back to article Shocks from a hairy jumper crashed a PC, but the boss wouldn't believe it

Many a middle aged man knows that hair today is gone tomorrow, but every Friday you can count on The Register bringing you a new instalment of On-Call, our reader-contributed tales of tech support tasks that required tact in the face of trying truculence. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Monty" because in the 1990s …

  1. Korev Silver badge
    Coat

    So "Monty" performed static analysis...

    1. KittenHuffer Silver badge

      Shocked I am! Shocked that you felt it necessary to say that!

      1. aerogems Silver badge
        Holmes

        So here's a random thought for the day.

        Zeus was the Greek god of lightning, so would that also make him the god of static electricity?

    2. KittenHuffer Silver badge

      Or was it a static back-grind (sic) analysis?

    3. Dave K
      Joke

      You're a bright spark, so you are...

    4. Inventor of the Marmite Laser Silver badge

      Volt amp you all twittering on about? Just go ohm, all of you

      1. b0llchit Silver badge

        I'm sorry, capacity induced a charge

        1. Neil Barnes Silver badge

          One day joule be sorry you said that...

          1. b0llchit Silver badge

            Henry, Weber and Gauss were in attractive discussions to the point that they repelled any max static well theory.

          2. Jedit Silver badge
            Pint

            Come on, people - no unnecessary friction, please.

      2. aerogems Silver badge

        The hero of the story overcame the resistance of the VP.

    5. Pete 2 Silver badge

      > the veep could be discharging a decent quantity of Coulombs into his keyboard.

      As you'd expect in British Coulombia

    6. JimboSmith
  2. KittenHuffer Silver badge

    I have seen photophobic mice before. When the afternoon sun came round the building and lit up the Boss's desk desk the mouse would become non-responsive.

    Option 1 was to open up the mouse and paint the inside of the paper thin shell to block the sunlight, or option 2, to swap the mice with those used by the poor mole rats that occupied a windowless office elsewhere in the building. I think you can probably guess the option selected by the lazy Helldesk PFY that I was at the time!

    1. lybad
      Facepalm

      When I were a lad...

      Well, maybe not quite a lad.

      When I was a student, our computer labs were on the 10th and higher floors in a city centre building, which then got sunlight (hey - it was Scotland, so it only happened occasionally). We had a lab of Sun Workstations. You know, the ones which needed a metal mousemat painted with dots to work. Had exactly the same problem so you could have 20 or 30 machines at a time suddenly not in mouse mode.

      1. jake Silver badge

        "the ones which needed a metal mousemat painted with dots to work"

        Not dots. A grid of grey and blue lines. Made by Mouse Systems Corporation. I've got an original, attached to an orange logo Sun 1 ... 40+ years old, and still going strong. They don't make 'em like they used to.

        1. Jedit Silver badge
          Devil

          "They don't make 'em like they used to."

          Some would say that's not a bad thing, if your mouse shuts down the minute the sun comes out. Of course that is a factor in the gear having a 40-year operational life in the UK...

      2. Michael Strorm Silver badge

        > a lab of Sun Workstations

        Ironic under the circumstances...

      3. Xalran

        oh dear, I'm *that* old.... I worked on SUNs with that mousemat.

        1. Gerhard den Hollander

          And the fun that could be had by rotating these mouse mats 90 degrees ....

          1. Arthur the cat Silver badge

            And the fun that could be had by rotating these mouse mats 90 degrees

            There were always a few users who'd rotate the mat themselves. "To make it fit better on my desk."

        2. Test Man

          Same here! Well, I was at uni where it was full of Sun workstations.... with that mat.

          1. the spectacularly refined chap Silver badge

            Or turn it upside down. To this day I don't know what the problem was - orient it so the Sun logo was at bottom right. You know, the orientation where you can read it might give you a clue.

            1. Adrian Harvey

              Wasn’t the SUN logo readable is all (4) rotations? Or was there an earlier logo that wasn’t?

              1. jake Silver badge

                Yes, even the original orange Sun logo was readable about all four rotations.

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-1#/media/File:Sun-1_Badge.jpg

                1. the spectacularly refined chap Silver badge

                  Yes, the any way up Sun diamond, but with the word "Sun" alongside it.

    2. DS999 Silver badge

      Sun optical mice

      Definitely had this problem back in the day

  3. original_rwg
    Coat

    No Goat related metaphor?

    Your kidding!

    1. KittenHuffer Silver badge

      Re: No Goat related metaphor?

      Naaaaah!

    2. Korev Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: No Goat related metaphor?

      Don't try and milk it...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: No Goat related metaphor?

        Enough with the cheesy comments already...

        1. jake Silver badge

          Re: No Goat related metaphor?

          There's never enough cheese.

          1. H in The Hague

            Re: No Goat related metaphor?

            "There's never enough cheese."

            Blessed are the cheesemakers!

          2. Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch Silver badge

            Re: No Goat related metaphor?

            ++?????++ Out of Cheese Error. Redo From Start.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: No Goat related metaphor?

        Don't try and milk it...

        Don''t tell us what we can and can't do....honestly, its like a nanny state

    3. Andy Non Silver badge

      Re: No Goat related metaphor?

      Don't play the goat

  4. TonyJ

    "Hairy jumper"

    I must admit the first thing that came to mind for me was some kind of spider had taken up residence inside the PC!

