Bargain-hunting boss saw his bonus go up in a puff of self-inflicted smoke

Welcome, gentle reader, to another Monday morning. We here at The Reg hope your working week is starting well – or at least better than it went for the protagonist of this week's instalment of Who, Me? Our hero this week we'll Regomize as "Nikolai" who spent the turn of the century (there's a phrase to make you feel old) doing …

[Joe W]

Not the cause I expected...

... with cheap PCs. We had some that were really cheap (not inexpensive, there's a marked difference), bougth by our "friends" at the neighbouring institute in a year end spending frenzy. The power supply had an 11.3V rail, among other things. And three (all three that ended up in our lab) PC power supplies had the smoke seals break. One of them really went out with a bang (----> Icon), the others just fizzled.

That was after the admin left who would open each and every PC, measure those power supplies, run two days of memtest and another couple of days of disk exorcising ( keep that typo ;p) ). He was a bit of a character, but sometimes his CDO (same as OCD, but the letters are in the right order!) paid off.

[Korev]

Re: Not the cause I expected...

I once made the magic blue smoke come from an SGI Tezro, not a cheap machine!

I never found out what happened, but it had been fed some of the UK's finest electricity before so I doubt the PSU was set incorrectly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not the cause I expected...

Ouch! Glorious machine too, but the spares situation to try and preserve one is probably a bit on the difficult side.

I still have a thing for the SGI's of the Jurassic Park era. Similar paranoia about how to go about keeping one going. And unlike most other hardware, modding one of those cases to host something else actually IS tech-sacrilege.

[Korev]

which needed help setting up swanky new digs in London, UK.

I think most people reading This Esteemed Organ have the intelligence to know where London is...

[Pascal Monett]

Yeah but no. There is a London, Texas, and you can bet that there is a number of US readers that just might be confused . . .

[Manolo]

And there's a London in Ontario, Canada.

[ColinPa]

London Ontario

Our brand new corporate travel tool had a default London, of London Ontario, instead of London England. I found this out when it said the flight from London to New york was under 3 hours! This was fixed the first day.

[Uncle Slacky]

Re: London Ontario

In the Concorde days this would have been harder to spot.

[ColinPa]

Re: London Ontario

No... we could not afford to go Concorde. We were always in cattle class.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: London Ontario

The cattle used for Japanese Kobe and Wagyu beef are rather high end and my only experience of Concorde was wandering around inside the static display at Duxford which gave a strong impression of luxury cattle class - not much room :-)

[Rich 2]

And as the story refers to the “gray” market, then that confuses things too. But we all know that the Reg can’t spell these days

[Doctor Syntax]

It can be spelled either way. In fact an eighteenth century English dictionary* only gives "gray" for the colour; "grey" applies solely to the greyhound.

* It's title is "An Universal Etymological English Dictionary" and it has a dedication to Frederick, Prince of Wales in Latin.

[Philo T Farnsworth]

Grey or gray, either way.

I've always felt that spelling it "grey" seemed to make it more. . . well. . . grey, somehow.

[A.P. Veening]

"grey" applies solely to the greyhound.

For some reason I associate "grey" with "Greystoke". I have to blame the books by Edgar R. Burroughs (Dutch translation, early editions) I inherited from my grandfather.

[Not Yb]

Right, the books where "a product of their time" will be firmly affixed to any new editions.

[Malcolm Weir]

Took me a long time to associate the place in Cumbria with the Weintraub TV shows (which I knew long before I saw any movies).

[JamesTGrant]

Regarding the colour, I was taught it was GrEy for England, GrAy for America - which stuck with me and I still remember it this way (hope this helps someone!).

Oh - the hound isn’t named after the colour.

[Nameless Dread]

'... there is a number of US readers ... '.

10 out of 10 for grammar! (Singular number.) --->

[ricardian]

London airport:

https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3744849

[Richard 12]

It's very vague.

Do they mean the City of London, the Greater London metropolitan area, or the Bay of London in Orkney?

At least we know it wasn't London in France, Ontario, Arkansas, Ohio...

[Doctor Syntax]

And, of course, the City of Westminster often gets muddled up with the City of London while the Port of London has its own Authority.

[anothercynic]

And the Port of London authority stretches all the way to Teddington where the tidal Thames begins.

[PB90210]

Unless you count the London Stone in Staines (Upon Thames) marking the original tidal reach before the 'damming' of the Thames by the construction of the locks at Teddington

(OK, so that's no longer in its original position)

[The Oncoming Scorn]

The home of Two-Ton Ted from Teddington and he drove the baker's van.

[John Brown (no body)]

I just checked the lyrics and you're right. I've spent my whole life thinking it was "Two-Bun Ted from Teddington and he drove the baker's van.", what with him being in the bakery business :-)

[R Soul]

Perhaps they do. My question is which UK, the one in Asia or the one in South America?

The vile Americanism of placename, bigger placename is too stupid for words. The only time it might be needed is when discussing two or more places with the same name - for instance the Perth in Australia and the real one in Scotland.

[Ace2]

Vile Americanism?

Every year California plays Indiana in [American] football. That’s California University of Pennsylvania versus Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Good luck keeping things straight around there without a few extra hints.

[David 132]

Do you mean Pennsylvania, Gloucestershire? Lovely little village, I’ve driven through it many times en route to Bath, but I never knew it had a university, let alone a hand-egg team.

[RobDog]

Is that California…

…a tiny seaside village in Norfolk that’s between Caister and Hemsby?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Is that California…

No. California's near Falkirk.

[Fr. Ted Crilly]

Re: Is that California…

It do have a bide-a-wee tavern of that name though for a bit of glamour though.

[Paul Cooper]

Re: Is that California…

Or a bus stop in Gomersal, West Yorkshire? It was my daily commute when I had a temporary job before starting University!

[Ace2]

Re: Is that California…

How far is that from The Mumbles?

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds lie the sort of thing you would only find in Gloucester, lovely place, absolutely beautiful, but very odd. Cheese rolling anyone?

[Fr. Ted Crilly]

You need Massive chew sets, it's a rather hard cheese...

[mdubash]

Hard cheese? Where's Terry-Thomas when you need him?

[MJI]

Well there are two Bath unis!

[Return To Sender]

A certain amount of innocent (childish?) fun to had when recommending hotels in the area. "Try the Bodkin or the Manor House, they're in Petty France between Dunkirk and Pennsylvania" (all 4 on the A46...)

[My other car WAS an IAV Stryker]

I will mention the closer-to-me Miami University... of Ohio. (Not the big orange 'U' of University of Miami, Florida.)

[MJI]

Florida

What north of Llandovery?

By the old abbey and the famous green lane?

[MachDiamond]

"I will mention the closer-to-me Miami University... of Ohio. (Not the big orange 'U' of University of Miami, Florida.)"

These days, that sort of naming should be inexcusable. Less than a millisecond of search time will let you know if the name has been used before someplace else for the same sort of thing.

[Fr. Ted Crilly]

What? California in Norfolk - (NOT Virginia) has a university. but it's right near Great Yarmouth which must be said not a centre (sp) of learning

[GuldenNL]

Placename, bigger placename

You're conveniently forgetting counties in the UK.

