binder@dosadi.DEC (No matter where you go, there you are.) (08/12/85)
Inertia rears its ugly head in yet another way. I used to have access to a MODCOMP III with the OS on a fixed-head disk. We'd use the machine with no trouble at all through the week, but the thing would invariably fail to boot on Monday mornings. One Friday someone got the bright idea to turn off the disk, and Monday we ran it back up and the system booted fine. We finally figured out that the problem was inertia, in the guise of centrifugal force; as long we we read and wrote things often enough, the bits didn't have time to be thrown off the disk, but over the weekend was too long. We had to install a bit bucket under the disk drive to keep the computer room clean. Cheers, Dick Binder (The Stainless Steel Rat) UUCP: { decvax, allegra, ucbvax... }!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-dosadi!binder ARPA: binder%dosadi.DEC@decwrl.ARPA