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From: moroney@jon.DEC (Mike Moroney)
Newsgroups: net.rumor
Subject: Re: Computer war stories
Message-ID: <1783@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Date: Wed, 19-Mar-86 13:19:22 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.1783
Posted: Wed Mar 19 13:19:22 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 22-Mar-86 03:16:12 EST
Sender: daemon@decwrl.DEC.COM
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 18


Yet another old classic war story.
--

It seems that there was a certain university that was doing experiments in 
behavior modification in response to brain stimulation in primates.  They had 
this monkey with a number of electrodes embedded in it's brain that were hooked 
up to a PDP-11.  They had several programs that would stimulate different parts 
of the monkey's brain, and they had spent over a year training the monkey to 
respond to certain stimuli.  Well, eventually the PDP developed problems, and 
field service was called in.  Due to some miscommunication, the field service
representative was not informed of the delicacy of this particular setup, and 
the people running the experiment were not informed that field service was 
coming to fix the machine.  The FS representative then booted up a diagnostic 
system I/O exerciser.  After several minutes of gyrations, the monkey expired,
it's brain fried.

The moral, of course, is "Always mount a scratch monkey"