Or the extra baggage of adding in smaller areas that mean nothing unless you live within 100 yards of them; e.g., Frogmore Edge, Windsor, Berkshire. Ask someone on the High Street about dear Frogmore Edge and you're going to feel like you're speaking Dutch.

[keith_w]

Perth County on Ontario, Canada

[WanderingHaggis]

Finding Oban in the prairies

Discovering Oban in Saskatchewan, Canada really freaked my Scottish -- a fishing port landlocked in the middle of the Prairies.

[PB90210]

Richmond in California was named after the founder's home town of Richmond, Virginia, which was named after Richmond in Surrey because its founder thought the river looked similar. Richmond Palace (Surrey) was built by Henry VII, formerly the Earl of Richmond in Yorkshire. Richmond in Yorkshire was land awarded by William the Conqueror to the Earls of Richmond (Comtes de Richemont) from Richemont in Normandy

[anothercynic]

There's also London, Ontario, which, given this involves a French bank, is not too out of left field (although I'd have expected them to park themselves in Montréal, rather than some speck in Ontario ;-) ).

But let's not be pedantic, Korev ;-)

[FirstTangoInParis]

At $employer, we knew a job req was being released for our site, with a town name also that of several smaller settlements but the best known. We couldn’t understand why the opening didn’t show up on a search, until we eventually found it and noticed that the person who loaded it up set the site name to one of the town namesakes, a village in Shropshire with at most a dozen houses and no tech industry to speak of.

[David 132]

Newport? :)

[MJI]

Newport?

Been to many, found the correct one eventually

[Fr. Ted Crilly]

Re: Newport?

It's a bit of a presumption that any Newport is correct given by experience of Newports.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except possibly Boots Opticians, who have me down as living in London (c600 sq miles), City of London (THE square mile)

[Why Not?]

London Ohio?

London Ontario?

London Finland?

London Christmas Island?

https://londonist.com/london/features/places-named-london-that-aren-t-the-london

Problem with ruling much of the world is that we named half of it too!

[ColinPa]

Coincidence?

30+ years ago I had to go to a customer in the US. The city council office IT department. I arrived on the Friday for a briefing before the weekend work. This had been planned for months, as it meant shutting down their whole system for the weekend to do the upgrade.

I was shown around the machine room, and the brand new tape drives, installed that day. The IT manager was very pleased, because he had replace the IBM drives with someone else's tape drives saving loads of money. We then had to go and admire his brand new, expensive car out in the car park, he had collected it that morning - what a coincidence,

Saturday morning we started work - but the tape drives didn't work - they had not actually been tested connected to the CPU! The guy I was working with phoned their help desk, and reported the problem. Great - an engineer has been dispatched. He doesn't work the weekend, so he'll be there first thing on Monday. My colleague escalated this and got told that out of hours cover was not included in the service contact. My colleague's boss was not around (this was the days before mobile phones).

We had been chatting to the IBM hardware engineer who was taking the opportunity while the system was down to fix a few things. He quietly wandered over to the tape drives did something and the tape drives suddenly were available. The drives had a misconfigured address.

I left on Monday, job done. Later I heard back from my colleague, the IT manager had been given a sweetener- a new car the day the OEM tape were installed. By the time the cost of the out of hours contact was included in the price, the tape drives cost more than IBM's. They were also not as reliable, and usually one out of the four was down.

A month later there was a new IT manager, the ex IT manager was driving around in an old car (working for someone else), there was a bank of bright blue IBM tape drives, and the IBM engineer got a bonus/thank you award.

[Doctor Syntax]

The voltage switch is usually quite near the socket where Nikolai or his colleagues would have to plug in the mains lead. You'd think one of them might have noticed.

[James Anderson]

Given that it was a low budget cheapo machine it's unlikely that they wired the voltage toggle to an external case mounted switch. These things cost pennies and you have to pay for people who know how to use a screwdriver and a soldering iron. So you would need to open the box to find the PSU manufacturer's default toggle.

[Lennart Sorensen]

The voltage switch was ALWAYS accessible on the back of the power supply. Power supply makers don't want you opening the power supply and since there is a convenient bit of metal next to where the power cord goes, that is where the switch went. On the not cheap systems, the power supply was able to switch automatically.

[J. Cook]

Let me spin you a story...

... The year... is 2018, and we've just received some brand-spanking new servers (Cisco UCS C-series) for our enterprise backup application. Two sets were ordered, one for the main data center, and one to act as a replica for our DR site. They were configured identically, and they cost us roughly 50 thousand US kopeks for the pair. (read: NOT. CHEAP.)

The discovery that the hot-swap power supplies for these servers were auto-ranging 208-240 VAC instead of 120-240 VAC was exceptionally annoying, and set back the project by a month or so as 120VAC supplies were ordered.

We've also had times where we will tell our vendors "Our datacenter uses 240 volts- MAKE SURE YOUR GEAR SUPPORTS 240 VOLT POWER" and they go "what?", or they'll just bring stuff in and start plugging it in, which results in the aforementioned snap, crackle, and pop as the power supply craps itself. (Technically, it's 208, but if we tell them that, they get even more confused because even their technical people are the line of "we plug it in and it works, right?" )

[Robert 22]

I remember power supplies with those switches placed to be accessible at the back of the machine, but with the toggle recessed a bit so accidental contact wouldn't move it.

[Ghostman]

I remember power supplies with those switches placed to be accessible at the back of the machine, but with the toggle recessed a bit so accidental contact wouldn't move it.

I had a customer that brought in his computer saying it stopped working, his 14 year old tech help had told him the power supply was out (which he was correct about). He bought a new power supply, installed it, and it wouldn't turn on. He flipped the TOGGLE POWER SWITCH, and it still didn't power up.

Brought it to my shop, told me what happened, checked the power supply and yes, it was working.

Told him no problem, I'll have it working in just a second. Unplugged the power supply, put right hand on top, left hand on the power supply in the back, and di my best impersonation of a faith healer and loudly said "HEAL".

Plugged in the power supply, turned on the computer, and it came right up, well, as fast as an older Pentium would boot up.

The guy was dumbfounded, claimed I was a magician, and would send me all the business I could handle.

Told him no problem, just a typical day at work.

He asked what I had done to get it to work.

Told him that the switch needed to be set for 110, not 240. He asked what switch, I then showed him the RECESSED SLIDE SWITCH that changed the voltage.

I still get customers that tell me he sent them because I can do magic with computers.

[Zibob]

It is a little... Maybe more than a little, on them for not checking the machines over before set up.

I mean just put of curiosity I would have a look inside even if jist to see if that they say it is, it actually is.

[Anonymous Coward]

me too, first thing you when you get a new PC is whip the lid off. Maybe it's an old school thing. I once kicked out of PC world for asking someone to do that!

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in 120 VAC land, so granted, a switch in the wrong config was less spectacular, but it's surprisingly easy to overlook.

I'm sure that once you've blown up a supply or two, you'll get used to checking it (at least for a while).

[John Brown (no body)]

...and by the time of 486s, the dual mode voltage switch was very common. Although having said that, I doubt many people would ever notice if it was in the wrong position, especially on a brand new out of the box device bought for use in a 240V country. On the other hand, no matter the rush to upgrade some entitled pompous twats desktop, no one AT ALL powered one up in the workshop/dev room first, just to check, you know, how get into the BIOS, see if any settings need changing, checking the date/time was correct before doing it in front of a user and possibly looking like a pillock if it doesn't behave as expected?

