Gross/weird things you've found inside electronics - Dead bugs and drugs galore!

  • 🐕 I am attempting to get the site runnning as fast as possible. If you are experiencing slow page load times, please report it.
Cleaning out older electronics, I get the usual dust/hair, gunk buildup. For what it is LA Awesome cleaner diluted 50/50 from the Dollar stores works great for that purpose. I dunno what it is about that stuff but I haven't found anything better that cleans as well that isn't corrosive to sensitive electrical contacts and aluminum or other easily tarnished metals.

la.jpg
The worst I've had is an outdoor high voltage power supply backup quit working on a server array. Smelled horrible, and after opening it up, I found the relay contacts had been completely insulated by common ants. They must have been attracted to the warmth of the electrical enclosure. Anyways, clearing out crusty, burnt ants from the contacts and polishing the relay contacts had it back to working order. But the smell of Kentucky Fried Crispy ants is pretty nasty.
 
  • Informative
  • Feels
  • Like
Reactions: cactus, MsFrancisFoster, Kiwi2Shoes and 4 others
I had a mouse problem once and found they were nesting in one of my old PC cases. It had an open PCI slot that they were entering through. Needed a good powerwashing, thankfully no hardware was harmed aside from some hard drives getting mouse piss and shit all over them.
 
The worst I've ever experienced was working on an old IBM tower back in the early 2000's that was owned by a smoker.

Shit stunk on the inside, and the tar/smoke stains were attrocious.
 
  • Horrifying
Reactions: HahaYes and Kiwi Lime Pie
cat piss.
can't remember if the cat pissed inside the open case or it was just standing it, but still had to service it. imagine the smell.

also weird porn if it counts. way back before the internet hit it big there were already plenty of coomers cruising BBS' and other stuff. looking at a hoard of literal boomer porn of the amateur variety (not the good kind) was something else. so much fucking hair...
:stress:
 
  • Horrifying
  • Feels
Reactions: Kiwi Lime Pie, Aljam and I Do Not Post
Boxxy's nudes and some weird evangelical stuff. I made sure those drives made it to The dump and replaced them.
 
Had a friend with a prebuilt that was having overheating issues so she brought it to me to check it out. I swear to god a dust cloud erupted when I opened the case and I found a spider nest under her GPU.

I've seen way more heinous shit with keyboards though, how do you feel comfortable never cleaning something you eat over and touch everyday for years?
 
Mostly dead bugs and spider webs. Once, I found an old American 25¢ coin inside a Fat PS2 disk drive I got from an online store, which was likely the reason the disk drive was damaged beyond repair.

The most unpleasant find was a mummified half-cat carcass inside my car's engine bay. The car was abandoned under a tree when I bought it, so it had a lot of interesting finds on it but the cat was by far the nastier one
 
  • Horrifying
Reactions: Dynamite Bean
Found slime in a cousin's PC tower. Literal sticky, gooey, snot green slime in his tower. I cleaned it for him but to this day I have no fucking clue how he got that shit in there or what he was even doing. Got thirty bucks out of it though.

Also have found more than my fair share of mummified animals in various electronics over the years. From mice and squirrels in air conditioners to cats and dogs in a car's engine block. Sad but tends to happen a lot.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: Pepe Cortisona
Just a very dusty insides of computer cases. Gray piles of dust on bottom part, coolers that not spinning properly due to dense heaps of dust, grimey touchscreens of tablets
 
My father's computer once some kind of cockroach's nest inside the motherboard. It was not a nice visual, to say the least.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back