    But then I quickly realised it wasn't an Australian-based story. :-)

    1. diver_dave

      Re: "Hairy jumper"

      Pray tell.

      Fried spider?

      1. Korev Silver badge
        Coat

        Re: "Hairy jumper"

        Jumper spider surely

      2. jake Silver badge

        Re: "Hairy jumper"

        You don't fry the spider ... you use the spider to remove food from the oil after it's cooked.

      3. Flightmode

        Re: "Hairy jumper"

        Many years ago I worked for a company who had some limited presence in Australia and New Zealand. We delivered telco services via satellite to a bunch of smaller places, and one day we had a complete outage at one of our sites. Deducing that we didn't even have incoming signals to our equipment at the site, we sent our trusty local engineer Tim on site to check that there was power to the receiver and other basic things. After he eventually climbed up on the roof of the building and removed a fried spider bigger than his own palm (he sent pictures) from the receiver head, signals came back.

        1. Ptol

          Re: "Hairy jumper"

          never used to be scared of spiders, and then i visited Australia. Spiders the size of your dinner plate that don't spin webs, they actively hunt food. Cornering one yo catch it is a bad idea - they will run at you, they can jump and they also have a pretty nasty bite.

    2. chivo243 Silver badge
      Pint

      Re: "Hairy jumper"

      Hairy Jumper had me thinking the HDD was covered in lint, and causing the jumper issues... perhaps connecting to 4 pins instead of 2?

      1. jake Silver badge

        Re: "Hairy jumper"

        Note to my fellow Yanks: A "jumper" is to the Brits (and hangers-on) what we would call a sweater.

        1. heyrick Silver badge
          Happy

          Re: "Hairy jumper"

          Just to mess with you, I'll throw in "pullover". Since the UK is dark and dismal for much of the year, we have three words for the same garment.

          Just remember, the "r" at the end is pronounced "a", jumpa, sweata (with a t), pullohva...

          1. Captain Hogwash

            Re: "Hairy jumper"

            Not in rhotic Bristol it isn't!

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: "Hairy jumper"

            Just remember, the "r" at the end is pronounced "a", jumpa, sweata (with a t), pullohva...

            Only by Brits from the far south, bad RP or other speech impediments.

            1. heyrick Silver badge
              Happy

              Re: "Hairy jumper"

              Oops, gave myself away there. Indeed, my particular speech impediment is growing up on "the Surrey-Hampshire border".

              Upvote because Britain has many accents... There's "joompeh" and the "swea'uh", for example. And a few dialects that are nigh on indecipherable, such as that infamous bloke from Zummerzet that turned up on Hot Fuzz.

              1. TimMaher Silver badge
                Coat

                Re: "Hairy jumper"

                And, slightly further afield, the “people of Strabane”.

          3. Martin an gof Silver badge

            Re: "Hairy jumper"

            we have three words for the same garment

            It's possibly a family thing, but around here,

            • Jumper: thick knitted woollen garment, probably with a roll-neck
            • Pullover: thinner garment, possibly in wool, maybe cotton mix, often with a "V" neck, occasionally with short sleeves
            • Sweater: usually man-made fibre or cotton mix, likely similar to tracksuit material, neck usually round or roll
            Then of course you have forgotten
            • Cardigan: similar to a pullover, often wool, but with buttons or some other fastener at the front
            • Tank top: again, similar to a pullover or a cardigan, but sleeveless. Considered terribly unfashionable for many years but darn it if it isn't coming back into vogue for some reason!

            M.

            1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

              Re: "Hairy jumper"

              Waistcoat. A bit of a surprise that Google offers about 5 pages trying to sell me one, before the inevitable Wikipedia article describing what it is.

              Known as a "vest" in U.S. and Canada, it says here. And "tank top" is a "sweater vest" in those parts.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: "Hairy jumper"

          Sssssshhhhh, don't give the game away. "TheRegister.com" has been very obviously trying to aim at a mainly US audience (and pass itself off as indistinguishable from American) for several years now.

          Drawing attention to unfortunate oversights like this risks undoing all that hard work!

          1. johnfbw

            Re: "Hairy jumper"

            Not sure if to upvote for the comment or downvote for the truth :(

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: "Hairy jumper"

              Metaphorically speaking, it's unfair to shoot the messenger regardless.

        3. anothercynic Silver badge
          Angel

          Re: "Hairy jumper"

          But us Brits also refer to what you call jumpers, as jumpers.

          Just to... muddy the waters, you understand ;-)

          1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

            Re: "Hairy jumper"

            ...and a vest is something else altogether :-)

    3. jake Silver badge

      Re: "Hairy jumper"

      The tarantulas are making their presence known here in Northern California, now that it's finally Spring. I don't think they live as far north as BC, though.

    4. vcragain

      Re: "Hairy jumper"

      When I was a teen my main ambition was to emigrate to Australia = had it all planned out - then I read an article about Australia's spiders - yikes - emigration plans immediately killed !

      1. Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch Silver badge

        Re: "Hairy jumper"

        Shame, really. They're quite tasty, once you get used to picking the hairs from the legs out from between your teeth.

