Fixed a $0.50 loose wire after 4 hours of head scratching

Spent an entire Saturday troubleshooting a network switch that kept dropping connection. Thought it was the switch itself. Or a firmware bug. Or maybe the power supply. Turned out to be a single Cat5e cable with a bent pin inside the connector. 4 hours of my life. A $0.50 patch cable fixed it. Has anyone else chased a hardware ghost for way too long?

3 comments

3 Comments

martinez.paul15h ago

I saw that Linus Tech Tips video where they spent like 6 hours debugging a server and it was just a loose power cable. That kind of stuff makes you want to throw your whole toolkit out the window. A bent pin is definitely the kind of dumb thing that will get you every time.

corap612d agoMost Upvoted

Oh, come on, a four hour headache over a single bent pin?

sandragrant2d ago

Honestly that "bent pin inside the connector" bit hit close to home. My buddy once replaced a whole graphics card only to find a single pin in his HDMI cable was bent the whole time.