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From: cem@intelca.UUCP (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: net.rumor
Subject: Re: Re: Computer Horror Stories
Message-ID: <217@intelca.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 21-Feb-86 11:14:36 EST
Article-I.D.: intelca.217
Posted: Fri Feb 21 11:14:36 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 24-Feb-86 08:14:44 EST
References: <14700001@hplabsb.UUCP> <476@mmm.UUCP> <9345@ritcv.UUCP> <1335@osu-eddie.UUCP>
Organization: Intel, Santa Clara, Ca.
Lines: 28

> A professor of mine told the story of how to bring down a line printer:
> 
> ... description of how lineprinters work ...
>
> So, if you knew the pattern of the print band, and sent a line with that
> pattern all in the right places to be struck at once... then the next line
> you sent had the same characters in the same order, just shifted one to the
> left...  All 132 hammers operating at once, repeatedly, at x00 lines per
> minute...
> 
> The most durable printer they found could stand this abuse for about 1.25
> pages.  They all ended up shredding the ribbon almost immediately, then
> finally smoking from the power supply about the same time as the platen was
> chewed up.  Some fun, huh? for the third-shift operator!
> Human: Bob Sutterfield

This was actually a test performed by the FE's for the IBM 1703 (or 1702?) 
except that one could download character/chain assignments. Simply define 
all of the characters on the chain to be the same one and then print it
several times. Really shook to floor, and could also bring out marginalities
(sp?) in the disk drives.

--Chuck
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