      2. Ken Shabby

        Re: "Hairy jumper"

        I emigrated here, to the land down under, many, many moons ago. Her indoors wanted to holiday in FNQ (Far North Queensland). Restaurant in the rain forest, a spider the size of a dinner plate, very black, very hairy just sauntered through slowly on the floor. When pointed out to the staff, "Oh that's Bruce" (forgotten the name, could have been Eric), "'He's' a Queensland bird eating spider that comes through this time every night, no need to worry". The bastard was HUGE.

        1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

          Re: "Hairy jumper"

          But did you have gulls swooping down and stealing your food? I believe you did not. ;-)

    5. waldo kitty
      Holmes

      Re: "Hairy jumper"

      i was thinking of a jumper block on some pins that was somehow accumulating some sort of conductive dust fibers or similar that were shorting to somewhere else and bonking up the works :lol:

    6. david 12 Silver badge
      Coat

      I quickly realised it wasn't an Australian-based story

      What do you get if you cross a sheep with a kangaroo?

      Woolly Jumpers

  5. diver_dave

    Not quite the same

    I once watched an engineer remove a brand new master board for a Sony DXC3000 camera from it's antistatic packaging.

    As he did so he spotted a static discharge from his index finger. All I heard was a sotto voce "Oh Shit" as he realised he had forgotten his anti-static band.

    Board not functioning on receipt read the return paperwork....

    1. blackcat Silver badge

      Re: Not quite the same

      At my old uni they replaced the carpet in the corridor to the computer lab and during the first warm dry weather you'd get a lovely crack as you started to type in the door code. The code lock didn't last too long after that. It took a couple of replacements before they figured out the actual cause and replaced the carpet.

      1. J.G.Harston Silver badge

        Re: Not quite the same

        I once worked in a 1970s council ziggurat where every morning the cleaners had to spray the carpets with water after vacuuming them to get rid of the static buildup.

        1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

          Re: Not quite the same

          It would probably have been cheaper just to fix the earthing problem in the vacuum cleaners!

    2. usbac

      Re: Not quite the same

      I remember working on the Sony Pro gear back in the day. The DXC3000 was a very expensive camera back then. Weren't they like $16,000, in 1980s money ($48,500 in 2003 money), plus the cost of lenses?

      It's hard to believe that a modern, sub $100 digital camera beats their quality.

      1. diver_dave

        Re: Not quite the same

        Yep. Not cheap.

        Getting the tube alignment, cc'd calibration and white balance/grey scale setup after was a nightmare. Although you got some very pretty patterns on the scope!

  6. original_rwg

    Static

    This story reminds me of an event many years ago. I was performing some routine maintenance on multiple 486 machines running Windows 3.1. Walking back and forth across the carpet a few times was enough to build sufficient a static charge in me that when I reached for the mouse of one machine, I felt the zap of the escaping 'angry pixies' and watched as the machines hdd led came on and stayed on. I had fried a vital component of the multi-io board (remember them?) and the box was now totally unresponsive and unable to boot.

    While awaiting the delivery of a replacement multi-io board, I placed a note on the monitor which read "Under treatment". I kept tropical fish as a hobby at the time. One of the other staff members added "Nil by mouse" to it. Amused by this I agreed she could submit it to The Readers Digest. They published it in one of their end of article fillers and we shared the spoils.

    1. Coastal cutie

      Re: Static

      Yep had a colleague in my banking days who could do the self same thing to the mainframe terminals

    2. jake Silver badge

      Re: Static

      Remember the anti-static mousepads they used to sell? The ones with a snap in one corner for attaching a ground wire?

      They weren't for grounding the mouse. They were there to ground the user.

      The "What if ... ?" aspect of destructive testing was one of my favorite games for several years. I've measured 115,000V after running a standard vacuum cleaner over the floor of a SillyConValley shipping & receiving department. Lots of very small particles moving quickly through a plastic tube caused the static buildup. The next stop on the cleaner's schedule was the stockroom, with shelves & shelves full of static sensitive parts. Much hilarity ensued.

      I once measured 61,750ish volts on an empty, unused Styrofoam coffee cup set down on an isolated table after a colleague walked across a nylon carpet wearing Nikes ... Was an example, just to prove the point.

      In other news, the average secretary can generate upwards of 85KV walking down the hall to get a cuppa, but myself walking alongside her came up static free. Seems my unmentionables were made of cotton, hers were made of silk and petrochemicals. Her heels were leather, my soles were high-carbon rubber.

      No, the above isn't sexist, it's observed reality ... and she volunteered to take part in the experiment. She also managed to drag another 21 of her female cow orkers into "the game" (as she called it), giving us some real data to make recommendations. Interesting couple of months, that.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Static

        For a moment I thought you were suggesting the secretary was average.

        1. Korev Silver badge
          Coat

          Re: Static

          For a moment I thought you were suggesting the secretary was average.

          That was mean!

          1. Flightmode
            Mushroom

            Re: Static

            You sure are on fire today!

            (That wasn't a pun, just an observation.)

      2. MrBanana

        Re: Static

        As much fun as mega KV stories can go, I think we all need a bit more detail on your high heeled friend in silk panties.

        1. Anonymous Coward Silver badge
          Alien

          Re: Static

          Have you heard the Monty Python lumberjack song?

          I don't think we actually need the aforementioned detail.

