Xref: utzoo rec.humor:18663 rec.humor.d:1584 comp.misc:4993 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!bionet!agate!saturn!ucscc.UCSC.EDU!haynes From: haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) Newsgroups: rec.humor,rec.humor.d,comp.misc Subject: Re: Looking for Computer Folklore Message-ID: <6286@saturn.ucsc.edu> Date: 9 Feb 89 04:19:30 GMT References: <744@utkcs2.cs.utk.edu> Sender: usenet@saturn.ucsc.edu Reply-To: haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) Organization: California State Home for the Weird Lines: 27 In article msmith@topaz.rutgers.edu (Mark Robert Smith) writes: >... >The specialists arrived with many special tools, and in one case a >very special tool. In an old style case, in a custom-molded velour >covered interior, sat the Vibra-matic - a rubber mallet. They had >brought this as a joke, but.... >... One of the design engineers at G.E. kept an electric vibrator in his desk. I think it was originally an engraver, not a massager or sexual vibrator. Anyway, when we seemed to have intermittent problems in a machine he would plug in the vibrator and touch it to each circuit board in the suspect area while running a diagnostic program. At that time G.E. had a small enough number of machines in the field such that when a customer's machine was in bad trouble and the regular field engineers couldn't fix it the company would pull together a small group of engineers and programmers who had participated in the design of the hardware and software and send them to camp out at the site until the problem was solved. So that's where the vibrator probably found the most use. haynes@ucscc.ucsc.edu haynes@ucscc.bitnet ..ucbvax!ucscc!haynes "Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art." Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle