moroney@jon.DEC (Mike Moroney) (03/19/86)
Here's another example of what steel wool in the wrong places can do to a machine: -- And yet another flooring story... (Being a hardware engineer at heart, I still shiver when I think about this one.) Seams there was a cleaning lady that was assigned to the floor that had the computer on it (a Zerox SIGMA 5 if it really matters). Well, one day she decided that the heal marks in the raised tile floor just had to be cleaned up. After seeing that the soap and wax did not take all the marks out, she then tried steel wool! The customer had to replace the whole machine. Since the cooling fans draw from the bottom, all the evaporating wax was sucked up through the machine. The soft coating on the PC cards and backplane made a good home for all the small pieces of steel wool that flew by later.
moroney@jon.DEC (Mike Moroney) (03/19/86)
Yet another old classic war story. -- It seems that there was a certain university that was doing experiments in behavior modification in response to brain stimulation in primates. They had this monkey with a number of electrodes embedded in it's brain that were hooked up to a PDP-11. They had several programs that would stimulate different parts of the monkey's brain, and they had spent over a year training the monkey to respond to certain stimuli. Well, eventually the PDP developed problems, and field service was called in. Due to some miscommunication, the field service representative was not informed of the delicacy of this particular setup, and the people running the experiment were not informed that field service was coming to fix the machine. The FS representative then booted up a diagnostic system I/O exerciser. After several minutes of gyrations, the monkey expired, it's brain fried. The moral, of course, is "Always mount a scratch monkey"
koko@uthub.UUCP (M. Kokodyniak) (03/26/86)
> > Yet another old classic war story. > -- > > It seems that there was a certain university that was doing experiments in > behavior modification in response to brain stimulation in primates. They had > this monkey with a number of electrodes embedded in it's brain that were hooked > up to a PDP-11. They had several programs that would stimulate different parts > of the monkey's brain, and they had spent over a year training the monkey to > respond to certain stimuli. Well, eventually the PDP developed problems, and > field service was called in. Due to some miscommunication, the field service > representative was not informed of the delicacy of this particular setup, and > the people running the experiment were not informed that field service was > coming to fix the machine. The FS representative then booted up a diagnostic > system I/O exerciser. After several minutes of gyrations, the monkey expired, > it's brain fried. > > The moral, of course, is "Always mount a scratch monkey" *** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR BRAIN WAVES *** Sounds like something out of the movie Brainstorm.