      3. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: Static

        >Seems my unmentionables were made of cotton, hers were made of silk and petrochemicals.

        So the optimal is "bare feet and no knickers"?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Static

          Or just rubber from top to bottom.

          (imagine the gimp icon)

        2. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

          Re: Static

          So the optimal is "bare feet and no knickers"?

          "PH34R MY N3KKID L33T SKILLZ!" -- https://megatokyo.com/strip/70

      4. Manolo
        Childcatcher

        Re: Static

        In terms of static build up, leather is good, synthetic is bad. I only get static shocks at work in winter, when the weather is really bad and I wear sturdy shoes with synthetic soles. The rest of the year I wear leather soles, they transfer any static buildup away from the body.

      5. Stuart Dole
        Mushroom

        Re: Static

        I did IT support for anesthesia research at a big uni teaching hospital. Nylons were banned in the OR (mostly affected women, but where this was you couldn't be sure). Because some anesthesia gasses are highly explosive...

      6. Stuart Dole

        Re: Static

        Another time I worked for a small consulting outfit that was in a loft over a piano and organ store. There was a shag nylon carpet that could really build up a charge. I discovered if everyone just took off their shoes, the moisture in the socks and feet was enough to discharge any buildup of static. Even on that carpet. No grounding straps needed. There was enough ventilation that the smell of un-shod feet wasn't oppressive....

        1. SuperGeek

          Re: Static

          "There was enough ventilation that the smell of un-shod feet wasn't oppressive...."

          A cheesy joke here would be a Brie-liant idea! I'll get my coat!

          1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge
            Joke

            Re: Static

            I would look for a joke about that nylon carpeted office being in the organ loft.

            But I would be preaching to the coir.

    3. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

      Multi I/O Boards

      As I recall, multi-i/O boards had an 8-bit-bus card edge connector, usually were used in IBM PC- and XT-compatible computers, contained two serial ports, one parallel port, a battery-backed realtime clock, and a floppy diskette controller, but no hard disc controller. Were your 486 machines floppy-disc-only, or was your multi-i/o card some sort of proprietary thing? (There were plenty of weird proprietary things floating around back then.)

      1. jake Silver badge

        Re: Multi I/O Boards

        We built them for the S-100 bus, Unibus, Q-bus, STD bus and etc, long before the IBM PC was invented. In fact, in the early days most such peripheral cards for the IBM were modified S-100 bus designs.

      2. original_rwg

        Re: Multi I/O Boards

        Can't remember the board maker but think they had hdd and fdd direct attached by ribbon cables. Parallel and serial ribbons to a separate slot. They could support 2 x hdd and 2 x fdd and some even came with a game port - 15 pin D type. The machines were beige boxes branded Wren. Originally started out as 486DX-33 but we upgrade them to 486DX-66 (wow!) and fitted a cooler for the CPU. So sad that I can remember all that :(

      3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Multi I/O Boards

        Multi-I/O cards changed over time. Anything other than an original 8088/86 or 80286 based PC would likely have had the realtime clock on the motherboard, and the multi-I/O card would have been 16-bit and had FDD, HDD, parallel and one or two serial ports on them and most likely IDE-based by the time 486s came along.

  7. Roger Kynaston
    Mushroom

    capital of BC

    Prince George!!!????? Try Victoria.

    </pedant>

    1. Korev Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: capital of BC

      Capital of Canada? Washington DC surely...

      1. jake Silver badge

        Re: capital of BC

        Not the capitol of Canada. The capitol of BC.

        1. phuzz Silver badge
          Joke

          Re: capital of BC

          Surely the capital of Canada is C?

          1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Re: capital of BC

            Are Rust and Go competing to take over?

            1. WolfFan

              Re: capital of BC

              Too late. Rust won when they got the second Trudeau. And Go (far, far away) was applied to candidates from a Certain Other Party.

        2. anothercynic Silver badge

          Re: capital of BC

          CapitAl. Capitol = building. Capital = self-explanatory.

          Sorry Jake.

    2. DM2012
      Thumb Up

      Re: capital of BC

      Thankyou, I couldn't follow the rest of the story after that Booboo.

    3. breakfast

      Re: capital of BC

      They were trying to Regomise every name in the story for good measure.

    4. Vincent Manis

      Re: capital of BC

      Prince George is the capital of BC, just as Milton Keynes is the capital of the UK.

  8. Sceptic Tank Silver badge
    Pirate

    Van De Graaff Computers filed for bankruptcy

    How does The Emperor in Star Wars operate his keyboard?

    1. mirachu Bronze badge

      Re: Van De Graaff Computers filed for bankruptcy

      Forcefully.

    2. WolfFan

      Re: Van De Graaff Computers filed for bankruptcy

      He has Jar-Jar and some dead Ewoks.

  9. Mishak Silver badge

    Pneumatic computer

    I'm sure I've told this story before, but...

    A friend of mine used to work on systems that used pneumatic computers.These used air and various pipes to form integrators, differentiators, and the like.

    However, one of the systems would regularly fail during the night shift, and none of the diagnostics run the following morning threw up anything to help solve the problem. So, my friend was tasked with an all-nighter to keep an eye on the system and have a look at it as soon as it failed.