[MachDiamond]

"The voltage switch is usually quite near the socket where Nikolai or his colleagues would have to plug in the mains lead. You'd think one of them might have noticed."

For what I would expect would be custom configured machines, they should be ready to go straight out of the box. There's also the sub-plot of the ohh so important trader that must have his new shiny before anybody else.

The clear indication I see is the vendor did zero testing of the machines after kitting them out. Another thing I've found handy on commissioning a big batch is to do one from start to finish and make a checklist rather than just setting up a bunch of tables and getting everything plugged in right away. It takes a bit of extra time, but very few people complain if there some overtime in the offing.

Way back on the Wall tour, they blew something like 45 15" woofers when Pink Floyd "tore down the wall" at the Los Angeles show. Luckily JBL was just down the road. I got a call for the big reconing job. The lead person didn't recone one speaker physically, but did a walk through of the steps so each station had a specific task. Unload the box, cut out the old cone, clean the gap and tape it up, scrape off the landings on the frame where the new kit will glue down, double check everything is clean, glue in the new kit and let it dry. Once the glue had set, the centering shims can be removed, leads soldered, a quick test for rub and buzz and glue the dust cap on. That was all left to dry and others re-installed the speakers when they could be handled again. There was so much to do without a lot of time to get it done which is why I got a call from a person I knew that knew a guy that called him looking for people. The sound system needed to be fixed and back on the truck so they could get to the next gig on time.

[Giles C]

Self inflicted

I have probably recounted this tale before but it is a good one and relevant.

Back in the early 2000s compaq made docking stations for laptops these things where huge (standard desktop size for the era) and could take 2 5-1/4” inch drives.

Now occasionally the ejection method for removing the laptop jammed and under the back cover on the dock was a level to manually release the catches.

To get to this lever you also exposed all the connections for the PSU - the thing used a standard desktop power supply - some of you may guess what is coming next.

A director rings up to say his laptop is stuck so we talk him through taking the back cover off (leaving power connected so the manual eject still has the power to operate. We talk him through the process to use the lever to manually eject, at which point there is a band that can be heard across our office. Followed by a rather sheepish I think that was the wrong lever.

Yes you guessed it instead of moving the white lever, he moved the one on the back of the PSU from 240 to 110v input.

Oops

[heyrick]

Re: Self inflicted

That's why you always shutdown and unplug before fiddling.

(lesson learned the hard way, icon appropriate, but in my defence I was about ten...)

[MachDiamond]

Re: Self inflicted

"That's why you always shutdown and unplug before fiddling."

In this case, it's the assumption that the person you are trying to walk through the process isn't a complete train wreck. There shouldn't be a requirement to disconnect the mains before un-docking a laptop. We too often overestimate the technical competence of other people when doing things we'd find as simple as breathing.

[Gene Cash]

Re: Self inflicted

Ugh...

Old TRS-80s had a reset button on the back, next to an I/O port which was the printed circuit traces extended to a bare edge.

These traces went directly into the Z-80, memory, and other expensive sensitive bits... without any sort of buffer or other protection. This was the '80s when chips were very static-sensitive indeed.

Needless to say, I destroyed my brand new machine fumbling blindly for the reset. This is how I found out the warranty replacement came out of the individual Radio Shack store's account, and dinged the manager directly.

Edit: since this didn't have buffers, it was very sensitive to RFI as well, when you actually put a ribbon cable on it to the "expansion interface" box that supported floppies and a printer. Lots of folks put their 5-1/4 drives (if they were lucky/rich enough) in a frypan or other ad-hoc RFI shielding.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nikolai was either nor clever nor experienced enough to check the voltage switch? Hardly the bosses fault.

[doublelayer]

Nikolai wasn't the only person to not check the switch. From the article, at least two more people did the same thing, and those at least two more people covered a total of eleven machines to Nikolai's one. Also, that kind of thing is not one that a lot of people have to consider unless they've already been warned about it. I saw where this was going, but mostly because I've heard the same story in other articles. I have seen relatively few power supplies that needed manual switching, and all of those were already switched correctly, so I don't think this was common knowledge at the time.

On another topic, I've noticed that all those stories have involved devices attached to 230(+-) V power while set to 120 V. Is the damage similarly picturesque if it's set to 240 V and plugged into 120 V and the difference is mostly due to 230 V being the more common voltage from readers of this site?

[cyberdemon]

> Is the damage similarly picturesque if it's set to 240 V and plugged into 120 V

Unlikely to have any effect, as the PSU would not start up until it has sufficient voltage on its input stage.

Worst case would be that the 3.3V and 5V rails power up, while the 12V rail has maybe 8V instead. I suppose in this scenario a HDD might fail to spin up properly and have a "head crash". So still potentially catastrophic for some hardware, but unlikely to damage most hardware. I think ATX mandates a "Power Good" flag to prevent startup before the power rails are at the expected voltage.

Whereas with the switch in the wrong position at 240V, then the electrolytic bulk capacitors and front-end voltage regulators end up with twice the voltage they were expecting, and explode, violently. With a -really- old power supply, the fried voltage regulators could "fail short", and pass 30V or more along to the supply rails and fry every component in the machine. But on anything since the 80s the exploding part is on the other side of a high-frequency transformer, driven by electronically "chopped" DC. An isolated SMPS can't "fail short", because the transformer can't pass DC. If the fuse doesn't blow then the transformer would burn out, with potentially lots of smoke and/or flames, but the other PC components -should- be fine, assuming your house isn't on fire at this point.

----> safety goggles required if you want to test this on a junk computer

Schematic of a pretty awful PSU of this vintage that I found on an image search - note the 110/240V switch, and the lack of any precise regulation on the 12V and 5V rails!

The 110V/240V switch connects one leg of the AC to the middle of the bulk capacitor (2 capacitors stacked in series), which effectively doubles the voltage. I'm simultaneously baffled, impressed and horrified at how this works.

[I could be a dog really]

Re: > Is the damage similarly picturesque if it's set to 240 V and plugged into 120 V

I'm simultaneously baffled, impressed and horrified at how this works

Why ? Why ? and Why ?

You shouldn't be baffled. As you point out, the switch simply changes from a full-wave rectifier in 240V mode, and a half-wave voltage doubler in 120V mode.

Impressed. Well, it is an elegant setup - including arranging to take equal power from what are effectively + and - rails so that the rectifier/capacitor arrangement works well in either case.

Horrified. Why, the whole front end is live - in 240V mode (and plugged into a UK 240V supply) there's around 340V across the caps, it'll be a bit lower on 230V, and a bit lower still on a US 110V supply. But either way, it's a lethal voltage, DC, with storage in caps to catch the unwary.

Most of the control circuitry is also live. It's only when you get to the low voltage output side, which is referenced to PE (protective earth) that you get "safe" voltages. That's why the schematic is littered with "!" signs.

[cyberdemon]

Re: > Is the damage similarly picturesque if it's set to 240 V and plugged into 120 V

Baffled no more, since you gave me the proper name for the circuit so I could look it up, cheers.

