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From: drich@bgsuvax.UUCP (Daniel Rich)
Newsgroups: net.rumor
Subject: Re: Computer Horror Stories
Message-ID: <15@bgsuvax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 5-Mar-86 18:50:30 EST
Article-I.D.: bgsuvax.15
Posted: Wed Mar  5 18:50:30 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 7-Mar-86 07:12:29 EST
References: <1215@brl-smoke.ARPA> <5027@alice.uUCp> <366@ucbjade.BERKELEY.EDU> <143@simon_pc.UUCP> <544@scgvaxd.UUCP> <3313@sun.uucp>
Organization: Bowling Green State University,OH
Lines: 17


   Speaking of doing things to power lines...I remember a story I heard from
my circuits professor in Colorado.  It seems that they received a computer
from the government (I can't remember the make, but it wasn't anything I
had heard of before).  This computer was a bit of a beast.  It ran off of
3-phase power, and had a disk that was between 3 and 4 feet in diameter.
Well, several students were involved in setting up the disk drive one night,
and when the professor left he told them that they could connect everything,
but not to power it up until he checked it over.
   Well, you know students...they wired it up and turned it on.  For those
of you who are not to familiar with 3-phase power, if you reverse any 2 out
of the 3 wires, the polarity changes.  Well, they managed to reverse 2 of the
wires, causing the disk to spin backwards.  Now, since the heads are designed
to float on a cushion of air above the disk, they went down instead of up, and
the disk ended up with a nice groove right down the middle.  Needless to say,
the prof wasn't pleased when he came in the next morning and found his nice new
disk turned into so many magnetic shavings....