I accidentally broke off the end of a security dongle. What is a dongle? A dongle is a piece of hardware that plugs into a computer and verifies that you did in fact purchase this five thousand dollar software package. Without this small piece of plastic and circuitry, nothing loads. It's important.
The break occurred at 7:00 on Sunday night, after I had almost completed all my after hours work. One last thing to do. I was moving a 1U rack mounted server and didn't know it had a dongle. I set it down when I heard the crunch. I'd snapped the USB connector clean off. I was all alone and no replacement available. The software HAD to run by Monday morning. Not should. Had.
So... I did what anyone would do. I panicked. I swore. I wept. Then I started thinking.
I cannibalized anther USB cable in my office and removed all the metal tongs. I bent a fith piece around them all and wedged them into the PCB on the dongle. This whole process took about an hour or so. Had there been a soldering iron here I could have used that. I'm not a very practised solderer so I'm not sure if it would have been better or worse. All in all the Frankendongle was completed. It was shaky at best.
So... I put it in the computer...and the LED powered on and the software loaded up!
That little kludge stood in the gap for about 10 days until the replacement arrived.
3 comments:
That should be a "there I fixed it" post lol. Well done!
It was your email that got me thinking..
"Hey, I've got one of these!"
So, thanks for the idea!
Ahh! You made me look up the word "kludge". Lol, was i the last person to know that word?
Post a Comment