I was baffled/horrified because it looked as if the electrolytic capacitors could end up in negative bias, with AC being placed directly on one terminal, but the diodes block that

Also I remain horrified at the "peak factor" of these rectifier-fronted power supplies.. All the current comes in surges at the peak of the mains waveform.

Certain smart meters apparently only sample at the peak, with a peak-hold circuit, which assumes a sinusoidal load current, and they would over-read by a factor of 6 in some cases

I hope that more modern meters have fixed this, but I still hear of some people getting ridiculously high bills due to having a lot of passive-PFC electronic equipment

[Robert 22]

Re: > Is the damage similarly picturesque if it's set to 240 V and plugged into 120 V

I"'m simultaneously baffled, impressed and horrified at how this works"

Voltage doublers were used in cheap North American vacuum tube TV sets. Isolation transformers were used by repairmen (at least the wiser ones) to reduce the dangers of electrical shock.

It might be hard to believe this, but cheap vacuum tube consumer electronics usually worked directly off the AC line. The tube filaments would be wired in series to run off the line voltage. Moreover, older houses didn't have (as far as I recall) polarized plugs, so it was quite easy to end up with a live chassis. Some people called this stuff "shock boxes."

Computer power supplies are quite different since transformers are used in the switchning power supply circuits to provide isolation between the line power and the DC outputs.

[MachDiamond]

Re: > Is the damage similarly picturesque if it's set to 240 V and plugged into 120 V

"I think ATX mandates a "Power Good" flag to prevent startup before the power rails are at the expected voltage."

The version with the 24pin connector has a 'power good' signal. The 20 pin version doesn't.

[David Hicklin]

I had a 2nd hand valve oscilloscope that also came with a 120/240 volt switch but it was not at all clear looking at it in which position which voltage was selected (it was a rotate by screwdriver job).

Naturally I got the wrong setting and as treated to a lightening show as the HT arced across to the case. Amazingly it worked fine once I had replaced underwear and reset the switch.

[Paul Cooper]

Been there, done that! We bought two new Disc drives for our Vaxstations (a whole Gigabyte, no less!), plugged them in and saw the magic blue smoke escaping, accompanied by appropriate sound effects! Exactly the same situation - they had been supplied set to 120V rather than 240V. Fortunately, the supplier acknowledged it was their mistake and replaced them! And while not a fly-by-night outfit, they had got the contract on the basis of being cheaper than DEC.

[toejam++]

I was a field installation tech for a network appliance company back around the century mark. The boxes I installed were just fancy PCs running an embedded version of *nix. And they used standard ATX power supplies.

I fly down to an install one day for a customer and I'm presented with computer racks with PDUs with C13 connectors. First question I ask is: what voltage are these? The on-site guys start to look at each other in a panic. Nobody is sure. One guy suspects that it is 120V. So I leave the voltage switch on the PSU in the 120V position and plug it in. *POP*

I do not want to spend the night while a replacement unit is shipped overnight since I didn't bring a change of clothes. So I call the boss up and explain the situation. I then ask if it is okay if these guys drive me to the nearest Fry's Electronics so I can pick up a replacement PSU. I'm given the okay and an hour later the box is fixed, voltage selector is set to 240V, and it is humming along swimmingly.

After that, I brought along a simple voltage tester that would indicate 120V or 240V. Well, at least until the 9/11 attacks. The TSA viewed the tester as a potential stabbing weapon, so into the trash it went when I didn't feel like checking-in my laptop case. Luckily, the company moved to auto-sensing PSUs shortly after.

[[e-mail]]

The company I worked for used data aquisition system where half of the components used 110 volts and the other half 230 volts. Inside the rack, there were usually a few leads with C13 connectors floating around.

One day, I installed a new disk drive, and after powering up, I thought the fan was quite noisy. 10 seconds later, the capacitors on the primary side of the powere supply exploded with a loud bang.

Fortunately, the capacitor casing had burst on the foreseen weak point (no ribbons of wet aluminium foil flying around).

After everything had cooled down I sealed the capacitors with hot melt glue and the PSU worked fine (with the correct input voltage) till I received a replacement.

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Not blown board, just one chip

I remember our then supplier of computer equipment for our image processing systems installing a 80287 math co-processor for our 12 MHz 80286 PC-AT compatible machine (the faster of the two machines we were using at the time). That worked fine for a brief while, until it didn't, and I could smell something fishy (and I don't mean the content of Baldrick's apple crumble). I opened the case, and sure enough, the 80287 chip was not looking happy, with a slight bulge and discoloration of the housing. On closer inspection, the part was labelled 80287 - 10. I checked the other, 8 MHz machine, and it had a co-processor labelled 80287 - 8. I checked some data sheets, and indeed we had been supplied with the cheaper 10 MHz version. It apparently did not like being overclocked. The company claimed I was wrong, but did supply a new 12 MHz one free of charge.

Future machines were sourced elsewhere. Can't think why.

[David 132]

Re: Not blown board, just one chip

Ah, the days when 2MHz counted as “overclocking”.

Nowadays it’s a tiny rounding error. Your new 3.8GHz machine runs in your motherboard at 3.798GHz - would you notice, or care?

[lglethal]

Re: Not blown board, just one chip

Don't think of it in absolute terms, think of it in percentage! Overclocking a modern cup by 20%, as in this story, is also unlikely to end favourably in the long run.

Although I do find modern chips are far more resilient and will simply dump you back to the bios with a message that overclocking failed. And leave you to our it at a more reasonable level...

[David 132]

Re: Not blown board, just one chip

True. My first foray into overclocking was fiddling with the jumpers on my Pentium motherboard to change the core speed from 75MHz up to the heady heights of first 90, then - emboldened - 100MHz. A whole 25MHz, or, yes, 33%.

As a bonus that tweak also boosted the PCI clock from 25 up to the correct 33MHz, so it was doubly worthwhile!

[Anonymous Coward]

Free Vending

Nothing to do with power supply switches (though I have seen the genie escape on several occasions) but the comment regarding pre-loaded vending cards brought back a couple of memories.

• When I first started working (back in the 1970's) office and factory hot drinks vending machines needed money; that seemed quite normal until (in the early 1980's) I moved into the oil&gas sector where all office machines were set to free vend. It now seems strange to think of staff having to pay for tea and coffee at work.

• One company I worked at, when I started there, had a free staff canteen - everyone on-site was entitled to a free 2/3 course lunch (and it was good food, as well). It wasn't uncommon for contractors and suppliers to favour late morning visits to the offices :). A few years into the scheme and a few staff had started to moan that they couldn't always get their favourite meal on some days. They were told that, with meals being free, they couldn't really complain, so they decided to demand the right to complain. It reached senior management who were pressured into making it possible - by making the canteen no longer free. Needless to say, the moaners were not popular with the rest of the staff (the far greater majority) who now had to pay for their lunches. (I was back in the office several years later and, by then, payment was by staff cards, and staff received a monthly pre-load that covered a basic lunch each day. Contractors and visitors had to load their own cards.)

[Ace2]

Re: Free Vending

When Dell was in the process of absorbing EMC, there was a week when we got two email broadcasts:

1) Dell was going to build the finest tech workforce around by hiring all of the best people.

