buying from EBC again.