    He got there at the end of his normal working day and sat down with a good book (it was before the days of the internet, after all). Some hours later the night operator arrived with a coffee and took over. The system failed shortly after the replaced worker left the room.

    It was at that point that my friend noticed the steam that was being drawn from the coffee cup and into the air inlet of the computer - which wasn't good, as it didn't like damp air! Of course, it had all dried out by morning, which was why the previous attempts to locate the cause had found nothing.

    1. Korev Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: Pneumatic computer

      Sounds like he couldn't handle the pressure...

    2. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

      Re: Pneumatic computer

      Wikipedia has an article on the "Gas flow computer".

  10. frabbledeklatter

    It Could Have Been Worse

    Wang Laboratories' first disk drive was the model 710, a peripheral for 700 series calculators, It looked like a turntable on a pedestal and had a 5KB (yes, "K" bytes!) removable platter and a 5K fixed platter. The electronics were a foot or so down in the pedestal. On the control panel was a "format" button secured by an impressive-looking key switch next to it.

    A walk across a carpeted floor to change removable platters or to put paper in an adjacent printer would often cause the 710 to go into its format sequence, wiping out all the data on both platters. We field techs called it "electrostatic formatting"

    When the key switch was in the "locked" position, its contacts were open, and eighteen inches of wire floated on a 2K ohm pullup resistor. That was the problem. The solution was to run the wire through a spare inverter on one of the chips, and have the key switch ground the wire via closed contacts when locked. Lotsa data (for its time) gone before the solution, though.

  11. DS999 Silver badge

    At my first job back in the 90s

    I had a colleague who was super anal about wearing a wrist strap anytime he changed out memory or drives from the workstations, and constantly chastised me for failing to do the same. I never had a problem with static despite ignoring those precautions (the lack of which continues to this day)

    He was an older guy who came from an engineering background so maybe he worked with more finicky equipment back in the day where this was necessary. Either that, or he had a shocking experience at some point in the past that burned itself into his very soul!

    1. Majikthise

      Re: At my first job back in the 90s

      Maybe he understood that even boards with static protection became less reliable after every shock and would eventually fail..

      So *you* probably never saw a problem. Someone else did...

      1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

        Re: At my first job back in the 90s

        Exactly, each zap across one of the tiny wires or tracks inside the chip will have weakened them, they may not have been burned through right away but when something stresses them later they'll fail.

      2. DS999 Silver badge

        Actually

        Now that I think about it I can't recall the last time I got zapped by static electricity. It used to happen all the time when I was a kid, but that's probably because we had shag carpeting all over the house.

    2. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

      Pooh-Poohing Anti-Static Cautions

      Does nobody remember the yellow sheet with anti-static warnings and procedures which Intel included with its 8087 Numeric Data Processor chips?

      1. jake Silver badge

        Re: Pooh-Poohing Anti-Static Cautions

        The instructions beginning "Run tub with cool water. Remove clothing. Stand in tub."?

        I know people who actually did that when populating RAM ... Memory was very expensive, and quit delicate at the time. There was a lot of superstition surrounding it.

        How expensive? I have a hand-written receipt[0] dated early December of 1977 for "8ea 16 Kbit Mostek MK4116 DRAM, new, in factory tube, with seals" ... for the low, low price of $336, plus tax. So I guess one question to the "42" answer is "What was the price in US dollars for 1 (one) 16K bit DRAM in late 1977?" ...

        By way of reference, $42 in 1977 money is just about 325 bucks today.

        [0] From the late, very much lamented Haltec, no less ...

    3. david 12 Silver badge

      Re: At my first job back in the 90s

      Application note from one of our suppliers reported that the failure rate of their robust, not static sensitive, power electronics went down from something like 1 in 100,000 to more like 1 in 1,000,000 when they adopted static protection measures in production. They didn't actually make a recommendation on static protection -- just that observation.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Strangely Enough....

    I read today about someone's monitor that kept going off because of the electrical discharge from the gas lift on their IKEA chair every time they sat down..

  13. mickaroo

    Me Too Story

    I, too, live in Canada. And yes, winter gets very cold outdoors and very dry indoors.

    I worked in a laboratory in the 1980's and we had a fair amount of not-cheap microprocessor controlled lab equipment. I was programming a lab instrument for an overnight run; I reached towards the keyboard, a spark about 5mm long leapt from my finger, and the WHOLE INSTRUMENT SHUT DOWN! DEAD!

    The instrument in question cost about twice my annual salary then. So I was trying to not throw up in my mouth when the cooling fans started spinning up. Then the status lights starting flashing yellow and turning solid green.

    I walked over to the lab sink, rinsed my hands under running water, finished programming my overnight run, and never told anyone what had happened.

    1. The Oncoming Scorn Silver badge
      Pint

      Re: Me Two Story's

      The Ex

      Used to accumulate* charge here in Alberta for a pastime, always the smart one, she would always try to discharge, on entering a building (or vehicle) with metal doors with the tip of her finger, rather than the more sensible hard slap of the palm to the surface.

      One happy day (For me) while looking in a furnishings store looking at kitchen appliances, she pointed out a over the cooker extractor fan with the comment "Ohh look that's just like the one we have! as she reached out to point with her finger, a gigantic spark worthy of Michelangelo's "The creation of Adam" leapt from finger to metal was seen by myself reflected in the shiny stainless steel appliance I was looking at, with a massive shriek of pain.