2) It was unfair for EMC sites to get free coffee so from now on we would have to pay for it.

Our VP was in town for an all-hands. To his credit, he didn’t even start his intro spiel before saying “Oh and ignore that stupid coffee memo, I’m taking care of it.”

[Antron Argaiv]

Re: Free Vending

Before Dell and EMC, there was my alma mater, Data General. NIce place to work, good people, bright orange carpet (they had got a deal when building the facility). Nevertheless, there was a cafeteria/canteen (pay), which served, among other things, coffee.

Now, as we all know, engineers run on coffee. We got tired of paying for it (and walking down to the cafeteria to get it), so a group of us got together and bought an inexpensive drip coffee maker to keep in our office area. I managed the thing, collected $1/week (for all you can drink, you finish the pot, you make a new one) from all members, and took care of getting coffee and filters. It was at this stage that I realised that coffee was incredibly inexpensive...and that the cafeteria was making a healthy profit on morning coffee. Others came to the same conclusion, and our membership increased.

All good things must come to an end, though, and one day, we were informed that Security considered our coffee maker a fire hazard. What to do? Well, by this time, our membership included several of the folks in line management, so we discussed this with them, and agreed that if the coffee maker was on a timer, it would only be on when someone was around to make sure it didn't burst into flames, and all would be safe. Security was informed, and magically, the problem went away. Funny thing, that.

// no coffee cup icon?

[R Soul]

Re: Free Vending

All good things must come to an end, though, and one day, we were informed that Security considered our coffee maker a fire hazard. .... Security was informed, and magically, the problem went away.

This shows a distinct lack of imagination. You could have called the coffee maker the engineering department's mission critical aromatic liquid dispensing tool or something along those lines. That should have been enough to keep the company's elfin safety bozos at bay.

Something similar happened at a former place of work. Management decreed there couldn't be any non company-supplied electrical devices in the building. The safety goons tried to confiscate our shared fridge that had been used for years to cool all sorts of tasty beverages. They got told to fuck off. It wasn't a fridge y'see. It was an electromagnetically, thermally insulated test chamber - and vitally important for the effective running of the department.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Free Vending

I worked in a place that had an in-house technical library. As a consequence we were never allowed to buy a technical book, it had to be ordered through the library with a delay of many months before it showed up.

User manuals, on the other hand, could be freely purchased. We rarely had to order books, but we bought many, many, user manuals.

[David 132]

Re: Free Vending

An alternative solution to the coffee-maker problem would have been to tell Security that they were welcome to help themselves to a free cup when on night patrol. Which, let’s be realistic, they were probably already doing anyway, but making it “sanctioned” would also have brought them on-side.

I speak from my experience of working with our onsite security teams at my former-former employer in Wiltshire… it was amazing how many little regulatory impediments could be magicked away with a few bottles of beer or a personal PC upgrade or two. It got to the point where I’d walk in through the entrance lobby and the goon on duty would sternly say “David! A word?” and as everyone else around would blanch and wonder what the heck I’d done, the Security chap would furtively pass a bottle of wine or his son’s brokenPlaystation out from under his desk, for repair. Either that or they’d want me to man the lobby for them for a few mins while they went off for a smoko :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Free Vending

>" It wasn't a fridge y'see. It was an electromagnetically, thermally insulated test chamber"

I think I might have let them take the fridge, then ordered something like a Thermotron test chamber (on the company dime). For those that don't know, that's one brand of high end temperature chamber, available in different sizes and temp ranges. They are considerably more expensive than your typical refrigerator, of course.

Our techs were known to fast cool their beverages at the start of shift by tossing them in the -40° chamber for a few minutes. Don't forget to remove in time!

[David 132]

Re: Free Vending

Thermotron test chamber [...] Our techs were known to fast cool their beverages at the start of shift by tossing them in the -40° chamber for a few minutes.

Elsewhere in Science, cutting-edge research uses far more esoteric and expensive cooling systems that can reach temperatures in the single-digit Kelvin range, in an ongoing - and so far, fruitless - quest to make mass-market US "beers" drinkable. Representatives from Anheuser-Busch refused to comment.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Free Vending

"Representatives from Anheuser-Busch refused to comment."

This must have been some time ago. They've been AB inbev for a while now. I've learned my lesson. A brand I might have enjoyed someplace else in the world isn't going to be authentic at $6.99/6, but will be a licensed product sold by AB InBev and complete shite.

[Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch]

RFC 2324

A proper implementation of HTCPCP should have had 420 On Fire as well as 418 I'm a Teapot error states, perhaps?

[David Hicklin]

Re: Free Vending

Mid 1980's UK, Engineering company I was working a had a tea/coffee "swindle" that we put money into and one of the secretaries (they still existed then!) would but the stuff and milk etc, it gave us a nice cuppa the only downside if the milk got low she just watered it down enough to make it go round!

In comes a new MD who was all "image".

Nice shiny vending machines cam in, Kettles, hot water urn, tea/coffee schemes got banned, no more unsightly mugs and stuff lying around the office....it was not popular. In the engineering offices they emptied out a filing cabinet and installed their kettle inside it until it started to rust through.

[The other JJ]

Re: Free Vending

Was the issue that the new machines required payment or that they invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea? I remember them from the 1970s/80s.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Free Vending

Thumbs-up for the HHGTTG reference

[Edge Case]

Re: Free Vending

Thumbs down for not crediting it in the first place?

[MachDiamond]

Re: Free Vending

"Thumbs down for not crediting it in the first place?"

Sorry, mate. Understanding the references is an exercise left for the student. I was surprised so many got the Alice's Restaurant reference so fast under another topic. Then again, it should be in the syllabus.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Free Vending

"our membership included several of the folks in line management, so we discussed this with them, and agreed that if the coffee maker was on a timer, it would only be on when someone was around to make sure it didn't burst into flames, and all would be safe."

When I was in high school, some friends and I skived off to go skiing. Far less crowded and cheaper to go mid-week. For cover we took the school's utility teacher/campus supervisor who was also the leader of the ski club. Jeff was a cool guy and smoothed over the fact that we weren't at school that day in exchange for a free lift ticket.

[Alien Doctor 1.1]

Re: Free Vending

I still fondly (?) remember in the very early 80's interning as a night shift operator as part of my COBOL course at uni. It was a large finance house in Bristol (the original and best) with a fantastic Burroughs mainframe setup including a couple of B5900's and a B7900, punch cards, tapes, disk packs and associated sound-proofed high speed printers. There were two permanent onsite engineers that fixed down to component level.

There was an onsite restaurant and we were all, staff and interns, issued with 25pence a day Luncheon Vouchers. I seem to remember preferring school dinners to the slop that 25p could buy.

Aside: eventually the two engineers were sucked into Unisys after the Sperry merger, where, a couple of years after my internship, I ended up at Unisys working with those two geniuses.

[heyrick]

Re: Free Vending

"It now seems strange to think of staff having to pay for tea and coffee at work."

<looks directly behind me>

I bring my own tea in a thermos. They put the price up (€0,35, who has fives? the machine gives change when it feels like it) and damn near halved the cup size. There isn't even a "just fill the rest with hot water" option.

