Help on thinking of problems to put into a computer.

Hello,
My friend is going to be competing in the SkillsUSA hardware part of the program.

We are in class thinking of ways we can set up for him to get ready for the competion. He is really smart and I need not simpleton problems, but problems that involve alot of thinking.. Thanks for your time.

switch some jumpers on the motherboard.. that always gets people

Well although that can fool some people, this kid is much smarter than just switching jumpers...Its too easy..Please supply more challenging problems.

it may seem simple, but it's easily overlooked because it is so simple.

i'll try to think of some other things though.

Well although I agree with you on that...but this kid is just unbelievable I don't know how he does it. So and little jumper wouldn't do the trick Thanks for thinking still.

Break the emitter lead of the CPU voltage regulator. The computer will try to turn on, all the lights will come on, but the CPU itself won't have any power.

*Points up to previous post*

Although that would work...this is a competition and you can't break anything on the computer...first that would break the whole mobo..and secondly, its against the rules...hehe..thanks though.

*replying to the reply made two comments up..*

There is only so much you can do without breaking something. Messing with jumpers on the mobo, hard drives, optical drives, unseating the ram a bit etc. Troubleshooting hardware isn't rocket science.

try adding to many jumpers to the mobo andjust switch a bunch of thing next to eachother and go nuts

Toss in an empty bios chip ?

Flip the switch on the back from 120 to 240, I would probably never check that and just say it's a bad PS.

Without breaking something its pretty hard to come across something devilishly difficult.
You could try using a staple to short two of the pins on the IDE cable to the hard drive. You could also try setting the Hard drive settings manually in the BIOS to incorrect amounts. Overclock the CPU extremely.

You could also try removing the CPU, bending a few of the pins and then sticking it back in. I remember the first time I changed over a 486 CPU I bent some pins accidentaly and had to spend 15 minutes restraightening them. Didn't harm the CPU but if you don't know about it it sure can be fun
Or short out a few of the pins.

Use a graphite pencil to draw lines between motherboard track thingies.

The graphite pencil one would be very difficult to pick up I suspect, unless you knew what you were looking for you'd more likely chuck it as a bad motherboard. Connecting IDE1 and IDE2 might be fun.