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Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!nic.MR.NET!xanth!mcnc!rti!jbs
From: jbs@rti.UUCP (Joe Simpson)
Newsgroups: rec.humor,rec.humor.d,comp.misc
Subject: Re: Looking for Computer Folklore
Summary: Third hand story, maybe true, maybe not...
Keywords: More midnight madness
Message-ID: <2774@rti.UUCP>
Date: 8 Feb 89 20:16:06 GMT
Reply-To: jbs@rti.UUCP (Joe Simpson)
Distribution: na
Organization: Joe's Bar and Grill
Lines: 26

A friend of mine used to work for Northern Telecom, and said this story
circulated there:

A team of installers was installing a DMS-10 digital telephone switch
somewhere in Tenessee. They had it set up and had been testing it all day;
everything seemed to work okay, so they left early in the evening to go
barhopping and rabble-rousing, as NT installers are said to be wont to do.
Next morning they came in only to find that the switch had failed during
the night, and a couple of circuit boards were fried to boot. They replaced
the boards, tested it all day, and left again that evening. Next morning,
same result. This went on for a couple of days, and finally one of the
installers bunked down next to the DMS-10. Along about midnight, in came
the cleaning lady with a feather duster, and proceeded to dust everythibg
in the room, including the exposed circuit boards.

UNRELATED STORY:

When I was an undergrad at UNC, I spent a little time in the graduate
department's graphics lab. When one of the grads was showing us the
hardware, he pointed out a large rubber mallet sitting beside one of the
cabinets. He said that the connection between the chips' prongs and their
sockets sometimes became poor, and often when the system acted up the cure
was to bang on the cabinet with the mallet to reseat the chips. He also
said anytime they had a photo of the lab taken, they made sure the mallet
was visible in the picture, and sent a copy to DEC, who apparently knew
exactly what the mallet was for.