[Anonymous Coward]

Too, too common an issue

I was invited to the unveiling of the very first Macintosh to be seen in Christchurch (The NZ one, not Dorset).

Great song and dance. "Have a beer and watch the unboxing".

An Apple employee and a staff member from the local distributor carefully unboxed, unwrapped and plugged it in. Much Oooing and Aaahing.

"Now, we'll turn the power on, and Mac will introduce itself."

Went with a bang. 110V/230V - who cares?

At least the beer was good.

[mike.dee]

Re: Too, too common an issue

To be honest, some Apple II and early Macintosh had exploding power supplies even if set at 220V.

The RIFA capacitors had a tendecy to go bang easily. Unfortunately they were ubiquitous.

[F. Frederick Skitty]

Re: Too, too common an issue

It inspired the classic Blue Oyster Cult track, "Don't Fear The Rifa".

[David 132]

Re: Too, too common an issue

Get out. Kindly leave the stage. And take your omitted mëtal ümlaut with you.

[AlanSh]

Back in 1982...

I imported the original Compaq luggable computer from the USA before they set up a UK franchise. I had to change the P/S from 110v to 230 - and guess what, it was just a switch inside the P/S. So, easy peasy. And a lovely machine too - very tough, but heavy. One winter I got stuck and needed to get the the bottom of a hill carrying it in it's nylon case. So, I just sat on it and sledded down the hill. Fun days!

Alan

[Michael Kean]

Re: Back in 1982...

I had a Sanyo luggable. An XT with colour CGA monitor and dual 5¼" drives.

It didn't like me trying to add an MFM hard drive. Was a great machine until then.

[AceRimmer1980]

Re: Snap, crackle, and pop

I once plugged a 486 chip into a motherboard, the wrong way round. On powerup, it blew apart spectacularly.

The motherboard still worked afterwards.

[PRR]

Re: Snap, crackle, and pop

> I once plugged a 486 chip into a motherboard, the wrong way round. On powerup, it blew apart spectacularly. The motherboard still worked afterwards.

I once plugged a V-30 (hotrod 8088) into a 8088 socket. Backward. IT GOT HOT!!!

Bizarrely, when I put it right, it worked fine for years.

[Jason Bloomberg]

Re: Snap, crackle, and pop

I fitted a quartz windowed eprom backwards once and that worked as a nice solid-state lightbulb as the leg to silicon wires glowed under the strain. For quite a while as well, longer than we could be bothered waiting for it to expire with a bang. And it still worked when rotated though it got its legs pulled off and went in the bin afterwards to prevent reuse.

The first was an accident. The second may one day be considered a crime against silicon.

[JamesTGrant]

Re: Snap, crackle, and pop

It’s been about a billion years but I’m still very impressed by keyed connectors. Been saved a few times despite being *absolutely sure* I was connecting the correct orientation…

[David 132]

Re: Snap, crackle, and pop

I have an old friend (hi WR!) who has an uncanny ability to destroy PC hardware. He’s very useful for user testing.

One day years ago, I was at his house and we were upgrading his PC. While I put the drives into their mounting cage, I delegated the installation of the DDR2 RAM to him. The modules are keyed so there’s no possible way it can go wrong, right?

First time I have ever seen a DIMM actually glowing on its socket contact pads, as a thin wisp of magic smoke curled upwards.

No, I still have no idea how he managed it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps the boss was trying to cut their leccy costs too. I know that's not how voltage works, but someone at my school didn't when he tried flipping that switch back in the day with the same end result. He wasn't the sharpest tool. He's now a finance boss. :-D

[DanielsLateToTheParty]

That mention of school reminds me of a day in electronics class when a friend was trying to power up a 555 timer. He plugged it into a breadboard, and the breadboard to an (analogue) power supply, then turned the knob up to 5V but the dial was around 1 instead and so cranked it up more. He got as far as mumbling "this won't go above 2.5" when the chip popped and blew a segment of black plastic into the ceiling. He'd been reading amps instead of volts of course. The ceiling had a crater. Amazingly the silicon chip was lying exposed and we could see it with a magnifying glass, albeit with a chunk missing.

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember one of my fellow students sticking two drawing compasses into the wall outlet, thinking it would somehow speed up the clock and we would get out earlier.

Cue large bang and smoke, and an embarrassed face as everyone turned to look. Amazingly, he did not get shocked.

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly, did this Darwin Award candidate's efforts get everyone out of class early?

[NXM]

Mains vs 12v

I used to make sealed led light tubes for illuminating water features. They used a decent amount of current so the most convenient cable to use which fitted through the cable gland on the end of the tube was round blue/brown mains cable, although the kit was always supplied with a transformer.

Some bright sparky decided to wire it directly to the mains, resulting in spectacular destruction (and a potentially lethal water feature). I did not offer a free replacement.

[Bebu]

"usual black-and-white Gateway boxes"

The cow hide livery brings back memories. Gateway was a bit like the Dell of its day. Never actually had to deal with the hardware but it was ubiquitous in corporate environments (at least all those not actually all in IBM.)

I vaguely recall some of their components and plugs or sockets weren't exactly standard - power supplies? Always great for the cause of djinn liberation. ;)

Around the same time finance/procurement requiring the cheapest tender for two dozen latest and greatest Pentium 4 boxes - the ones with eye wateringly expensive rdram - with decent Adaptec SCSI controller and 10k rpm disks - what could go wrong? A lot but the killer was the optimistically rated power supplies that were just enough for the system to work for a random period - hours to weeks - before crashing.

A few hundred bucks saving on tens of thousands. Sadly the unreliability meant the cluster was abandoned by users long before the problem was diagnosed.

[Pascal Monett]

Re: "usual black-and-white Gateway boxes"

Ah, power supplies.

Even today, when upgrading a PC I systematically search for a PSU that is at least 50% more powerful than the load I expect to have.

I have long since learned that, if a PSU is rated for 600W, it will give you 500W without too much trouble, in a pinch, for a while, but if you load it more, you will end up with a dead PSU sooner or later.

[JamesTGrant]

Re: "usual black-and-white Gateway boxes"

Indeed - recentish ‘bronze/silver/gold’ ratings have really helped. Ie - if not rated, expect it to be crapulous and fail in days or weeks. Bronze is rated at 82% efficiency - which is pretty ok - 500W advertised can power 400W continuously without cooking itself.

[Spazturtle]

Re: "usual black-and-white Gateway boxes"

80 Plus is a terrible rating these days which is easy to cheat and no longer gives any guarantees of quality.

The Cybenetics rating system is the one you want to look at.

Top level 80 Plus requires 90% efficiency of 12V at 100% load and nothing else.

Top level Cybernetics requires 93% efficiency of 12V from 2% to 100%, a power factor of ≥0.985, a efficiency of 79% for 5V and a standby power draw of <0.10W. Cybenetics also test the PSU from hot by putting it under 100W load for 20 mins before the test to defeat some cheats and check that the ripples stay within spec.

[BOFH in Training]

Re: "usual black-and-white Gateway boxes"

I know Dell (at least as of about a year ago) still used proprietary PSUs and even motherboards (some look like standard ATX stuff, but with power pins set differently) at least for some models.

