Stoopidest Hardware Repair Call?
Q
I know there are a lot of urban myths regarding the subject.
It would be interesting (for me at least) to hear of some first-hand
ones.
Let me be the first:
On a paint inventory-control system I wrote, an important part of
tracking was to print out bar-code labels for the 55Gal drums of
paint. The printers were out in the heat/humidity/dust of the shop
floor.
I don't remember the exact model of the dot-matrix printers. Think
they were Swedish, and real easy to program for. You would send an
escape char down the wire, followed by the number that you wanted to
print. Pretty nice...
Anyway -- after a month in use the print was being compressed. The
height was perfect, but the width was downright anorexic!!
Called the repair folks, and watched what he did.
Two minute fix. Sprayed the print-head support bar with WD40
(oil/solvent mixture), so it would not bind. The bill was $US180
dollars.
Needless to say, we went to the tool crib and got a can to position
near each printer...
Q
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Q <WallyI...@erewhon.net> wrote:
> To all:
>
> I know there are a lot of urban myths regarding the subject.
> It would be interesting (for me at least) to hear of some first-hand
> ones.
I once returned a Commodore Pet to one of the worlds leading physicists
after ... changing the fuse in the mains plug and soaking it for a couple of
days.
--
You gave the command for the computer to WIN, why are you so surprised that
you lose ?
The.Central.Scru...@invalid.pobox.com
>On Thu, 17 May 2001 13:46:37 -0500
>Q <WallyI...@erewhon.net> wrote:
>> To all:
>>
>> I know there are a lot of urban myths regarding the subject.
>> It would be interesting (for me at least) to hear of some first-hand
>> ones.
>
> I once returned a Commodore Pet to one of the worlds leading physicists
>after ... changing the fuse in the mains plug and soaking it for a couple of
>days.
A friend once bought a returned CD player. It was returned because it
"didn't work" and the reason was that the shipping screws were never
removed.
Eric Sosman
>
> To all:
>
> I know there are a lot of urban myths regarding the subject.
> It would be interesting (for me at least) to hear of some first-hand
> ones.
This incident is "first-hand" in the sense of "I was there
at the time and I knew all the people," but I neither placed the
call nor performed the service.
My college's lone computer was a punched-cards-and-printouts
sort of operation. It was "clock-shared" between administrative
and academic use, running student and faculty jobs from noon to
midnight until the Admin night operator kicked us all off and ran
dull stuff like payroll and grades from midnight to noon.
The day shift operators were students, and sometimes bored
students. On one occasion, a student operator noticed that the
indicator lights on the 1403N1 printer were just ordinary bulbs
covered by rectangular bits of plastic of various colors and
bearing various engraved legends -- and that all the plastic
pieces were (1) of the same size and (2) detachable to allow
bulb replacement. Yes, he amused himself by switching the light
covers around.
Midnight came (as it still sometimes does), and the night
operator took over and started running senior-class grades or
some such. Everything chugged along merrily for a while, and
then the console bell rang and the printer stopped dead with
the SYNC CHECK light illuminated.
Now, this was something new in Andy's experience: he'd seen
lots of things go awry with printers, but SYNC CHECK was novel.
So he did what he should have done: he looked it up in the handy
troubleshooting guide and followed the procedures therein outlined.
RESET button -- the light still burns. Power-cycle the printer --
it came back up with SYNC CHECK still glowing enigmatically. Power-
cycle the entire system -- when power came back, so did SYNC CHECK.
Andy probably tried a few other remedies he didn't tell us
about, but none of them worked. So at about 3AM he called IBM
Service; we only had prime-shift coverage, but he was trying to
get a tight-deadline job done, and the clock was ticking ...
IBM rousted somebody out of bed and sent him to our little
backwater. Upon arrival he assessed the situation, noticed that
the light bezels were disarranged, restored them to their proper
places, and Lo! the printer no longer complained about SYNC CHECK.
To justify the whopping bill we were going to pay for an out-of-
contract-hours emergency-response Service call, he even cleared
the remaining problem by putting in a fresh box of paper ...
.
wrote:
>To all:
>
>I know there are a lot of urban myths regarding the subject.
>It would be interesting (for me at least) to hear of some first-hand
>ones.
Got 2 more stories for you.....
Back when 20meg Hard Drives were selling for $350.00 (Cdn).
I bought a 20meg Hard Drive for $5.00 (Cdn) as the store thought it
was defective, it wouldn't format and made a loud "clunking" sound
when it was turned off.
1) They couldn't format it because they forget to "fdisk" the drive.
2) The "clunking" sound was caused by the "auto-parking" feature.
I had a 10meg drive with aprox 50k in bad sectors, recovered 20k after
the drive had been dropped 3 feet onto a wooden floor.
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
>
> IBM rousted somebody out of bed and sent him to our little
> backwater. Upon arrival he assessed the situation, noticed that
> the light bezels were disarranged, restored them to their proper
> places, and Lo! the printer no longer complained about SYNC CHECK.
> To justify the whopping bill we were going to pay for an out-of-
> contract-hours emergency-response Service call, he even cleared
> the remaining problem by putting in a fresh box of paper ...
random ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#3
--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | ly...@garlic.com - http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
J. Otto Tennant
>To all:
>I know there are a lot of urban myths regarding the subject.
>It would be interesting (for me at least) to hear of some first-hand
>ones.
>Let me be the first:
This is not exactly on topic.
I was assisting in the installation of a computer in Brazil. We could
not really control the hardware support types Pittsburgh sent to us, so
I was treated to working with one of the dumbest hardware maintenance
persons I had ever met (and since, for that matter.)
The line printer we used was originally, I think, from Univac, but a
good chunk of the electronics was created by XDS. The print drum was
associated with a "code wheel", which optically told the beast which
letter was under the printing place. When the right character was under
the printing place, an RJ45 card would fire a hammer and the character
would be impressed on the paper.
RJ45 cards were notoriously unreliable. Before Pittsburgh sent us a
hardware type to help, even programmers could figure out which RJ45 had
failed. All those years ago, we didn't need any f***ing grounding
straps, so we just replaced the card. Pgh, though, decided that we
could not do that any more. (I admit that a fairly spectaular spark I
drew from a high-voltage power supply had something to do with their
decision.)
So I told the hardware guy that the RJ45 in slot (whatever) was
defective and that I wanted him to replace it. It was hard to read a
Fortran listing if column 7 doesn't print.
This wonderful person decided that the problem was not the RJ45 card,
but a dirty code wheel. He got out his Q-Tips and alcohol. To his
horror, but not to my surprise, he discovered that the coding on the
code wheel was soluable in alcohol.
So we looked into our spare parts, and discovered that our spare code
wheel, somehow, was the negative (black where it should be clear, and
vice versa) of what we needed.
I thought at the time that if I had a few moments, I could put a patch
into the device driver to make the thing work, but I was almost
incoherent with rage and asked the hardware guy what he was going to do.
He did, to my surprise, fix the problem.
Now, I do not know what Brazil is like now. This incident happened
almost 30 years ago. In his few days in Brazil, he had hooked up with a
female from a "boite" (pronounced bwa-chee, derived from the French word
for a box, and is a place where one meets women of negotiable virtue)
named "La Licorne" ("The Unicorn").
She provided him with a bottle of purple nail polish, and he spent
several hours carefully painting back what he had erased from the code
wheel. He was very pleased when he put the code wheel back, and the
durned thing worked (except for column 7).
After an incredibly loud conversation, I convinced this idiot to replace
the failed RJ45 card, and went back to work.
Some years later, I left that company. At the "going away" luncheon I
was presented with quite a bit of memorabilia, all of which I have since
misplaced, and none, but one of which, I miss. I do wish, though, that
I had saved the code wheel with the purple nail polish.
--
J.Otto Tennant jo...@pobox.com
Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit.
Charter Member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
Heinz W. Wiggeshoff
>
...
> about, but none of them worked. So at about 3AM he called IBM
> Service; we only had prime-shift coverage, but he was trying to
> get a tight-deadline job done, and the clock was ticking ...
>
> IBM rousted somebody out of bed and sent him to our little
> backwater. Upon arrival he assessed the situation, noticed that
the controller needed replacing, called for a crane etc. etc.
My sides are hurting. (But it's amazing the operator didn't
compare the positions of the bezels with the illustration in
the book.)
Terry Kennedy
> I know there are a lot of urban myths regarding the subject.
> It would be interesting (for me at least) to hear of some first-hand
> ones.
This one goes back many years. I was working for a typesetting shop in
computer support, and they'd just gotten some newfangled box to read
various obscure word processing system diskette formats some months back.
[I think it was from Shafstall or something similar.]
Anyway, it's a Friday night, I'd cut out of work early to pick up my
girlfriend and head for the shore. Some time in the wee hours of the
morning, I get a page (in those days, the pager only went beep-beep, no
display or anything) and I called the office, none too pleased.
They said the converter box was displaying an error they'd never seen
before - "dee one five cee", and they Absolutely Had To Have It Fixed
Immediately as there was a Big Job waiting. After getting them to try
the usual stuff, I decided I had to go and swap it out.
So, I drop my girlfriend off at her place, which wakes up her mother
and I get maternal abuse about keeping her Sweet Thing out till all
hours (if she only knew 8-) and I drag my sorry ass into work. Where,
I find that the display is not "dee one five cee", it's...
D15C. Or, since it only had seven-segment displays, "DISC". The
idjit operator had neglected to insert the Big Job's input floppy in
the conversion box.
I complained mightily about said Idjit Operator. But I did get a
suite at the Gramercy Park for the night (which I parlayed into the
whioe weekend, with the aforementioned girlfriend) at the company's
expense.
Terry Kennedy http://www.tmk.com
te...@tmk.com Jersey City, NJ USA
sw...@nol.net
> To all:
> I know there are a lot of urban myths regarding the subject.
> It would be interesting (for me at least) to hear of some first-hand
> ones.
At a PPOE, we once made a call to FileNet because our server had dropped
off the network. While my boss was describing the problem, one of my
coworkers discovered the problem. The tranciever had come off, and the
machine was literally off the network. Plugging it back in solved the
problem.
--
Mike Swaim, Avatar of Chaos: Disclaimer:I sometimes lie.
Home: swaim at nol * net Quote: "Boingie"^4 Y,W&D
Heinz W. Wiggeshoff
>
> This one goes back many years. I was working for a typesetting shop in
> computer support, and they'd just gotten some newfangled box to read
> various obscure word processing system diskette formats some months back.
> [I think it was from Shafstall or something similar.]
Yup - it could read/write 5 1/4 and 8" disks written by AES, Micom,
Wang, IBM PC's and god knows what else. Had one at the late
Alphatext here in Ottawa.
>
>
...
> I complained mightily about said Idjit Operator. But I did get a
> suite at the Gramercy Park for the night (which I parlayed into the
> whioe weekend, with the aforementioned girlfriend) at the company's
^^^^^
> expense.
You dirty dog - never had one of those. The week in Jamaica was close
though.
Terry Kennedy
>> I complained mightily about said Idjit Operator. But I did get a
>> suite at the Gramercy Park for the night (which I parlayed into the
>> whioe weekend, with the aforementioned girlfriend) at the company's
> ^^^^^
>> expense.
>
> You dirty dog - never had one of those. The week in Jamaica was close
> though.
Urrrrmmm, that should have been "whole weekend". Maybe the cats walked
across the keyboard, maybe my fingers slipped...
Philip Newton
<ste...@eircom.net> wrote:
> I once returned a Commodore Pet to one of the worlds leading physicists
> after ... changing the fuse in the mains plug and soaking it for a couple of
> days.
Soaking the fuse? In what? What for?
Cheers,
Philip
--
Philip Newton <nospam...@gmx.li>
Yes, that really is my address; no need to remove anything to reply.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Jan Atle Ramsli
>
> On Thu, 17 May 2001 13:46:37 -0500
> Q <WallyI...@erewhon.net> wrote:
> > To all:
> >
> > I know there are a lot of urban myths regarding the subject.
> > It would be interesting (for me at least) to hear of some first-hand
> > ones.
I was briefly employed at Einersen Kontor & Data, Tønsberg, Norway.
I was a jobless programmer in need of money, I had just barely survived
a yuppie bancrupcy called Agder Managment.
One day the EDB-sjef (Computing Department Manager) receives a phone
call, says something that sounds like "He will be there right away" and
turns to me.
I had spent the last couple of weeks trying to make sense of the ugliest
computing chaos I had ever seen, loading a spreadsheet over the network
could take 25 minutes, and I had no idea what was wrong - a forgotten
terminator? Swapping? What??
So I stood straight, ready to meet my new challenge ... but he had a
weird smile on his face.
"What is it?"
"The printer doesn't work, you have to go right away!"
"Any idea what is wrong with it? I know nothing about printers ..."
"You'll know this one"
"Do you mean to tell me you know what the error is?"
"Yes"
"Then tell me, and I'll get on the phone and help them fix it
themselves!"
"And lose NOK 750.- an hour in billing? NO WAY! You are going down
there, pronto!"
"At least tell me what it is ..."
"ON LINE"
"What?"
"The button on the printer. It says ON LINE, and they have no idea what
that means ..."
----------------
It seems this was a regular call.
Nobody told them what "ON LINE" meant, including me, for I refused to
go.
To my surprise, once I had refused, the room was filled with guys who
would gladly take the call ..?
It seems the secretary in question was not very intelligent, but she had
(according to unverified rumour) the biggest pair of b00bs in Tønsberg.
So, if this doesn't qualify for the st00pidest hardware-related call, I
don't know what does.
Atle, loss of a great b00b-repairman.
-----------------------
Peter Ibbotson
"Q" <WallyI...@erewhon.net> wrote in message
news:tb68gt063urc1j8mg...@4ax.com...
> To all:
>
> I know there are a lot of urban myths regarding the subject.
> It would be interesting (for me at least) to hear of some first-hand
> ones.
>
several floppy discs photocopied then faxed but an ex-dec support person
told me that she asked the customer to send a copy of the floppy. A
photocopy arrived, but they'd taken it out of the mylar sleeve.
The other one that happened to me (Circa '86). I got a phone call from our
investor relations (for a software house) person whose secretary was on
holiday telling me she couldn't get her email. Took me a good ten minutes to
realise that she hadn't turned on the monitor (and I very nearly had to go
out to fix this one).
ic0c...@ic24.net
>To all:
>
>I know there are a lot of urban myths regarding the subject.
>It would be interesting (for me at least) to hear of some first-hand
>ones.
How about a defective mouse bringing an IBM1620 to its knees?
A round trip of 300 miles early one Monday morning, to remove a dead
mouse from the internals of the B1 typewriter since the operators
wouldn't touch the damn thing. It is possible that this Cumbrian coast
mouse died of unnatural causes in the typewriter whilst the machine was
powered off over the weekend.
--
Tony Lenton
ic0c...@ic24.net
<Eric....@east.sun.com> wrote:
>
> IBM rousted somebody out of bed and sent him to our little
>backwater. Upon arrival he assessed the situation, noticed that
>the light bezels were disarranged, restored them to their proper
>places, and Lo! the printer no longer complained about SYNC CHECK.
>To justify the whopping bill we were going to pay for an out-of-
>contract-hours emergency-response Service call, he even cleared
>the remaining problem by putting in a fresh box of paper ...
A regular problem I can assure you. Even some of IBM's engineers spent
time looking for synch or print checks. Happily most customers had
maintenance agreements.
--
Tony Lenton
John West McKenna
>The other one that happened to me (Circa '86). I got a phone call from our
>investor relations (for a software house) person whose secretary was on
>holiday telling me she couldn't get her email. Took me a good ten minutes to
>realise that she hadn't turned on the monitor (and I very nearly had to go
>out to fix this one).
Earlier this week I wasted a good half an hour chasing a bug (I didn't
change anything important! I swear!) that turned out to be me forgetting
to turn the monitor on.
I've also wasted considerable time debugging hardware, with the special
debugging software in an EPROM on the other side of the room...
And of course, code runs much better if you remember to compile it first.
John
Paul Grayson
news:20010517223250....@eircom.net...
> I once returned a Commodore Pet to one of the worlds leading physicists
> after ... changing the fuse in the mains plug and soaking it for a couple
of
> days.
When I worked for a systems integration company we generally farmed our
hardware support out to various third parties, most of whom were too
incompetant to really do the job. However there were exceptions:
We were based in Yorkshire. We had a customer at a factory in central
Scotland. They had two 64K leased line connections to other sites. The
provider (BT) assurred us that there was no problem with the link, and that
the problem was with comms hardware in the machine. The server was fitted
with a rare HDLC card with a bizarre multi-connector cable.
I went to the site armed with a replacement card and cable. To get to the
site required a taxi-ride to York station, a train to Edinburgh, another
train to Stirling and then another taxi-ride to the factory, arriving at the
factory at 11am. It took me 5 hours or so to get there.
I was able to touch the server at 2pm, spending the hours beforehand
drinking coffee. I didn't know whether the problem was with the card or the
cable. Firstly, though, I swapped over the two connectors, and discovered
that the broken link was still down, and that there was no problem with the
card.
I left the factory 10 minutes later, and proceeded home. I got home at
9:30pm that night. BT resolved the problem on Monday.
I've still got the replacement HDLC card I took to the site in a cupboard at
home.
Ian Stirling
>On Thu, 17 May 2001 22:32:50 +0200, Steve O'Hara-Smith
><ste...@eircom.net> wrote:
>> I once returned a Commodore Pet to one of the worlds leading physicists
>> after ... changing the fuse in the mains plug and soaking it for a couple of
>> days.
>Soaking the fuse? In what? What for?
Naah, soaking the plug.
To ensure proper remorse at having wasted someones time, when it's plugged
back in :)
--
http://inquisitor.i.am/ | mailto:inqui...@i.am | Ian Stirling.
---------------------------+-------------------------+--------------------------
"I meant, have you ploughed the ocean waves at all?" Colon gave him a cunning
look. 'Ah, you can't catch me with that one, sir' he said 'Everyone knows
horses sink' -- Terry Pratchett - Jingo
.
Another "real" mouse sighting....
While browsing through some computer books in the store, I opened one
up and found a mouse had been flattened within it. I handed the book
to the sales staf, suggesting they might wish to consider disposing of
the book. (BTW, one of the staff was eating supper at the time)
The book was placed in one of their bags and left by the entrance
to the store, we figure that someone picked it up thinking it was a
forgotten purchase.
Joe Morris
>Eric Sosman (Eric....@east.sun.com) writes:
The hack of playing mix-and-match with the jewels (and almost all
IBM boxes used jewels of the same dimensions) probably could be found
in most shops. "Tape Indicate" on the printer, "Chip Box Full" on
the disk drive, etc...
At my PPOE it got so bad that a formal memo was issued prohibiting
the practice, *especially* with newly hired student operators (with
the newly-hired student operators as either perpetrator or victim...)
Joe Morris
gla...@glass2.lexington.ibm.com
I actually prevented a "stoopid repair call" once. One hot
August afternoon, I kept hearing one of the programmers grumbling
about his monitor, which was failing. He finally came into my
office, looking for the number to call for hardware service. I
questioned him as to what was wrong, and he explained that his
monitor kept getting all jittery. I was curious since I hadn't
observed that particular failure mode before, so I accompanied him
back to his office. Sure enough, the image on his monitor was
vibrating left and right about an inch a few times a second. He was
about to call the service number to get a new monitor when I
remembered seeing that the programmer in the adjacent office had
just that morning brought in a small fan. On a whim, I stepped next
door and had him turn the fan off. The monitor immediately cleared
up. When he switched the fan back on, the monitor started jittering
again. It seems that the fan had enough magnetic field leakage that
it was able to penetrate the wall, get into the monitor, and mess up
the electron beam in the CRT. He got the programmer with the fan to
move it a few feet, and the problem was gone.
Dave
P.S. Standard Disclaimer: I work for them, but I don't speak for them.
Q
<do...@harvestme.co.uk> wrote:
> Took me a good ten minutes to
>realise that she hadn't turned on the monitor (and I very nearly had to go
>out to fix this one).
Dont't forget the big-giant-brains that somehow manage to set the
foreground color same as the background color;-)
Q
Eric Sosman
>
> The hack of playing mix-and-match with the jewels (and almost all
> IBM boxes used jewels of the same dimensions) probably could be found
> in most shops. "Tape Indicate" on the printer, "Chip Box Full" on
> the disk drive, etc...
One arrangement I rather admired involved replacing all
the push-buttons (there were close to a dozen) on the front
panel of our S/360 Model 44 with nice red STOP buttons gleaned
from all the other equipment in the room.
Andy van Tol
I was interrupted from coding duties to do "tech support" on our CP/M -
Multibus hardware product. The female caller needed to be stepped through
typing in a CP/M command, so I instructed "Type A ... colon ....".
Long, long pause, and finally the caller said "I can't find the colon!". I
started giggling, and Bob, the other programmer sitting next to me, wanted
to know what could be so funny on a support call.
I told him: "She says she can't find the colon".
Bob came right back with "Tell her to start at her ankles and work her way
up".
We had to break for lunch just to restore order in the lab.
Andy
Q
> He got the programmer with the fan to
>move it a few feet, and the problem was gone.
>
>Dave
Never underestimate the power of EMF!
Q
The.Central.Scru...@invalid.pobox.com
I've been known to walk along the cubespace isles with a mucking big magnet.
"ooo... look at all the colors!" heard from the other side of the partition.
gla...@glass2.lexington.ibm.com
I'm reminded of a, possibly apocryphal, tale of a typewriter
repair-person (back when typewriters were repaired) who had been
called to a particular office to fix a typewriter. It seems that
the typewriter was skipping, inserting extraneous blank spaces in
the wrong places. Well, the repair-person examined the typewriter,
and could find no fault with it. He then had the secretary
demonstrate the problem. It seems that she liked to sit very close
to the typewriter, and, when she had gotten to typing very
rhythmically, a resonance built up in part of her body that would
occasionally slap the spacebar, thus causing the extra spaces to be
inserted. The repair-person diplomatically told her that he thought
he knew what the problem was, but that it might take a while to fix.
So, she stepped out of the office for a few minutes, and he
proceeded to raise her chair by an inch, and the problem was fixed.
:*)
Dave
P.S. Standard Disclaimer: I work for them, but I don't speak for them,
especially in this post!
Charlie Gibbs
jo...@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (John "West" McKenna) writes:
>And of course, code runs much better if you remember to compile it
>first.
It runs even better after you've remembered to copy the new
executable to somewhere on the live system's path.
--
cgi...@sky.bus.com (Charlie Gibbs)
Remove the first period after the "at" sign to reply.
David Given
.@. writes:
[...]
> I had a 10meg drive with aprox 50k in bad sectors, recovered 20k after
> the drive had been dropped 3 feet onto a wooden floor.
I once dropped a very old, very exotic 20MB MFM SCSI drive --- the *first*
SCSI, it came with an 8-bit controller card --- ten centimetres and it
never spun again.
--
+- David Given --------McQ-+ "[SF is not about predicting the future.] We are
| Work: d...@tao-group.com | not prophets; in fact, if we were much worse at it,
| Play: d...@cowlark.com | we'd be economists." --- Stephen Dedman
+- http://www.cowlark.com -+
JM Carmack
4ax.com>:
Back when I worked for an IBM repair branch in college, we had several
pieces of test equipment cobbled together from spare IBM Store Controllers
(IBM AT with dual full-height 30Mb hard disks and all slots full of cards I
Couldn't Identify. Seems it was a Wal-Mart option pack that they used for
POS applications or something). These things made for wonderful space
heaters given their hardware configuration and the state of technology at
their time of manufacture.
We'd just moved into a new warehouse-style building in the middle of a
field in a low-rent rural-ish area (as compared to the pricy 3-story Branch
in a nearby college town) during a cold winter. Very quickly some of the
old ATs died as a result of chewed controller cables. One of them failed
over a weekend with a crashed OS. Seems a mouse found the warm 286
processor a good place to wrap around. It shorted out several leads on the
processor and died from a measly 5-volt signal
Alexandre Pechtchanski
>In <3B051492...@skynet.be>, Jan Atle Ramsli <tro...@skynet.be> writes:
>>Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
>>>
>>> On Thu, 17 May 2001 13:46:37 -0500
>>> Q <WallyI...@erewhon.net> wrote:
>>> > To all:
>>> >
>>> > I know there are a lot of urban myths regarding the subject.
>>> > It would be interesting (for me at least) to hear of some first-hand
>>> > ones.
>>This one is genuine, I attach to it Atles Certificate of Authenticity.
[ good story snipped ]
>I'm reminded of a, possibly apocryphal, tale of a typewriter
>repair-person (back when typewriters were repaired) who had been
[ another good story snipped ]
Another one that happened to me recently (swear!).
Originally was marked as software/network problem: users cannot log into the
network.
Checked computer - OK. Checked if _I_ can log in - OK. Tried to log in as user
- no go. Checked account - not locked (and the message said "cannot
authenticate", not "account locked"). Tried log in from another computer - OK.
Suddenly users says: "Oh, and I forgot to mention: when I press letter 't', I
have to hit the key real hard for it to appear"...
<Silent glare>
Of course, password had a 't'.
--
[ When replying, remove *'s from address ]
Alexandre Pechtchanski, Systems Manager, RUH, NY
Jan Atle Ramsli
>
> again. It seems that the fan had enough magnetic field leakage that
> it was able to penetrate the wall, get into the monitor, and mess up
> the electron beam in the CRT. He got the programmer with the fan to
> move it a few feet, and the problem was gone.
corners ... after just about the same story as above, I started to
'examine' the environment, and I noticed that I had spent the other 1/2
on speakers, but very little on 'lebensraum' - so the speakers were
standing too close to the TV.