      I had an electronics tutor that was known for killing computers bought from Dixon's (Even when tested in store, gets it home, DOA). Make, model, didn't matter. His demonstrations never worked, he blew up transistors for a past time, just by proximity & would spend so much time trying to find a working, or nearest equivalent that the point of the lecture was totally lost.

      Some rat of a student (For beer money (Not me)) flogged this to the tabloids as the man who had to discharge himself, before kissing his wife when leaving or arriving from work.

      In hindsight, being a lecturer in electronics was the best career course for him, as he was probably unemployable as a field service guy.

      *Sorry not sorry.

  14. Xalran

    Electrostatic bracer... err watch

    When I was a PFY so shiny I still couldn't believe I had a job and in telecom to boot, we all fresh employees were given a swatch that had a button on the wristband ( and a metal bit on the inside attached to the button ) so that we could tie the slinky grounding cable that could be found in the racks.

    We were told that it was cheaper for them to give us purpose modified watches than making sure the wristbands supposedly attached to the slinky cable were still there and getting replacements for them when they weren't... I lost mine one day in Gare du Nord when the wristband failed and I didn't notice it fell when I removed my vest while waiting for a train on a hot day.

    1. Anonymous IV
      Happy

      Re: Electrostatic bracer... err watch

      > I lost mine one day in Gare du Nord

      Reminiscent of the olde French joke, said by someone standing in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral:

      C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas le Gare...

    2. Tom 7

      Re: Electrostatic bracer... err watch

      When ferreting about inside PC cases even today I keep my forearms bare and touch one or other to the bare metal of the case and keep it there before diving in. Never trusted leads as deliberately open circuit ones where left around the labs by Mr Funny in one place I worked. Except of course when training in which case the avo came out to check.

      1. Martin an gof Silver badge

        Re: Electrostatic bracer... err watch

        Do that myself, but it does rely on having an earthed case, and leaving it plugged in. Much safer these days of enclosed power supplies, but potentially quite hazardous in even fairly recent times with open-frame PSUs, and I've met more than several items of consumer kit (CD players, amplifiers, video recorders, that sort of thing) where the supposedly double-insulated (hence no earth) appliances have the mains cord soldered to two large pins sticking straight up out of the PCB with nothing to stop you touching it once you've taken the lid off. Utterly criminal for something that very often you have to diagnose "live" so that you can see exactly which of the nylon cogs is jumping so that the tape won't come out...

        M.

        1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

          Re: Electrostatic bracer... err watch

          I was thinking about sharp metal edges inside machine cases. Not a good thing to plan on having an involuntary movement of the arm next to. Unless it's the kind of appliance that you do need to bleed on to propitiate it.

    3. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

      Re: Electrostatic bracer... err watch

      Vest as the American word for "waistcoat" (gilet), or ...?

  15. disgruntled yank

    Just one question

    I lived for some years in Denver, which is always dry and often cold, and was on the end of my static shocks. I wonder how the man with the sweater never noticed the static discharge.

    1. Tom 7

      Re: Just one question

      Most likely regular short discharges rather than massive bolts Didnt take much to wipe out early chips.

  16. TrevorH

    > Regomize

    Nit pick time.

    I'm pretty sure this should be 'regonomize' as in a smash of register and anonymize.

    Regomize sounds more like a word smash of register and sodomize. Similar and maybe very registerish...

    1. TheMaskedMan Silver badge

      "I'm pretty sure this should be 'regonomize' as in a smash of register and anonymize."

      I'm pretty sure it used to be, though I can't be bothered to check. Regomize has been bugging me for weeks, too!

    2. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
      Holmes

      If you're going to portmanteauify two words, you probably want the resulting neologism to be as short and simple as possible.

      1. Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch Silver badge

        The subtleties of portmanteauification.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Or, in elReg's case, the subtitles.

          1. jake Silver badge

            And quite often the subtleties.

      2. WolfFan

        Unless you’re German. Hmm. Panzerkampfwagen. Panzerkampfwagenaberkanonne. A.k.a ‘Panzer’, or ‘tank’ to English speakers, and PAK, or anti-tank gun. A direct translation of panzerkampfwagen would be ‘Armored Battle Vehicle’. Note that ‘tank’ in this context is because the things were developed by the Royal Navy, under the cover name of ‘water carriers for Mesopotamia’,

        Flak is similar: fliegeraberkanonne.

        Germans apparently love to mash words together where others just get a new word. Unless they’re French, where they use half a dozen existing words. Because le Academie says so.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          " Unless they’re French, where they use half a dozen existing words. Because le Academie says so."

          Or just use the English word in spite of the Academie.

    3. heyrick Silver badge

      "Regomize" (-ise) just sounds like something that would need to have NSFW tags plastered all over it, like:

      ... I'm bloody annoyed with you, go regomize yourself with a broom handle ...

    4. C R Mudgeon

      "Regonomize" makes me think of being regonomical with the truth. So perhaps keep that in reserve for the day (may it never come!) that the Murdochs buy El Reg.

    5. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      ...and very un-American, which is the opposite of what El Reg is trying to be. I submit Regonomizationizm as a suitable American-sounding replacement,

      1. TheMaskedMan Silver badge

        "and very un-American, which is the opposite of what El Reg is trying to be."