[J. Cook]

Re: "usual black-and-white Gateway boxes"

Yup. it's a little known standard called BTX. Dell and Gateway (at least until they went away) used that form factor for most of the Pentium 4 builds. (Another case of "Blame Intel"...)

Apple liked to do something similar with their LaserWriters waaaay back in the late 80's and early 90's- it used a normal Canon-type print engine, but Apple flipped the VCC and ground pins for the formatter, meaning you had to buy their replacement parts instead of ones that would work in the same type engine.

[David 132]

Re: "usual black-and-white Gateway boxes"

BTX was actually a good form-factor, but struggled to gain traction because the mass market was full-in in ATX by then. BTX solved a lot of the airflow & cooling problems inherent in ATX, the older standard being conceived in an era before multi-hundred-watt GPUs. Mind you, once CPUs calmed down a bit from the insanity of the Pentium 4’s power requirements, some of that pain went away, which further undermined the case for BTX.

Source: I know the guy who co-designed the BTX standard.

[StudeJeff]

Re: "usual black-and-white Gateway boxes"

In a book I was reading the main character described breaking into a server room, which he described as being full of "cowbox Pentiums". I have to admit it took me a minute to get it, but once I did I about died laughing.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: "usual black-and-white Gateway boxes"

"eye wateringly expensive rdram"

Ah yes, the ones that required "blanks" be installed in the unused slots. I only ever came across it once "in the field". A university. No, not a maths or physics lab. The main office complex where the Vice Chancellor, Bursar etc hang out and being used by office staff for, well, general office tasks. They wanted a quote to upgrade the RAM. By this time, it was rarer than hens teeth and the price we ended up quoting them was more than them just buying faster, more more current PCs with "normal", but faster DIMMs :-))

[Spazturtle]

Re: "usual black-and-white Gateway boxes"

Could do with brining back blanks.

Motherboards with 4 DDR5 slots can't reach anywhere near the clock speeds that ones with only 2 can due to the added reflections from 2 spare slots. And if you try populating all 4 slots the memory controller on the CPU starts crying and drops to half speed.

[ComicalEngineer]

In the days when my job at a university (late 80s) involved coding in Fortran 77 and an IBM PC cost the same as a new small hatchback.... we found out that BBC Basic is remarkably similar to F77, similar enough that we could write our fairly complicated mathematic routines on a BBC and test them out before porting them onto the IBM PC that three of us shared, and was always in demand. Now working for a university had it's advantages, one being that buying computer equipment received an Education Discount from certain suppliers. Thus, I purchased my own BBC Master 128 and green screen monitor at a healthy discount (25% IIRC).

The Master wasn't the most convenient shape to sit a monitor on and so I purchased a "Viglen kit" wich consisted of a new main box with a flat top big enough for the monitor, and a separate keyboard on a short (about 2'6") cable. The Viglen box also had sufficient space for two 5.25" floppies making it a much better fit for my digs. The Viglen kit supplier said that they would install it for free and so I duly took it in to the shop.

Whilst taking to the technician doing the work, I was shown a BBC B which had been in for repair. If anyone remembers BBCs, there were several ports including a four channel analogue input port at the rear. The owner of this particlar BBC had decided to use the machine as an oscilloscope - no problem as the Beeb could do this. Only he connected the analogue port (which is 1.8V) direct to the 220V mains supply....

Needless to say there was a loud bang and the machine stopped working. On receiving the machine, the tech opened it up to find the top of the A-D converter chip had blown off and a matching dent on the inside of the casing. More in hope than expectation a new A-D chop was ordered and soldered in (you could do things like that with a Beeb).

Switching the repaired machine back on, it worked perfectly, the A-D chip having acted as a fuse.

How I miss my BBC.

[Paul Herber]

And that is what you pay your licence fee for!

[David 132]

Ah yes, those BBC B’s and Masters were built like tanks… necessary, given that they were expected to be used by grubby little schoolkids.

My own alma mater had a room full of them, closely guarded by Mr Higgins the maths/computer teacher.

One lunchtime I was messing around with a giant horseshoe magnet that a friend had brought in, and found that it made lovely swirly psychedelic patterns when applied to the screen of the Microvitec Cub RGB monitors.

I was told subsequently by another friend who was in the post-lunch Computing class that the still-distorted displays caused much muttering and beard-scratching from Mr Higgins. Fortunately, they degaussed and resolved themselves before too long, so I don’t feel excessively guilty, but Mr Higgins, if you’re reading this after 30+ years… sorry!

[druck]

The Master wasn't the most convenient shape to sit a monitor on and so I purchased a "Viglen kit" wich consisted of a new main box with a flat top big enough for the monitor, and a separate keyboard on a short (about 2'6") cable.

That must have been before the Master Compact came out, which was a 3 box system out of the box, so to speak.

[Ben Boyle]

Oooof

My sister once called me shortly after finding that switch on a PC I'd bought set up for her only a couple of weeks before. If only she'd called me before she idly flipped it, or while the machine was powered down... Thankfully it was an older model Dell desktop that I'd acquired at auction to keep her going, but she sure as hell paid for the replacement.

Curiosity, thou art a fickle mistress!

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: Oooof

Spent the morning rebuilding a PSU for offshore work, just about finished & we went to lunch, well it was Friday so that meant PUB!

Came back, powered up *BANG*,*FLASH* & escape of the magic smoke. All of which sobered me up fairly quickly.

Whoops it was still set for oil rigs 110V.

I didn't get to rebuild it (again), later that extremely wet afternoon I was told I was going to (I forget which) France for a OEM positioning equipment course or Scotland for the offshore fire fighting course at Montrose.

[Rick594]

Sibling Rivalry

We had 5 foster children and they all had their own computers, until one of them discovered the little 110/220 switch on the back of the power supply of his siblings computers.

He denied all knowledge, but seeing as his was the only computer that was still working it was a bit of a giveaway. He was banned from using his computer until the others PSU's were renewed.

[Steve Hersey]

I did that to a Sun Ultra One station once...

About 25 years ago, my US employer provided weather satellite instruments to the European Space Agency, and I did on site ground support, which included setting up the instrument test console; a Sun Ultra One if recollection serves me. The test control room was wired for 220V 50 Hz, and after procuring the relevant power cords with Schukosteckers, I connected the Sun monitor to the mains - having first verified that it was automatically dual-voltage agile, and didn't require a switch.

Alas, I then neglected to verify that the CPU was ALSO auto-adaptive. (The nameplate said 105-230V AC, 50/60 Hz - we checked that before shipping it - so we were good, right?). Plugged it in, flipped the switch, and POP! Oops. Dead, smelly PSU. The CPU DID have a selector switch. which was, of course, still set to 110V.

Fortunately, I had good relations with the local techs, and even more fortunately, the PSU was a standard PC type. We made a quick trip to the local Mega store, where I bought a replacement and swapped it in. Mission rescued. (I think we first temporarily pillaged an idle Sun workstation for its PSU so I could get the console up and running, verifying that the rest of the station hadn't died as well.)

Never made THAT mistake again.

Ironically, some of the other instrument contractors were using 110V-only computing gear, and had a separate AC supply through a stepdown transformer. Which I didn't use, since the Sun station was dual-voltage capable.