This one seems fairly standard - I did mention it to the TV-salesman,
and he told me lots of people get this problem, the first thing he asks
is: "Where are your speakers?"
Atle
Nico de Jong
> >So, if this doesn't qualify for the st00pidest hardware-related call, I
> >don't know what does.
> >
I installed a media conversion system in Oslo back in 1988. Some time later, they had to move the system, and when they had finished the job (they thought), they called me monday morning and summoned me to get to Oslo on the double, as their disk conversion box wouldnt start.
So, I took off, driving some 650 km, to look at the problem.
It showed, that they had forgotten to connect the power cable between the box and the mains!
This is _not_ a joke, and in order to avoid embarrassment, I will not mention the company name.
This reminds me of a more-or-less standard phrase in Norwegian: when rebooting DOS or Windows systems, they have a phrase called "the Danish button". This is CTRL-ALT-DEL.
The also have a "Swedish button" (svenskeknappen), which is the power switch!
Guess who they like most!
Nico
Steve O'Hara-Smith
"Andy van Tol" <no...@nospam.org> wrote:
AT> Bob came right back with "Tell her to start at her ankles and work her way
AT> up".
C:<Enter>
Sorry, it was a bad day when I first read that the wrong way.
--
You gave the command for the computer to WIN, why are you so surprised that
you lose ?
Q
> Seems a mouse found the warm 286
>processor a good place to wrap around. It shorted out several leads on the
>processor and died from a measly 5-volt signal
Way back in the days if ISDN, squirrels moved into the telco box down
the alley. Little suckers *had* to pick my pair to chew on! Repair
man evicted them...
Q
Q
wrote:
>Guess who they like most!
The ones that the Norwegians chased through the weeds...
(Will explain -- *if* necessary)
Disclaimer: Has nothing at all to do with computing devices!
Q
Maurice Fox
wrote:
> In article <9e34cp$5a2$1...@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au>
> jo...@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (John "West" McKenna) writes:
>
> >And of course, code runs much better if you remember to compile it
> >first.
>
> It runs even better after you've remembered to copy the new
> executable to somewhere on the live system's path.
Yup! Demonstrated that one to myself only yesterday!
Julian Thomas
>I'm reminded of a, possibly apocryphal, tale of a typewriter
>repair-person (back when typewriters were repaired) who had been called
>to a particular office to fix a typewriter. It seems that the typewriter
>was skipping, inserting extraneous blank spaces in the wrong places.
>Well, the repair-person examined the typewriter, and could find no fault
>with it. He then had the secretary demonstrate the problem. It seems
>that she liked to sit very close to the typewriter, and, when she had
>gotten to typing very rhythmically, a resonance built up in part of her
>body that would occasionally slap the spacebar, thus causing the extra
>spaces to be inserted.
Also a legend about keypunchers (Ms W, are you there?)
--
Julian Thomas: jt . epix @ net http://home.epix.net/~jt
remove letter a for email (or switch . and @)
In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State!
Boardmember of POSSI.org - Phoenix OS/2 Society, Inc
http://www.possi.org
-- --
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
Howard S Shubs
wrote:
> Nobody told them what "ON LINE" meant, including me, for I refused to
> go.
Looks like you should've gone. Stupid users deserve to be billed for it.
--
Howard S Shubs
"Run in circles, scream and shout!" "I hope you have good backups!"
Howard S Shubs
<slrn9gak1e.fv.The.Centr...@C1459607-A.arvada1.co.home.com
>,
The.Central.Scru...@invalid.pobox.com () wrote:
> I've been known to walk along the cubespace isles with a mucking big magnet.
On -purpose-??
>
> "ooo... look at all the colors!" heard from the other side of the partition.
Charles Richmond
always crashed around 2 PM on every Thursday...turned out the janitor
would plug his vacuum cleaner into the UPS plug around that time each
week... (I can certify that this really happened...)
--
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| Charles and Francis Richmond <rich...@plano.net> |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
Charles Richmond
Charles Richmond
>
> In article <3B051492...@skynet.be>, Jan Atle Ramsli <tro...@skynet.be>
> wrote:
>
> > Nobody told them what "ON LINE" meant, including me, for I refused to
> > go.
>
> Looks like you should've gone. Stupid users deserve to be billed for it.
>
"Life is tough...it's tougher if you're stupid."
Ron Wellsted
> Q wrote:
>>
>> On 18 May 2001 14:54:10 GMT, gla...@glass2.lexington.ibm.com wrote:
>>
>> > He got the programmer with the fan to
>> >move it a few feet, and the problem was gone.
>> >
>> >Dave
>>
>> Never underestimate the power of EMF!
>>
> On a wide-area network, we got a call from a site...seems their
> computer always crashed around 2 PM on every Thursday...turned out the
> janitor would plug his vacuum cleaner into the UPS plug around that
> time each week... (I can certify that this really happened...)
>
Last year, we got an early morning panic phone call from customer,
complaining that the entire network was dead. All the PC had powered
up but no one could log on. Using our ISDN line we dialed into the
server and all was running perfectly but the server couldn't ping and
workstations so we had to send an engineer out.
Cause of problem: the cleaner had unpluged the power cable for the hub
in order to plug in the vac. (thankfully this real PITA is now an
ex-customer)
--
Ron Wellsted
e-mail r...@wellsted.org.uk
web: http://www.wellsted.org.uk
Jan Atle Ramsli
>
> So, I took off, driving some 650 km, to look at the problem.
If you had seen a white Mercedes driving the other way at neckbraking
speed with all four wheels skidding, that would have been me driving the
other way ... surprised we didn't meet - was that a DiskMaker?
> systems, they have a phrase called "the Danish button". This is CTRL-ALT-DEL.
> The also have a "Swedish button" (svenskeknappen), which is the power switch!
> Guess who they like most!
Hehe, this gives some good memories!
Atle
Jan Atle Ramsli
> > > go.
> >
> > Looks like you should've gone. Stupid users deserve to be billed for it.
Well, the NOK 750 were not the main attraction :-)
Atle
Jan Atle Ramsli
> I installed a media conversion system in Oslo back in 1988. Some time later, they had to move the
>system, and when they had finished the job (they thought), they called me monday morning and
>summoned me to get to Oslo on the double, as their disk conversion box wouldnt start.
This one is for Norwegians only, if you are not Norwegian, here is a
quick course:
'musa' = the mouse, a Norwgian name that litterally means 'pussy'. It
seems the goes for 'la topa' in Italian ...
My wife's friend is Italian, but has spent time in Norway, done her
studies there and masters the language, at least in written form.
One day she came running in from her office, in obvious distress, and it
is part of the story that such good-looking women are a rare sight in
Norway: "Jai har problema med musa mi"
Silence.
Nobody dared say a word, nobody even smiled.
After a while, one guy got up the courage to say: "Jeg skal hjelpe deg,
jeg"
They dissappeared into her office ...
Atle
jmfb...@aol.com
OH, yeah. JMF had a VT05 here at home. I had a black&white
TV that I played Nintendo games on. I could see what
Jim typed and what the computer responded with when I turned
that TV on (spacing was about 25-30 feet). Curiously, the ^C
came out very clear but not the rest of the character set.
Never did figure out why that happened.
/BAH
Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
jmfb...@aol.com
ja...@aepiax.net (Julian Thomas) wrote:
>In <9e3n7m$htg$2...@ausnews.austin.ibm.com>, on 05/18/01
> at 05:47 PM, gla...@glass2.lexington.ibm.com said:
>
>>I'm reminded of a, possibly apocryphal, tale of a typewriter
>>repair-person (back when typewriters were repaired) who had been called
>>to a particular office to fix a typewriter. It seems that the typewriter
>>was skipping, inserting extraneous blank spaces in the wrong places.
>>Well, the repair-person examined the typewriter, and could find no fault
>>with it. He then had the secretary demonstrate the problem. It seems
>>that she liked to sit very close to the typewriter, and, when she had
>>gotten to typing very rhythmically, a resonance built up in part of her
>>body that would occasionally slap the spacebar, thus causing the extra
>>spaces to be inserted.
>
>Also a legend about keypunchers (Ms W, are you there?)
These women obviously didn't have my typing teacher to teach
them about posture. IIRC, she went around with a straight
edge that measured the space between our chests and the
typewriter.
jmfb...@aol.com
"Charlie Gibbs" <cgi...@sky.bus.com> wrote:
>In article <9e34cp$5a2$1...@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au>
>jo...@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (John "West" McKenna) writes:
>
>>And of course, code runs much better if you remember to compile it
>>first.
>
>It runs even better after you've remembered to copy the new
>executable to somewhere on the live system's path.
