I didn't really get in "trouble" for it, but I reformatted (I think is the term) the hard drives of two of the school's computers.
This was back in the '80s and we were doing computer time on the library computers. The librarian (who knew nothing about computers) told us to go to the stack of computer books she had prepared, take one, then go back to our computers and follow the instructions in the book. The problem was, she didn't have enough books for everyone. So she told me where the computer books were and had me go get one off the shelf. Which I did.
I don't remember the name of the book, or what exactly it was about, but I do remember that the first section was on formatting your hard drive. So I followed the instructions. Needless to say, the computer quickly got to a state of screwed that was well beyond my fourth-grade expertise. I told the librarian that my computer stopped working, and instead of coming to check on me, she told me to "just switch to another one". Which I did. Repeat the process and another computer eats it. This time, she came over to see what I was doing, and that's when she looked at the book I was working from.
She buzzed the office and two minutes later here comes our teacher and the Principal. They looked at the computers, then took the book and tried to "undo" what I did. There was much frustration (and a couple of new vocabulary words), and the whole thing ended with my parents being called.
I didn't really get in "trouble" for it, but I reformatted (I think is the term) the hard drives of two of the school's computers.
This was back in the '80s and we were doing computer time on the library computers. The librarian (who knew nothing about computers) told us to go to the stack of computer books she had prepared, take one, then go back to our computers and follow the instructions in the book. The problem was, she didn't have enough books for everyone. So she told me where the computer books were and had me go get one off the shelf. Which I did.
I don't remember the name of the book, or what exactly it was about, but I do remember that the first section was on formatting your hard drive. So I followed the instructions. Needless to say, the computer quickly got to a state of screwed that was well beyond my fourth-grade expertise. I told the librarian that my computer stopped working, and instead of coming to check on me, she told me to "just switch to another one". Which I did. Repeat the process and another computer eats it. This time, she came over to see what I was doing, and that's when she looked at the book I was working from.
She buzzed the office and two minutes later here comes our teacher and the Principal. They looked at the computers, then took the book and tried to "undo" what I did. There was much frustration (and a couple of new vocabulary words), and the whole thing ended with my parents being called.