[chivo243]

Beige Box

When I broke onto the scene, back before the turn of the century(never thought I'd use that phrase) I first encountered the Beige Box. No two alike on the inside(one had 32mb of RAM!!), running win95, prone to losing the magic smoke randomly, with out rhyme or reason. I put it down to crappy PSUs and dirty power with lots of spikes.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Beige Box

"I put it down to crappy PSUs and dirty power with lots of spikes."

Yeah, we went through a batch of PSUs like that. No issues whatsoever in production or with all but one of our customer sites. At that one site, they were blowing at least one PSU per week. Some serious testing and monitoring went on and it turned out the PSUs were in spec, if only just barely, but the site itself had especially dirty power to a couple of buildings. Technically, we were " in the right", it's was their dirty power causing the issues with our "in spec" PSUs, but we still replaced them all with ones a bit "more" in spec.

[David 132]

Re: Beige Box

A former colleague and old friend of mine loves to relate a war-story from his time as a 2nd-level field service engineer for a large computer company back in the early 80s. I relay it now; any inaccuracies are probably mine, and I apologise in advance.

The company had supplied some 386 - possibly, Multibus - based server systems to a customer near Oxford who ran their own small-scale nuclear pile for research purposes (well, that narrows it down a bit doesn't it? Rhymes with "tarwell"...).

The customer complaint was that every evening, regular as clockwork, these new systems would crash.

After weeks of back-and-forth, with the first-level engineer replacing PSU after PSU to no avail, my friend was called in to investigate. He signed into the site late in the afternoon, and watched the systems.

Power to the campus was provided by the aforementioned nuclear pile. On one wall of the office, there was a 7-segment readout that showed the voltage output being supplied to the building - 240V, or thereabouts within that range.

5 o'clock came and went. All the servers were still running happily.

The secretary switched off her electric typewriter and 5-bar electric fire. Other workers in the building switched off their bench supplies and work lights and other accessories.

As this happened, my friend watched as the voltage readout slowly ticked upwards... 245... 250...260...300...

When it hit around 320V, the server keeled over with an unpleasant sound.

Yes, the nuclear pile had insufficient limiting on its output; without a load being present, it ran higher and higher, a shortcoming that until then had gone unnoticed!

I have chosen the most appropriate icon -->

[RobDog]

Re: Beige Box

We had those. The only part they had in common was the Elonex badge.

[StudeJeff]

Things that go BANG and let the magic smoke out.

Back around the turn of the century I was working at a plant that refurbished used equipment for IBM. One of the devices I worked on was an AIX box… looked like a PC, that ran a tape library.

We had two of the ones I’d worked on returned as defective. Investigation showed one had a blown power supply, the other a smoked motherboard… or planar in IBM speak.

These boxes had that same voltage switch, in the tape rack they ran at 220v, but we’d switch them to 110 to work on them.

The instructions for the CE specified that he check that switch as part of the installation process to make sure it was set at 220v. He failed to do so, causing the damage.

The CE thought he could blame us… ME... for it, but I was able to prove it was because he didn’t follow his procedure.

I took it upon myself to write a new step into our work instructions, that once testing is complete switch the power supply back to 220v. I’m pretty sure that’s the first thing that I ever wrote that went into a work instruction.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Things that go BANG and let the magic smoke out.

"motherboard… or planar in IBM speak."

Oh, is THAT where that term comes from? Lenovo still use that term, so I guess they inherited it when they bought IBMs PC division.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Things that go BANG and let the magic smoke out.

Well, even if it was in his work order, it was you and your guys who were switching them over and (I assume very rarely) forgetting to switch them back. So he was told to check the switch as part of procedure and 99% of them were set correctly, so "habit" kicks in. I think blame deserved to be shared in this case as your dept should not have forgotten to switch them back and he should not have forgotten to check (your work!).

[jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid]

Bargain hunting

Not sure you can blame bargain hunting for ending up with manually switched PSUs. I remember manually switched PSUs being standard even on expensive kit. Auto switching kit seemed an exotic luxury when it first came in. For years in the UK or was unusual enough to have to check the labelling for the mysterious "110-240v" words, then checking it again and maybe one more time before actually plugging it in. My only doubt is precisely when this era was...

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Bargain hunting

Generally, if you bought kit in the UK, for use in the UK, from a UK supplier, the switch was ALWAYS set correctly to 220-240V, except in very very rare circumstances. A "bargain" might well have been a "grey import", "failed export order" or similar, so all bets are off depending on the items original market destination.

[DS999]

Why would the vendors return policy matter?

They aren't going to be able to return 10 PCs because they blew the power supplies with the wrong voltage. Nor should it blow his budget - 10 fuses have blown, that's it. Granted with cheap power supplies the design may not allow for easy replacement of the fuse so you probably need 10 whole power supplies but that's still not a big deal.

Honestly I blame the IT team for this. Surely living in a country with 220/240 volts they have encountered, or at least heard about, gear that has a 110/220 switch on the power supply that needs to be correctly set! How is it possible they got these new PCs delivered and not one of them looked at the back of it? Maybe to see what ports it has or something?

I would be willing to bet the Gateways of that era ALSO had the power supply switch (auto switching power supplies were rather uncommon in the 90s) but they had decent customer service for corporate customers so they insured it was correctly set before they shipped a bunch of PCs from South Dakota to a 220/240 country like the UK.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Shocked & Dismayed

No ones flagged at the fact that "Nikolai" took a machine to image at the client desk*, especially first one off the pallet\boxes whatever!

I may or may not have re-imaged a machine at a clients desk, but that's a different scenario.

[Robert Carnegie]

Re: Shocked & Dismayed

I assume that the user demanded that their new PC was to be brought NOW to their desk, and installed.

As for stopping the work, I wonder if setting off the fire alarm so everyone has to stop work and go outside would be worth it?

[Why Not?]

To be fair

35 years ago I used to get American PC's as voice mails from the mothership and they had these switches before they had auto switching. We a lost a few to the switch being at 110v before we figured it out.

Flame because..

[Brave Coward]

So for us...

... humble peasants living on the faraway marches of the Empire and not blessed enough to even be native speakers, is that what is called a "blow job" ?

[ChaosFreak]

Been there

These power supplies were common in the 90's on PC compatibles. Luckily in the US when they arrived improperly set for 220, the results weren't destructive.

[Munchausen's proxy]

My mind is kind of boggling that Gateway would be considered the more reliable option in that environment.

[Chasxith]

Dual voltage is fun

....especially when you're working at a company who exclusively works for an American client. Said client insisted we fit 110v wiring into the factory cleanroom where the majority of production took place - apparently they were worried that 230v lab ovens from the same manufacturer would "behave differently". As a result about 75% of our equipment was US procured 110v stuff.

Lost count of the amount of times their "engineers" would come over with handfuls of cheap US-UK adapters bought off eBay, bring 110vkit out of the cleanroom into the 240v wired support laboratory and instantly let the magic smoke out upon plugging it in.

[ZoranGrbic]

That's without...

... including London in Equatorial Guinea, three in South Africa and one in Nigeria, to just name a view.

The exhaustive list for your viewing pleasure is here: https://geotargit.com/called.php?qcity=London