Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!think!harvard!seismo!rlgvax!jsf From: jsf@rlgvax.UUCP (Steve Fritzinger) Newsgroups: net.rumor Subject: Re: Horror stories Message-ID: <959@rlgvax.UUCP> Date: Thu, 27-Mar-86 19:23:36 EST Article-I.D.: rlgvax.959 Posted: Thu Mar 27 19:23:36 1986 Date-Received: Sat, 29-Mar-86 06:05:19 EST References: <1060@loral.UUCP> <2155@watdcsu.UUCP> <2282@phri.UUCP> <1267@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU> Organization: CCI Office Systems Group, Reston, VA Lines: 39 I have two quick but nasty stories. These are true so for everyone who has been defending horror stories in net.rumor by saying there all folk lore, sorry. Back in the summer of '84 I was setting up a PC lab at my school. We were converting an old chem. lab, and of course had to make some major modifications, including installing air conditioning to handle the heat. After setting up about 50 Dec Pro 350s we had the normal break in trouble but soon everything settled down and ran fine until about mid October. I came in one Saturday morning to open the lab and found it a little warm, but didn't think anything about it. After cramming close to 100 freshmen into the lab to work on their homework, the temperature reached close to 90 and 3/4s of the machines were down with random hardware errors. Seems that building services had decided on Friday afternoon that it was time to turn off the air conditioner, and fire up the heat for the winter. They had of course locked the door behind them, and we had rivited all the windows shut that summer to prevent theft. The whole lab was down until late Monday when we finally convinced building services that we would need our air conditioner all winter. The cause of the second one was a little more difficult to find. Recently one of our customers was having trouble with a group of terminals getting periodic line noise, sometimes to the point of locking up the comm processor. After finding nothing wrong in the hard or software a team of crack support people went to site. There they found a bunch of RS232 lines almost 600 ft. long that ran through an elevator shaft. Every time the elevator came by with it's big electric motor on top the RS232 line would pick up the RF noise like any good antena and drive the comm board insane. -- Steve Fritzinger CCI-OSG Reston,Va. seismo!rlgvax!jsf "Most guys spend their entire life with one woman, right?" "Right." "I've got three under 'Q'."