        And I, for one, really wish they wouldn't.

        As for static, it's a bugger. Many years ago, I went through a phase of getting a nasty belt nearly every time I touched something metal. Door handles, filing cabinets, my car... it was seriously ouchy.

        I've no idea why it started - as far as I know, nothing had changed. No new carpets, shoes, undies. It lasted a few weeks, by which time I was living in dread of the next zap, and then stopped, again for no reason I could figure out. I do not want it to happen again!

    6. imanidiot Silver badge

      Regomize is a smash of the words Register and randomize. It's perfectly fine.

      1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

        It should be Nonymize. Anonymize is when you take a name away, Nonymize is to give someone a new one. :-)

        Regomize is to call somebody Reg.

  17. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    There are more ways than static to generate high voltages. The microspectrophotometer had a Z80 S-100 box attached and, for fluorescence work had an XBO (xenon) light source with a stabilized PSU that provided a hefty pulse to strike the arc. We learned to turn on the light before powering up the X80 box.

  18. Horatio Hellpop

    Dust bunny jumper

    New to a MSP job, I go to troubleshoot a client's RAID alarm on a Netware 3.11 server. Reboot and get into the RAID console and notice that the SCSI ID on the drives seemed a little odd. They started in order, but then skipped a couple of IDs and listed the last drive last or nearly so. That was the drive it was claiming was missing from the array, but obviously it was present. I wondered what the tech who set the server up was thinking by skipping IDs. I downed the server and opened the case to check the SCSI ID jumpers, and that drive had a dust bunny perfectly jumping the higher ID! Nearly a full can of compressed air later, booted the server back up with all drives correctly ID'ed and off it went to rebuild the array.

    1. C R Mudgeon

      Re: Dust bunny jumper

      Now that's a hairy jumper!

      I have to say, as a non-Brit, something along that line is what the headline first suggested to me.

  19. PRR Silver badge

    Every year...

    After the school office got (nylon) carpeting, every year, start of the heating season, the secretaries in the office would report 'stuck' PCs. The first to go foo was usually Jan---, who had her PC on a plastic-wheeled cart. Last was often Lo--- who had live plants all over the office (and dripping into PCs...) There may have been additional factors in unmentionable garment fabrics, but this was not my purview.

    All static electricity of course. Mostly cured by mixing Downy (or CostCo) fabric softener in water in a sprayer, and anointing chairs and carpets twice a week.

    Retired, but we still keep a spritzer around the house for the throw-blanket on the couch. The dog is remarkably tolerant of being zapped when people get off the couch but we have the technology to avoid it.

  20. NITS

    plastic seats

    Some time ago I was working on the parking-and-admissions system for an entertainment venue. The terminals had been reliable when originally deployed in Florida, but were prone to crashing when installed at a newly-rebuilt venue in New Jersey. Turns out that the agents had smart, new, polyester uniforms. They were seated on smart, new stools with plastic seats and plastic-tipped metal legs. When they'd scoot their bum against the stool's seat, static electricity would be generated. The solution was to provide conductive plastic seat covers, and remove the plastic tips from the legs, so that the stools were (sorta) grounded to the stone floors in the admissions booths. After that, no problems.

    1. Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch Silver badge

      Re: plastic seats

      Strange. The machines that work fine in New Jersey are usually the ones full of security holes and bugs when they use them in Florida.

      1. TimMaher Silver badge
        Windows

        Re: plastic seats

        And that might cost you 787.5 million USD.

        Icon because very old bloke.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Back when I were a lowly PFY, the IT director (who happened to be female) showed up to work wearing a very fluffy and very pink sweater one day. ESD concerns aside, we were doing some work on a server that day and discovered pink fluff on the air filter (even though she had only been in the building about an hour at that point).

    Our BOFH informed her that we had taken a vote, and decided she needed to take her shirt off. Fortunately for all involved, she took the joke well (I'm not very PC now, and was less polished in my youth, but even back then, I thought that may be a bit over the line).

    At our company picnic that summer, she brought the offending shirt and tossed it on the bonfire.

  22. henryd

    Been there, done that

    In the late 70's I was working in Israel developing an office computer. As Israel is a hot country rooms have stone tiled floors, not carpet.

    Once ready we shipped our gleaming new computer to our first customer, in Germany (You can guess where this is going).

    Soon reports of failure came in which we could not reproduce at home so we had to go to Germany to investigate on site. I still remember the electric shock going through my fingers when I touch a metal radiator while standing on a nylon carpet.

    1. Terry 6 Silver badge

      Re: Been there, done that

      God yes. Later than in my previous post I was in a teaching base that had nylon carpets installed. Every radiator, filing cabinet and door handle became a test of courage.The computers were all fine though. Just me being traumatised.

      1. PRR Silver badge

        Re: Been there, done that

        > Every radiator, filing cabinet and door handle became a test of courage.

        Friend worked in a corporate archive library. Heavy A/C to preserve old paper. Filing cabinets and doorknobs were shocking. I soldered a 1Meg resistor on a trinket ring so she could touch metal and discharge herself in more than a pico-instant, so the shock was hardly felt.