>
Later, we added SET WATCH FILE which reported the type of
access and the full file spec of what was really happening. I
used the FILE argument all of the time.
jmfb...@aol.com
Wow!!! We have built a better (thus more expensive) mousetrap.
jmfb...@aol.com
Charles Richmond <rich...@ev1.net> wrote:
>Howard S Shubs wrote:
>>
>> In article <3B051492...@skynet.be>, Jan Atle Ramsli
<tro...@skynet.be>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > Nobody told them what "ON LINE" meant, including me, for I refused to
>> > go.
>>
>> Looks like you should've gone. Stupid users deserve to be billed for
it.
>>
>I have seen a poster that says:
>
>"Life is tough...it's tougher if you're stupid."
>
the stupid.
Tim Shoppa
>
> In article <9e34cp$5a2$1...@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au>
> jo...@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (John "West" McKenna) writes:
>
> >And of course, code runs much better if you remember to compile it
> >first.
>
> It runs even better after you've remembered to copy the new
> executable to somewhere on the live system's path.
True story: the first program I ever compiled on a Unix system
was a benchmark that I called 'test'. Of course, with /bin being
earlier in the path than ./, I was astonished when 'test' executed
*really* fast.
Tim.
Tim Shoppa
I once worked in a lab where we had a PDP-11/34 covered by DEC
field service. I come in, turn it on, and sparks and smoke come
out of the power supply. Call field service, and they send
someone out. The first item on his servicing checklist, he says,
is to run diagnostics. I tell him "but it shoots sparks out of
the power supply when I turn it on". He loads the diagnostic
pack in the drive, turns on the CPU, and sparks shoot out.
And in the "stoopid user trick" category:
After we "upgraded" to a VAX we had fun incrementing the error
counter for the NLA0: device (the null device, like /dev/null)
before each PM visit by field service :-).
Tim.
Chris Hedley
> Cause of problem: the cleaner had unpluged the power cable for the hub
> in order to plug in the vac. (thankfully this real PITA is now an
> ex-customer)
We used to get that a lot, and no amount of asking both the cleaners and
the cleaning company would stop them unplugging vital equipment such as
minicomputers to plug in their vacuum cleaners. In the end, the only
solution was to fit all the systems with a nonstandard twist-lock plug
to stop them from being pulled out, and to keep the comms cabinets locked
at all times.
Chris.
--
//USENET01 JOB (CBH,ISA),'TALKING BOLLOCKS',REGION=4000K,CLASS=F,
// MSGCLASS=A,PASSWORD=WIBBLE,USER=CBH,COND=(04,LT)
jmfb...@aol.com
c...@ieya.co.REMOVE_THIS.uk (Chris Hedley) wrote:
>According to Ron Wellsted <r...@wellsted.org.uk>:
>> Cause of problem: the cleaner had unpluged the power cable for the hub
>> in order to plug in the vac. (thankfully this real PITA is now an
>> ex-customer)
>
>We used to get that a lot, and no amount of asking both the cleaners and
>the cleaning company would stop them unplugging vital equipment such as
>minicomputers to plug in their vacuum cleaners. In the end, the only
>solution was to fit all the systems with a nonstandard twist-lock plug
>to stop them from being pulled out, and to keep the comms cabinets locked
>at all times.
Or have creative shorts.
jmfb...@aol.com
Everyone learned real fast that, on TOPS-10, there's a difference
between the RUN and R commands.
Q
<rich...@ev1.net> wrote:
>On a wide-area network, we got a call from a site...seems their computer
>always crashed around 2 PM on every Thursday...turned out the janitor
>would plug his vacuum cleaner into the UPS plug around that time each
>week... (I can certify that this really happened...)
Charles,
OK, I was not going to break the first-person rule, but here goes...
Part 1:
Was working with a consulting firm. Slow day, folks bs-ing.
The high mucky-muck of the outfit (no, not that OUTFIT), told a
similar story. Big IBM iron, running their batch jobs at night.
System would crash about the same time (early am).
Calls from company bitching about the software. Has his soldiers
check the code. They say everything fine.
Boss man (turns out to be smart management) goes to company at night
to see how client is running jobs. He said he saw the Polish cleaning
crew open up a tile in the raised floor. You got it! They swept all
the dust into the plenum!!!
Part 2:
Working now for small service bureau (360/30 -- that's how small).
The white-shirt-and-tie-man (field engineer from IBM) was there one
day. Another bullshit session. I told story Part 1.
The IBM guy was looking at me kinda funny. I said "What's wrong?
Dont belive me?" He says, "No, that kind of stuff happens all the
time." then *He* tells his story.
During World War II, he was a civilian working for a telco somewhere
on the US East Coast. Part of the network would drop off each night.
Now -- remember the WAR -- govt thinks communication important, right?
He says the FBI started investigating him! Following him around.
Just like some kind of Hitchcock movie, where the "wrong man" has to
prove his innocense.
Once again, it turned out to be the cleaning crew. After they were
finished, they would turn off the "lights." They were actually
turning off the lights *and* the telco gear!! Solution: a warning
sign, in the cleaning crews native language (no, not COBOL!),
instructing them to leave the lights on.
Phew...
Q
PS Hope this makes sense -- I'm not done with my first AM coffee yet.
Chris Hedley
> Or have creative shorts.
I have a pair of fluorescent yellow shorts somewhere, but I'll only
wear them abroad to avoid being seen by someone I might know.
The.Central.Scru...@invalid.pobox.com
>In article
><slrn9gak1e.fv.The.Centr...@C1459607-A.arvada1.co.home.com
>>,
> The.Central.Scru...@invalid.pobox.com () wrote:
>
>> I've been known to walk along the cubespace isles with a mucking big magnet.
>
>On -purpose-??
>
of course!
Peter Seebach
Q <WallyI...@erewhon.net> wrote:
>I know there are a lot of urban myths regarding the subject.
>It would be interesting (for me at least) to hear of some first-hand
>ones.
Okay. So, when I was at Xerox, one of our customers found out we had a Unix
guy, so sometimes they'd call me out to do stuff on their site totally
unrelated to their Unix system.
Once, they called me out to debug a frame relay connection between two sites.
I played around, called the people on the other end, they played around.
They could reach the router on our end. We could reach the router on their
end. No contact.
I started verifying IP addresses.
Turns out, we were connected via frame relay to a machine in a closet on
their end that they didn't know they had, and they were connected via frame
relay to a machine in a closet on our end that...
Each side had installed the frame relay connection, and they had never
coordinated at all.
-s
--
Copyright 2001, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / se...@plethora.net
C/Unix wizard, Pro-commerce radical, Spam fighter. Boycott Spamazon!
Consulting & Computers: http://www.plethora.net/
Paul Repacholi
> At my PPOE it got so bad that a formal memo was issued prohibiting
> the practice, *especially* with newly hired student operators (with
> the newly-hired student operators as either perpetrator or
> victim...)
The bix Vaxen had a common front door, with the model numbers plugged in.
Where I was working had just got 4 8800s. A few days later there was
a stink about the 8008s in the computer room.
Soon after DEC took to bolting them on.
--
Paul Repacholi 1 Crescent Rd.,
+61 (08) 9257-1001 Kalamunda.
West Australia 6076
Raw, Cooked or Well-done, it's all half baked.
Spam-To: u...@ftc.gov,enfor...@sec.gov,sn...@fcc.gov,hfur...@fcc.gov,
mpo...@fcc.gov,gtri...@fcc.gov
PL
<The.Central.Scru...@invalid.pobox.com> wrote in message
news:slrn9gd5bf.1oa.The.Cent...@C1459607-A.arvada1.co.h
ome.com...
<picture of a 15 lb. "health bracelet"> <g>
dgr...@cs.csuabk.edu
> On Thu, 17 May 2001 22:32:50 +0200, Steve O'Hara-Smith
> <ste...@eircom.net> wrote:
>> I once returned a Commodore Pet to one of the worlds leading physicists
>> after ... changing the fuse in the mains plug and soaking it for a couple of
>> days.
> Soaking the fuse? In what? What for?
What makes you think he was soaking the fuse or plug?
--
David Griffith
dgr...@cs.csubak.edu
freddy1X
>
> "Q" <WallyI...@erewhon.net> wrote in message
> news:tb68gt063urc1j8mg...@4ax.com...
> > To all:
> >
> > I know there are a lot of urban myths regarding the subject.
> > It would be interesting (for me at least) to hear of some first-hand
> > ones.
> Took me a good ten minutes to
> realise that she hadn't turned on the monitor (and I very nearly had to go
> out to fix this one).
