Applied Energistics 2/Retrieving A Stuck Item

A Quick Guide to Getting Stuck Items out of your ME (Applied Energistics)

This tricks works on any version that has a storage bus. I have used it for over a decade as the go-to solution.

(I'll revise this when I can but I wanted to get this out as fast as I could during lunch break).

Why

Sometimes you will notice you can't remove an item from your system, it's this time when you need this technique.

Target Audience

This guide assumes you know the basics of Applied Energistics. If you do not, you must go familiarize yourself first (but then you should be if you are having this problem, right?).

I have 50 Drive Bays, now what?

In these cases, divide and conquer. In other words, disconnect half the bays, and if its still there, you know which half has your item. Keep repeating that process until you are down to a few bays. Then remove drives in the same manner (half at a time, checking to see if its still in there). Once you have whittled it down to a single drive, you will now know which you have to work with.

What You Need

The easiest way to get your items will need a separate setup, using these items:

1 Energy Acceptor 1 ME IO Port (make sure its not the Spatial one!) 1 ME Storage Bus (again, be sure its just a plain one, not a fluid/gas/etc) 1 or more chests

Put The IO Port block on the Energy Acceptor, connect the energy acceptor to a power supply. Place a Cable and connect a chest+storage bus to it (see optional below if your drive has lots of items). Then in the IO Port, place your drive and set it to transfer the data to the network, all items will go into the chest, if there is room. Special Note: if you have Ender Utilities, the "Handy Chest" is VERY handy in this situation as it can have stacks >64 items which is VERY USEFUL here (personal choice). Now, once you get your item out, put the other stuff back in by placing the IO Port to transfer items back into the cell. There done, easy right?

IT DIDNT WORK!

What's that, you still dont have your item, it stopped halfway even though you have plenty of room in the chest??? Have no fear, there is a solution to this. What you do, is you put the cell into a ME Chest on its own network, then in the terminal REMOVE ALL ITEMS (that you can remove) and put them in a chest or back into your main system. Once you do that, place 32 of an item that comes alphabetically before the item name that cant be removed, and one that comes alphabetically AFTER the name of the item. Use 32 because thats what I do. Alphabetically for some reason works not sure if its a code glitch or what but it should be enough to get it to extract all items once you put the cell back into the IO port. Try it again and it should work.

So, in the past 10ish years of AE, AE2, I have had a 100% success rate using the above methods. If you come across one that doesnt work PLEASE let me know. You contact me on github (osirisgothra is the username).

Optional Stuff

Additional Storage Busses and Chests may be needed if you have a large amount of items in the storage cell. If you need more than 8 chests/busses, you will need to swap the Acceptor for an ME Controller(s), and attach each side to up to 8 chest+storage busses (or 32 if you use dense cable).