Xref: utzoo rec.humor:18829 rec.humor.d:1619 comp.misc:5077
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cwjcc!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!att!cuuxb!dlm
From: dlm@cuuxb.ATT.COM (Auntie Dion)
Newsgroups: rec.humor,rec.humor.d,comp.misc
Subject: Re: Looking for Computer Folklore
Summary: morning sickness and rubber mallets
Message-ID: <2481@cuuxb.ATT.COM>
Date: 11 Feb 89 05:57:52 GMT
References: <2774@rti.UUCP>
Reply-To: dlm@cuuxb.UUCP (Dennis L. Mumaugh)
Followup-To: rec.humor
Organization: ATT Data Systems Group, Lisle, Ill.
Lines: 37

In article <2774@rti.UUCP> jbs@rti.UUCP (Joe Simpson) writes:
>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. 

Long before there was DEC we had an SDS 920 computer.  These had
printed circuit cards with gold plated contacts and gas tight
connectors.  They were a bitch to reseat.  You had to pound them
into the socket with a mallet.  One day, as were were reseating
the card a senior executive wandered by and saw what was
happening and said "I've heard of kicking coke machines but this
is ridiculous!"

The same computer also must have been pregnant as it had "morning
sickness".  In the morning when we turned it one, it wouldn't
work until we let it warm up for a half an hour.

Then there was the time it broke.  Most of it still worked but
the shift instructions wouldn't work, we called it a shiftless
computer.

Then there was the Army tech that was lazy and dropped a screw
driver [so he says] from the Supply bus to the AC line and fried
every transistor in the computer.  In shipping it back to the US
of A for repair it was accidentally pushed off of a loading dock.
We learned about how to to auto body work on a computer.

Poor SDS 920, last I heard it was still serving our country in a
nameless rural area and the technicians go out to Radio Shack to
buy transistors to repair it.

-- 
=Dennis L. Mumaugh
 Lisle, IL       ...!{att,lll-crg}!cuuxb!dlm  OR cuuxb!dlm@arpa.att.com