I just did this one last Friday:
Fix minor broken part on printer. Re-assembled and power up to test
repair. Hmm... has power lights, but nothing is moving, not even the
cooling fans. Dis-assenble, re-assemble, checking all connections
between mechanical stuff and the controlling electronics. Nothing loose
or in the wrong place because it is well keyed and color coded. Still
just as dead. Did I mention that it is now minutes to closing time, and
they are getting impatient for me to finish so that they can leave.
Gee, I guess I will take it back to the shop for repair on monday.
Reach around back to pull the power plug ...and...DAMM! The parallel
port was still connected, and the attached computer was power-off( they
wanted to leave early, after all. ). Pulled that cable and the printer
surges to life.
It seems that sometimes even the most sophisticated printer takes that
Centronics reset seriously, and after five years since the last time I
tripped over this, I got a conveinient reminder.
--
not rechargeable
/\>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>\/
/\ I may be demented \/
/\ but I'm not crazy! \/
/\<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<\/
* SPAyM trap: there is no X in my address *
|| attatch FLAME here ||
\/ \/
X
Nico de Jong
Jan Atle Ramsli <tro...@skynet.be> skrev i en nyhedsmeddelelse:3B065700...@skynet.be...
> Nico de Jong wrote:
> >
>
> > So, I took off, driving some 650 km, to look at the problem.
> If you had seen a white Mercedes driving the other way at neckbraking
> speed with all four wheels skidding, that would have been me driving the
> other way ... surprised we didn't meet - was that a DiskMaker?
>
No, it was not a DiskMaker. It was a Belgian media conversion system called EMS (the customer in fact had 2)
The company was a major actor in the money market, located around Hvidtved. Does that ring a bell ?
Nico
jmfb...@aol.com
c...@ieya.co.REMOVE_THIS.uk (Chris Hedley) wrote:
>According to <jmfb...@aol.com>:
>> Or have creative shorts.
>
>I have a pair of fluorescent yellow shorts somewhere, but I'll only
>wear them abroad to avoid being seen by someone I might know.
<grin>
Jan Atle Ramsli
time, I was making communications software to log on to IP Sharp's
database of stock exchange prices, so this was more that just money, it
was everything, the rights to buy the rights to buy ... my program ran
nicely on a PC, but crashed on a 286 AT - the AT was too fast (8Mhz !!!)
so I had to sprinkle the code with JMP $+@ in order to slow it down
enough so the data could be transferred from the serial port!
8Mhz too fast, those were the days!!
<mimre,mimre,lengte,lengte>
OH, and I did cross Haukeli in my terrible car, on summer tyres in
April.
I slowed down to 20kmh, trying the brakes ... nothing.
I managed to survive down to Røldal by driving half the car off the
road, scaa-aa-rrry!!
Atle
Nico de Jong
Jan Atle Ramsli <tro...@skynet.be> skrev i en nyhedsmeddelelse:3B07F63A...@skynet.be...
> OH, and I did cross Haukeli in my terrible car, on summer tyres in
> April.
> I slowed down to 20kmh, trying the brakes ... nothing.
>
> I managed to survive down to Røldal by driving half the car off the
> road, scaa-aa-rrry!!
>
> Atle
Yeah I know what you mean....
I once drove from Copenhagen to Trondheim in one day. Left Oslo at 5 pm or so, on summer tires and passing Dombås
I'll - NEVER - do that again
Nico
Eric Smith
> The bix Vaxen had a common front door, with the model numbers plugged in.
> Where I was working had just got 4 8800s. A few days later there was
> a stink about the 8008s in the computer room.
>
> Soon after DEC took to bolting them on.
Reportedly DEC wasn't very happy about the big Mattel logo someone stuck
on the DECsystem-10 at the Colorado School of Mines. Apparently they
liked to show that site to potential customers.
Bernd Felsche
>According to <jmfb...@aol.com>:
>> Or have creative shorts.
>I have a pair of fluorescent yellow shorts somewhere, but I'll only
>wear them abroad to avoid being seen by someone I might know.
We'll all know you by your shorts when we see you now. :-)
--
/"\ Bernd Felsche - Innovative Reckoning, Perth, Western Australia
\ / ASCII ribbon campaign | I'm a .signature virus! |
X against HTML mail | Copy me into your ~/.signature|
/ \ and postings | to help me spread! |
Ric Werme
>True story: the first program I ever compiled on a Unix system
>was a benchmark that I called 'test'. Of course, with /bin being
>earlier in the path than ./, I was astonished when 'test' executed
>*really* fast.
The first Fortran program I wrote in TSS/360 was called test. However, there
was no system command by that name. My program had some compilation
warning, so I deleted the library file in which executables wound up
and tried again. Still had a warning, but I couldn't find that library
to delete and try again.
The next day, one of system programmers wanted to see how responsive
the system was, so he typed "test" on the console and was quite
surprised to see a messages akin to "warning: module test has errors"
and run it anyway. Apparently the system couldn't save test in my
library, so it went to the next in the search list, which was the
system library.
I think it was an OS bug that let me do that, not just a permissions
problem. TSS/360 was not the world's best system when it came out....
I'm sure I've fouded up the jargon, the next year CMU got a PDP-10 and
I quickly abandoned TSS.
-Ric
--
Ric Werme | we...@nospam.mediaone.net
http://people.ne.mediaone.net/werme | ^^^^^^^ delete
Alexandre Pechtchanski
wrote:
>According to Ron Wellsted <r...@wellsted.org.uk>:
>> Cause of problem: the cleaner had unpluged the power cable for the hub
>> in order to plug in the vac. (thankfully this real PITA is now an
>> ex-customer)
>
>We used to get that a lot, and no amount of asking both the cleaners and
>the cleaning company would stop them unplugging vital equipment such as
>minicomputers to plug in their vacuum cleaners. In the end, the only
>solution was to fit all the systems with a nonstandard twist-lock plug
>to stop them from being pulled out, and to keep the comms cabinets locked
>at all times.
Oh, yeah, I forgot about that one. On the PPOE that was pretty common as well.
I wonder if having router installed in the janitor's closet had something to do
with their insistence that they _may_ unplug it to use that outlet?
--
[ When replying, remove *'s from address ]
Alexandre Pechtchanski, Systems Manager, RUH, NY
Factory
>> was a benchmark that I called 'test'. Of course, with /bin being
>> earlier in the path than ./, I was astonished when 'test' executed
>> *really* fast.
I did that too, of course I also was trying to learn c at the time
(in fact it was one of my first programs) it started out as something
involving a few functions, but eventually got down to:
#include <stdio.h>
int main( int argc, char* argv[] )
{
printf( "Hello\n" );
return 0;
}
When that didn't work, erm, I started looking for other non-code
related problems..
Oh and of course in c array[ 3 ] is not the same as *(array + 3),
which caused about 2 weeks of held up learning..
- Factory/TRSI
Peter Seebach
Factory <faq...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Oh and of course in c array[ 3 ] is not the same as *(array + 3),
>which caused about 2 weeks of held up learning..
Of course they're the same.
Eric Sosman
>
> Along the "stoopid field service" instead of "stoopid user" line:
Yep, got one of them ...
The 1403N1 printer uses a circulating chain of metal slugs
bearing impressions of the various printable characters: the chain
whizzes 'round and 'round, and when the slug with an X on it arrives
at column 36, the column 36 hammer leaps out and whacks paper, ink
ribbon, and slug together into a typographical fast-food sandwich.
When it works well (most of the time, really; a good printer) you
get a nice crisp letterform. Even if the timing is just a little
bit off you get something which looks much better than output from
the average drum printer. But when the print chain is jammed in its
tracks and will not budge, you get nothing at all.
The IBM Service guy managed to remove the jammed print train
and replace the damaged track in which it rode. A few of the chain's
slugs had been chewed up too, and there were little metal shavings
all over the place; he clearly wasn't going to put that chain back
into his nice new set of tracks.
He didn't have a spare print chain, either. Or rather, the spare
he had wasn't a duplicate of our old one; you could use different
print chains to get different character sets, and we had one of the
fancy models with lots of weird characters like semicolons (most
shops used a less diverse chain which printed faster by virtue of
having more repetitions of the character set per revolution). But
only a few of our chain's slugs were damaged, and it happened that
they could be replaced by slugs from his spare chain. So he took
our chain apart, threw out the duds, cleaned everything thoroughly,
and reassembled the chain using a few slugs from his spare. This
took an hour or so of painstaking labor, after which he installed
the rebuilt chain, powered up the printer, ran a test pattern, and
got hopeless gibberish.
The printer checked out okay: electronics good, hammers firing,
chain whirling around, all systems happy -- and unreadable output.
Had he mixed up the order of a few slugs? Take out the chain again,
compare it with the illustration in his tech manual, slug by slug,
everything matches. Mystery. Maybe this slug over here is just a
little bit bent? Tear down the chain again, replace the suspect
slug from the spare, reassemble the chain, fire up the printer,
gibberish.
After a third pass over the chain (he's now been working on
this thing for about five hours and is beginning to develop a look
that we later learned to recognize as the early signs of "going
postal"), he called his office for help. Another Service guy came
out; he was supposed to be The Real Printer Expert, and sure 'nuff
it took him less than three minutes to figure out what was wrong.
When our guy had reassembled the chain to match the sequence
of slugs listed in his tech manual, he'd sort of overlooked the
little matter of orientation. The picture in the manual showed
the slugs as you'd see them on the chain in an opened-up printer,
but he'd had the whole thing out on a table and was working with
the little slug-to-slug linkages on the chain's back side, and ...
... well, he'd built us a chain that looked like (IIRC there
were three letterforms per slug)
[ABC] [DEF] [GHI] ... [uvw] [xyz]
whereas the printer itself was expecting
[xyz] [uvw] ... [GHI] [DEF] [ABC]
He wasn't too pleased about being shown up by The Real Printer
Expert, and he was even less pleased when he realized this meant
he'd have to *completely* disassemble and reassemble our chain
*yet again* ... He plugged away for another hour or so in what
can only be described as a grim silence, put the re-re-rebuilt
chain in the printer, showed that all was working properly, and
departed having uttered the absolute minimum number of words
possible. I imagine his next move was to contribute generously
to the retirement nest-eggs of half the bartenders in the county.
David Given
Q <WallyI...@erewhon.net> writes:
[...]
> Way back in the days if ISDN, squirrels moved into the telco box down
> the alley. Little suckers *had* to pick my pair to chew on! Repair
> man evicted them...
I read once of a company somewhere that used an infra-red laser link as a
cheap way of extending connectivity over a canal. Worked great; except
they noticed that in cold weather it tended to drop out. They eventually
discovered a spider living near the laser. When it was cold, it would
crawl inside the laser aperture where it was nice and warm --- and spiders
are rather opaque.
--
+- David Given --------McQ-+ "You'll have to excuse me. There are five things I
| Work: d...@tao-group.com | need to do today, all of them annoying." --- Susan
| Play: d...@cowlark.com | Ivanova
+- http://www.cowlark.com -+
David Given
Tim Shoppa <sho...@trailing-edge.com> writes:
[...]
> True story: the first program I ever compiled on a Unix system
> was a benchmark that I called 'test'. Of course, with /bin being
> earlier in the path than ./, I was astonished when 'test' executed
> *really* fast.
Been there. Done that.
My most-excruciatingly-embarassing-idiot-user story concerns a telephone I
had that wouldn't ring. I eventually got the telco to send out a repair
guy. He pointed out (very nicely) that it really helps if you set the
little switch on the side of the phone marked "RING/NO RING" to "RING"...
It gets worse: the reason why it was set to "NO RING" was because *I* had
set it like that while watching a TV program. And then forgot about.
D'oh.
Steve O'Hara-Smith
se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:
PS> In article <jh3jgtclia4v9vqu6...@4ax.com>,
PS> Factory <faq...@hotmail.com> wrote:
PS> > Oh and of course in c array[ 3 ] is not the same as *(array + 3),
PS> >which caused about 2 weeks of held up learning..
PS>
PS> Of course they're the same.
Which is why 3[array] works just as well as array[3] - at least for the
compiler :)
--
You gave the command for the computer to WIN, why are you so surprised that
you lose ?
Chris Hedley
> I read once of a company somewhere that used an infra-red laser link as a
> cheap way of extending connectivity over a canal. Worked great; except
> they noticed that in cold weather it tended to drop out. They eventually
> discovered a spider living near the laser. When it was cold, it would
> crawl inside the laser aperture where it was nice and warm --- and spiders
> are rather opaque.
I've heard of assorted other problems with lasers and fibre-optics; one
company I worked for didn't wire up one of the offices, since they decided
to use a newfangled laser link since it was just across the road. Problem
was that the thing ended up out of alignment every time a lorry went past.
Another one, although I remain to be convinced of this, is a company which
runs its fibre-optics alongside railway lines, and apparently they get
huge amounts of packet loss every time a train goes by because of the
vibration (again)
GerardS
|> David Given wrote:
|> I read once of a company somewhere that used an infra-red laser link
as a
|> cheap way of extending connectivity over a canal. Worked great;
except
|> they noticed that in cold weather it tended to drop out. They
eventually
|> discovered a spider living near the laser. When it was cold, it would
|> crawl inside the laser aperture where it was nice and warm --- and
spiders
|> are rather opaque.
|
| I've heard of assorted other problems with lasers and fibre-optics;
one
| company I worked for didn't wire up one of the offices, since they
decided
| to use a newfangled laser link since it was just across the road.
Problem
| was that the thing ended up out of alignment every time a lorry went
past.
| Another one, although I remain to be convinced of this, is a company
which
| runs its fibre-optics alongside railway lines, and apparently they get
| huge amounts of packet loss every time a train goes by because of the
| vibration (again)
There are MAJOR fibre-optic lines along some of the railroads going
across
the west. Now consider, if a railroad over 1,000 miles long has
fibre-optics
along it, just how does the train go "by" the fibre-optic cable. It's
going
parallel to it for a 1,000 miles. So the train should be causing huge
amounts of packet loss (losses) continually for many many hours, and, of
course, there is more than one train running, so there should be
continual
packet loss (losses). But, as we know, that isn't happening.
Otherwise,
the fibre-optics would be a complete waste.
Gerard S.
Steve O'Hara-Smith
c...@ieya.co.REMOVE_THIS.uk (Chris Hedley) wrote:
CH> Another one, although I remain to be convinced of this, is a company which
CH> runs its fibre-optics alongside railway lines, and apparently they get
CH> huge amounts of packet loss every time a train goes by because of the
CH> vibration (again)
I could believe that of a line of site link of almost any kind, but
not fibre-optic.
There used to be a link (infra-red IIRC) between the university
engineering dept. and the computer labs that would report 'link down due to
fog' quite often at which point both the IBM and the Sigma would have to wait
on the Sun :)
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
> I've heard of assorted other problems with lasers and fibre-optics; one
> company I worked for didn't wire up one of the offices, since they decided
> to use a newfangled laser link since it was just across the road. Problem
> was that the thing ended up out of alignment every time a lorry went past.
> Another one, although I remain to be convinced of this, is a company which
> runs its fibre-optics alongside railway lines, and apparently they get
> huge amounts of packet loss every time a train goes by because of the
> vibration (again)
we did infrared modems between the tops of two buildings (that crossed
a major hiway ... this was possibly at a time when getting a permit
for laser would have been difficult ... all the stuff about shinning
into people's eyes). the alignment problem was the uneven heating
effects of the building by the sun as it moved across the sky
(resulting in expansion/contraction of different sides of the
buildings). there was a lot of fine-tuning the placements of the
modems in an attempt to compensate for building lean because of
variation in thermal expansion caused by the sun during the course of
the day.
Before they were installed it was predicted the major problem was
large packet loss during heavy rain and/or snow, which never really
materialized. There were a few packets lost during a blinding,
white-out snow storm ... during which people were unable to get into
work, but the rest of the time things ran very smoothly (once things
were worked out to compensate for uneven thermal expansion of the
buildings). However, nobody had predicted the sun-induced building
leaning problem.
ranndom ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#23
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#65
--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | ly...@garlic.com - http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Donald Tees
news:20010522011554....@eircom.net...
> On Mon, 21 May 2001 21:12:20 +0100
> c...@ieya.co.REMOVE_THIS.uk (Chris Hedley) wrote:
> CH> Another one, although I remain to be convinced of this, is a company
which
> CH> runs its fibre-optics alongside railway lines, and apparently they get
> CH> huge amounts of packet loss every time a train goes by because of the
> CH> vibration (again)
>
> I could believe that of a line of site link of almost any kind, but
> not fibre-optic.
>
All it would take is a loose connector. There is not going to be any loss
in the cable, but light does have to enter and leave that cable, and those
are plug in devices. They can be misalligned.
Charles Richmond
a banner (printed on a line printer) on the side that said:
"LA MACHINE"
For those who do *not* remember, at that time there was a food processor
sold under that name... (A food processor is a blender/chopper kind of
device driven by an elecric motor...)
--
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| Charles and Francis Richmond <rich...@plano.net> |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
Charles Richmond
>
> In article <3B06265E...@trailing-edge.com>,
> Tim Shoppa <sho...@trailing-edge.com> writes:
> [...]
> > True story: the first program I ever compiled on a Unix system
> > was a benchmark that I called 'test'. Of course, with /bin being
> > earlier in the path than ./, I was astonished when 'test' executed
> > *really* fast.