  23. FatGerman

    Clothing is dangerous

    I have a pair of shoes I can't wear to my office for this reason. I think it's something to do with the carpet. One of the other engineers has one specific door he can't open when he's wearing a certain brand of socks.

    1. that one in the corner Silver badge

      Re: Clothing is dangerous

      > wearing a certain brand of socks

      Marks and Sparks?

  24. Martin H Watson

    True story

    We had a dot matrix printer that used to jump a line each time the lift arrived on our floor. That took a lot of trouble shooting.

    1. jake Silver badge

      Re: True story

      Picture a data center in the basement of a tall building in San Francisco's financial district. Card punch up against a wall, near the ancient Otis heavy goods lift. Every now and again, at seemingly random times, the punch generated errors for a couple characters. Nobody could figure out why, not even IBM's field circus dudes.

      Until IBM was traipsing in and out one fine weekend, upgrading who knows what hardware, as only IBM could. Someone (ahem) noticed that the gibberish was being generated about ten seconds before the elevator doors opened.

      Turned out that the motor for the lift was drawing so much current when it first started that it was inducing errors in the punch on the other side of the wall. Nobody put two and two together prior to this because the lift rarely went into the basement (that level was key-protected) ... until IBM was in and out that morning.

      Once I figured it out, and could reproduce the problem at will, a little shielding (spec'd, provided and installed by IBM, gratis!) made it go away permanently.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: True story

        "(spec'd, provided and installed by IBM, gratis!)"

        Well, the electrical and RFI specs for devices in most countries usually specify that the device not only should not produce too much RFI but should also continue to work in the presence of RFI. So either IBM or Otis would be on the hook to resolve that situation :-)

        But yeah, spotting it in the first place can be interesting and fun. Most often it's when a fresh pair of eyes turn up knowing that the people who already looked at it are good and will have tried all the obvious things already. The right pair of eyes with the right type of brain behind them knows it time to think outside the box.

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: True story

        We had the lift shaft problem with our Z8000 Onyx back in goodness knows when.

        These either side of the wall stories remind me of Feynman's which, of course, is one up on the rest of them: visiting Oak Ridge and discovering the enriched uranium being stacked up in the required small lots but back to back against a wall.

  25. Terry 6 Silver badge

    North London

    Newly appointed peripatetic teacher was based in my off-site class. She had access to our (only) RM 480Z I think, computer on days when I was out in schools and vice versa.

    And she was always complaining that the PC kept crashing. Which had never happened for me. Until the day that I was in for admin time and she had a cancelled slot so came back to the base.. As she walked past me in her lovely mohair jumper the computer crashed.....

  26. user555

    USB is easily locked up

    USB is well known for its poor handling of static discharges, it can lock the whole chain of controllers and hubs totally. Not even a forced hard computer reset will recover it at times. Only way is to remove the computer's power. Some hubs are much better than others I've noticed.

    I've had to add extra discharge protections (extra earthing of equipment and metalwork around it, shielding of cables) to equipment using USB devices to get some reliability.

  27. David Coulter

    No Goat puns?

    You're Kidding!

  28. WolfFan

    Feh.

    I was expecting a story with either mountain goats, as the setting was Way Far North Mountain Canada, or someone’s pet monkey.

  29. martinusher Silver badge

    To be expected -- honestly

    Static abounds if you don't treat for it, especially if the weather's dry. An electronics assembly line will have conductive floor tiles, conductive smocks on the workforce (or anyone else visiting the production area) and the usual collection of wrist and heel straps. Office areas have carpet treatment (if all else fails a spray bottle with a dilute solution of a fabric softener such as Downey will kill static). Engineers know to ground themselves before touching any electronic assemblies or test equipment.

    Despite this you can pick up some quite big charge while walking around. The scene in "Office Space" where our hero reluctantly touches a door handle, generating a huge spark, isn't that much of an exaggeration. "The Boss" needs to be made aware of static precautions.....

  30. Bitbeisser

    Yeah, had of those "random" problems once too. Working in a small computer repair shop, one day a local customer down the street brought a computer in. Said it was brand new and would always crash after running for 15-20 min. Put it up on our workbench a bit later and was playing with the computer for half an hour. No crash. Let it sit busy with the screensaver for the rest of the day, no crash. Customer picked the computer up just before closing. Came back the next morning, and 3 more times, always the same, claiming it would crash after those 15-20min.Was working just peachy fine in our shop. The last time he brought it in, on Saturday, he sat himself at our workbench for a couple hours. No crash. Took it home and called half an hour later. It had crashed and rebooted again. As we were just closing the store, I went over to his house a couple of blocks away. Nice home office in a covered, converted patio. He turned the computer back on when I came in and presto, a few minutes later, it rebooted. While the machine came back up, he lamented that he started to think that his place was cursed. While talking, me telling him that I noticed a flickering in the lighting, after that roughly 15min time span, his wife walked into the room and down a narrow staircase inside. When she opened up the door, to a room under the former pattio, the computer crashed and rebooted again. But this time, I did not only notice the light flickering, but also noticed the sound of the compressor of a large freezer in that basement room kicking in. Turned out that the freezer was on the same electrical circuit as his office upstairs and the draw of the freezer kicking in was enough to cause a brownout and subsequent reboot of the computer upstairs. Had an electrician first thing on Monday morning separate the circuits and that computer worked happily ever after...

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