TBC101@PSUVM.BITNET (TomShark Collins) (01/18/90)
A few of these stories reminded me of some experiences with some Apples... Mention was made of people listening to their computers "think". Well, I built a headphone jack into my IIe and ran it through an amplifier. It was great fun listening to a program start up, as you could hear data being read from the drive, the program running, and text being printed to the screen... In Junior High, I took an intro to computers class that involved programming in LOGO and using the PFS series of software (PFS:Write and PFS:Graph). April 1st was soon approaching, and I figured I'd play a little trick on my teacher... I wrote a BASIC program to simulate an extremely stripped down version of LOGO. I then slipped in onto one of the disks, and let someone boot it up, thinking that they were using the real thing. Soon enough, they called the teacher over, complaining that nothing worked. He played with it for a while, and finally figured out that it was a joke, so he control-c'ed it, and typed list. The joke was on him though, as all he got was the words APRIL FOOL repeated indefinitely - I had found a POKE from one of the Beagle Bros. famous PEEK, POKES, and CALLS chart that caused the first line to list repeatedly... And, most recently, I had the chance to watch a computer blow up. Over Christmas break, I watched as a friend applied 110v AC to various pins on an old (non working) IIc motherboard. What a fireworks show that was - chips exploding, flames shooting from chips, and even chips that melted down. It made a terrible odor, but was quite entertaining... ------- Tom "Shark" Collins Since ICS is comprised of 2 people, my views tbc101@psuvm.psu.edu are the opinion of at least 50% of the company.
njc@nsscb.UUCP (Neil Cherry) (01/19/90)
Speaking of exploding chips, I think exploding Techs are more fun. I worked at a local County College and an associate of mine was working on a terminal. He always prided himself with safety, but sometimes I wondered about his elctronic knowledge. One of the things he had taught me was to drain an CRT I needed a thick handle insulated screwdriver and a good ground strap. He would connect them together ground the other end and short then anode end. I was never too happy about doing this because electricity has the tendency to jump when the voltage was high enough. Well oneday while inside a live set he was working around the high voltage area. I warned him about the voltage but he said because he was working on the circuit board the voltage shouldn't be too high. Well just as he finished saying this he gets zapped with 2 load cracks of high voltage (40kv on this mono monitor). It took me about 5 minutes stop lauughing. Moral to this story is lighten can strike twice. (True story) NJC.