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From: acm@grendal.Sun.COM (Andrew MacRae)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Hitting the Fan
Message-ID: <732@jethro.Corp.Sun.COM>
Date: 19 Jan 90 20:31:33 GMT
References: <1990Jan15.181808.1352@newcastle.ac.uk> <16867@cc.usu.edu>
Sender: news@jethro.Corp.Sun.COM
Reply-To: acm@sun.UUCP (Andrew MacRae)
Distribution: alt
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
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The company I worked for 10 years ago was a big user of PDP-11/34s.
About that time DEC began selling replacement front panels.  Instead of
nifty toggle switches and lights you could have a keypad (octal of course)
and an LED readout.

We had put in a call for maintenance on a band printer.  The tech who came
out decided to replace the old front panel with one of the new ones as long
as he was out at our shop.  This was on a Friday afternoon, late, and he
didn't bother to test it out afterwards.  After all, all you have to do
is hook up a few wires, right?

On Monday morning when we powered up that machine, we heard funny clicking
and ticking sounds, then the whole machine went dead.  After pulling the
front panel off we found the problem; the guy had run the wires for the
panel *through* the fans.  Hey, it was the shortest distance, and the blades
weren't moving anyway.  When we powered up, the fan blades had started chopping
away at the wires until they were cut, at which point everything shut down.
Oh yes, he hadn't gotten around to fixing the printer either.