>
> Been there. Done that.
>
> My most-excruciatingly-embarassing-idiot-user story concerns a telephone I
> had that wouldn't ring. I eventually got the telco to send out a repair
> guy. He pointed out (very nicely) that it really helps if you set the
> little switch on the side of the phone marked "RING/NO RING" to "RING"...
>
> It gets worse: the reason why it was set to "NO RING" was because *I* had
> set it like that while watching a TV program. And then forgot about.
>
my Data Structures class. The problem was: I had created a procedure
named "output", and that is a reserved word in Pascal. The compiler
error dectection was poor, and the compile errors came out elsewhere
and were a bit cryptic... Still, it was a *dumb* mistake...
ic0c...@ic24.net
<Eric....@east.sun.com> wrote:
>Tim Shoppa wrote:
>>
>> Along the "stoopid field service" instead of "stoopid user" line:
>> [...]
>
> Yep, got one of them ...
>
> The 1403N1 printer uses a circulating chain of metal slugs
>bearing impressions
Well I was nitpicked a couple of days ago, so it's my turn now. The
1403N1 has a train not a chain.
Nice story about the engineer, but IME quite common.
--
Tony Lenton
Gene Wirchenko
>Along the "stoopid field service" instead of "stoopid user" line:
[snip]
My mistake was putting the paper in the printer wrong. It was
2-ply with carbon paper in between. I got it the wrong way around.
The secretaries had a good laugh, but were nice about it. I think
they all had probably made the same goof at least once.
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko
Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
I have preferences.
You have biases.
He/She has prejudices.
Gene Wirchenko
>>> True story: the first program I ever compiled on a Unix system
>>> was a benchmark that I called 'test'. Of course, with /bin being
>>> earlier in the path than ./, I was astonished when 'test' executed
>>> *really* fast.
>
> I did that too, of course I also was trying to learn c at the time
>(in fact it was one of my first programs) it started out as something
>involving a few functions, but eventually got down to:
>
>#include <stdio.h>
>
>int main( int argc, char* argv[] )
>{
> printf( "Hello\n" );
> return 0;
>}
>
> When that didn't work, erm, I started looking for other non-code
>related problems..
I was playing with scripting on a UNIX box. I decided to make a
modification to /etc/shutdown. I was smart. I didn't mess with the
original. I put my copy in a temporary directory. Finally, I had a
version that worked. As the system rebooted, I realized that /tmp had
been a bad choice and why (It gets cleared on boot.).
> Oh and of course in c array[ 3 ] is not the same as *(array + 3),
>which caused about 2 weeks of held up learning..
But they are. Perhaps, you are thinking of the confusion of an
array declared with n elements has valid subscripts 0 to n-1.
Gene Wirchenko
>In article <3B051492...@skynet.be>, Jan Atle Ramsli <tro...@skynet.be>
>wrote:
>
>> Nobody told them what "ON LINE" meant, including me, for I refused to
>> go.
>
>Looks like you should've gone. Stupid users deserve to be billed for it.
What's stupid about it? They didn't KNOW. No one told them
either. You'd rather they messed with the system to try to deal with
it?
Gene Wirchenko
[snipped previous]
>Everyone learned real fast that, on TOPS-10, there's a difference
>between the RUN and R commands.
What is it?
In MTS, "R" is short for "RUN". Coming from a TSB, I was
accustomed to typing "RUN". A few times, I had an amusing typo:
"RUIN".
Jan Atle Ramsli
>
> Howard S Shubs <how...@shubs.net> wrote:
>
> >In article <3B051492...@skynet.be>, Jan Atle Ramsli <tro...@skynet.be>
> >wrote:
> >
> >> Nobody told them what "ON LINE" meant, including me, for I refused to
> >> go.
> >
> >Looks like you should've gone. Stupid users deserve to be billed for it.
>
> What's stupid about it? They didn't KNOW. No one told them
> either. You'd rather they messed with the system to try to deal with
> it?
This was not far from a swindle, an example of what happens when 20 year
old testosterone heads get the opportunity to see DD balloons ...
Atle
Jan Atle Ramsli
>
> Factory <faq...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>> True story: the first program I ever compiled on a Unix system
> >>> was a benchmark that I called 'test'. Of course, with /bin being
> >>> earlier in the path than ./, I was astonished when 'test' executed
> >>> *really* fast.
> >
> > I did that too, of course I also was trying to learn c at the time
> >(in fact it was one of my first programs) it started out as something
> >involving a few functions, but eventually got down to:
> >
> >#include <stdio.h>
> >
> >int main( int argc, char* argv[] )
> >{
> > printf( "Hello\n" );
> > return 0;
> >}
> >
>
> >which caused about 2 weeks of held up learning..
>
> But they are. Perhaps, you are thinking of the confusion of an
> array declared with n elements has valid subscripts 0 to n-1.
{
char cp[3];
int *ip;
c[2] = '!'
ip = cp; /* This is not an error */
printf("%c", *(ip+3); /* This is confusing to non-C programmers! */
}
Atle
B W Spoor
>
>
> >We used to get that a lot, and no amount of asking both the cleaners and
> >the cleaning company would stop them unplugging vital equipment such as
> >minicomputers to plug in their vacuum cleaners. In the end, the only
> >solution was to fit all the systems with a nonstandard twist-lock plug
> >to stop them from being pulled out, and to keep the comms cabinets locked
> >at all times.
>
> Oh, yeah, I forgot about that one. On the PPOE that was pretty common as well.
> I wonder if having router installed in the janitor's closet had something to do
> with their insistence that they _may_ unplug it to use that outlet?
>
intelligence (they service heavy duty cleaning equipment used in
supermarkets etc).
They had a call about a vacuum cleaner not working - fault resolution
"change battery in operators hearing aid". He couldn't here the motor
runmning, so reported it as broken.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Brian W Spoor MBCS
Chartered Information Systems Practitioner
Friday Computer Services Phone: +44-(0)1803 852625
bws...@fcs.eu.com Fax: +44-(0)1803 854926
-----------------------------------------------------------
Paul Grayson
news:1f9be9...@127.0.0.1...
> > Way back in the days if ISDN, squirrels moved into the telco box down
> > the alley. Little suckers *had* to pick my pair to chew on! Repair
> > man evicted them...
>
> I read once of a company somewhere that used an infra-red laser link as a
> cheap way of extending connectivity over a canal. Worked great; except
> they noticed that in cold weather it tended to drop out. They eventually
> discovered a spider living near the laser. When it was cold, it would
> crawl inside the laser aperture where it was nice and warm --- and spiders
> are rather opaque.
A former employer used to sell maintenance contracts which covered both
software and hardware. One customer was a UK government department who were
based in two ajoining buildings separated by a narrow road and small
corridor. The two buildings were linked by a simillar link, although it may
have been infra-red or micro-wave instead. The link equipment was placed on
the roof of each building.
We'd get a telephone call at a monthly intervals to re-align this equipment.
The wind would knock them out of alignment regularly.
Why they didn't just sling a cable down this corridor I'll never know!
Philip Newton
> Philip Newton <pne-news...@newton.digitalspace.net> wrote:
> > On Thu, 17 May 2001 22:32:50 +0200, Steve O'Hara-Smith
> > <ste...@eircom.net> wrote:
>
> >> I once returned a Commodore Pet to one of the worlds leading physicists
> >> after ... changing the fuse in the mains plug and soaking it for a couple of
> >> days.
>
> > Soaking the fuse? In what? What for?
>
> What makes you think he was soaking the fuse or plug?
The pronoun "it" in "soaking it" appeared to me to have "the fuse in the
mains plug" as its antecedent. Probably because of the parallel in
"changing {the fuse in the mains plug} and soaking {it}".
What makes you think the "it" did not refer to the fuse or the plug?
Cheers,
Philip
--
Philip Newton <nospam...@gmx.li>
Yes, that really is my address; no need to remove anything to reply.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Philip Newton
wrote:
> Nico de Jong wrote:
> >
> > This reminds me of a more-or-less standard phrase in Norwegian: when rebooting DOS or Windows systems, they have a phrase called "the Danish button". This is CTRL-ALT-DEL.
> >
> In the U.S., we call it "the Vulcan nerve pinch" or the "Boy Scout Salute"...
I've also heard "three-fingered salute". In German, sometimes
"Dreifingergriff" (roughly, three-finger combination).
Philip Newton
wrote:
> For those who do *not* remember, at that time there was a food processor
> sold under that name... (A food processor is a blender/chopper kind of
> device driven by an elecric motor...)
Cue the old joke I saw in a _Shoe_ comic ca. 1988:
"You know why them call them word processors?" "No." "Well, you know
what a food processor does to food?"