back to article Muppet broke the datacenter every day, in its own weighty way

By Friday the weight of the world presses down upon even the most enthusiastic IT pro, which is why The Register uses the last day of the working week to lighten the load with a new instalment of On Call – the reader-contributed column in which we tell your tales of struggling out from under tech support burdens. This week, …

  1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

    This kind of semi-random, intermittent error is such a pain to diagnose

    A friend of mine once worked on a 68020-based computer (quite a beast in its day, I think it had a whole 16 MB of RAM), which would be on the fritz from time to time. It turned out, there was a tiny break in one of the connections on the motherboard, which sort of closed when the board was slightly bent one way, but opened if the board was seated slightly differently. Some hawk-eyed technician found it, put a little solder on the break, and the board worked flawlessly.

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Re: This kind of semi-random, intermittent error is such a pain to diagnose

      Now that is eagle-eyed diagnostics !

    2. IanRS

      Re: This kind of semi-random, intermittent error is such a pain to diagnose

      I once had a graphics card with a similar problem. Occasionally the whole system would crash, and I noticed while poking (literally) around while the system was running that pushing it one way would almost guarantee a crash. I put a small length of wood between it and another PCI, or maybe ISA back then, card to keep it slightly flexed the other way. Improved reliability and ran for many years that way.

      1. J.G.Harston Silver badge

        Re: This kind of semi-random, intermittent error is such a pain to diagnose

        To add to the stories: in the early '90s I had a call out to one site where the computer was repeatedly reported as crashing. I visited the site to investigate, opened up the computer case, probed everything, sat there for 30 minutes with no problem, put everything back together, still works, left the site.

        I got called back again... still keeps crashing.

        So I asked the user to demonstrate, while I just sat in the corner and watched and the user did some intensive large-screen graphics editing stuff... after about 15 minutes, yes it started crashing.

        I lifted the monitor off the case to open it up.... lifted the monitor.... the monitor..... yes, you know what's happening. The weight of the monitor was just enough to flex the top of the case, and after a dozen or so minute of operation the computer innards had warmed up enough to expand an internal vertical card juuuust enough to touch the inside of the case and cause it to mis-seat in the socket. I can't remember after all this time, but I think the fix was a telephone directory to spread the weight.

        1. Andy A
          Happy

          Re: This kind of semi-random, intermittent error is such a pain to diagnose

          In the days of 286 machines, one place I visited to do an upgrade mentioned that another machine had a fault.

          It would not boot first thing in the morning, but having been left switched on, it would boot about 10:00.

          It being only 9:15, I took the lid off it to look for obvious faults. I pushed down each of the socketed chips on the motherboard.

          The processor went CLICK.

          Apparently things expanded during the warm-up lap, and made contact for the rest of the day.

          1. Roland6 Silver badge

            Re: This kind of semi-random, intermittent error is such a pain to diagnose

            I expect thermal expansion and contraction and the issues they can cause are a factor in why turning stuff off that has been running for a long time (eg. a mainframe), needs to be done with caution.

    3. Contrex

      Re: This kind of semi-random, intermittent error is such a pain to diagnose

      In 1985 I had an add-on 3.5 inch floppy drive in a case, for a Sinclair QL, that used to malfunction (Disk read/write failures) after you moved it until you tapped it in one particular place. Turned out the one-man-band making them had not actually soldered the connector onto the power cable properly, just dabbed the terminals and bared wires with the iron.

      I also had the same types of problem (bad solder joints that flexed) 20 and 25 years later with two different models of Shuttle small form factor PC.

      1. Kuang

        Re: This kind of semi-random, intermittent error is such a pain to diagnose

        Ah, the wonders of percussive maintenance :)

        I worked at a college years ago that bought a shedload of those old Dell Optiplex machines - the ones with the curved front and the triple-expensive floppy drives that were just normal drives with the front panel removed and the eject button moved to the case.

        The monitors that came with them had dodgy power switches that could be diagnosed with a sharp slap to the right hand side of the case. Talking people through tat on the phone was interesting:

        'Put you palm flat on the right had side next to the switch. Now lift it off the surface by about two inches. Ok? Now smack it. No, really. It went off? Be there in a minute.'

        1. Rob Daglish

          Re: This kind of semi-random, intermittent error is such a pain to diagnose

          I remember being the PFY many years ago at the grandly titled “Technical Servicing Unit”, which was run by the local education authority to maintain pretty much anything technical in schools in the county, by means of a van that drove round collecting faulty kit, delivering it to the TSU, and returning it usually a week later after it was repaired.

          We had a lovely engineer called Ted who had spent a good chunk of his life working for Associated Rediffusion, but now looked after all our CRT repairs and BBC/Archimedes repairs, and every monitor coming in went on his bench, got connected to the test rig, and given a good thump. One day, I got curious about the thump, and asked why he did this. He replied that everything you saw on the screen told you something about where the fault was - for example, if it was squashed too to bottom, you knew it was in the vertical hold area, if it was the wrong colour, it was something else, and so on. The thump, it turned out, would show if a fault was due to a loose solder joint, so you could go looking for that…

          (Being a bit of a smartarse, I said what about if there’s nothing on screen, it can’t tell you anything, and was firmly put in my place as Ted pointed out that if there was nothing on screen, then you had a power issue…)

        2. ITMA Silver badge
          Devil

          Re: This kind of semi-random, intermittent error is such a pain to diagnose

          That reminds me of a real-time printer fix on a customer's dot matrix printer which kept stopping mid-print saying "Paper out".

          I think I was working for NEC (UK) Peripherals at the time on the help desk.

          Knowing the likely culprit, I asked the customer the model of printer.

          I then said "This is going to sound strange...." then proceeded along the lines of "carefully lift the left hand side of the printer 3-4 inches of the desk. Then let go so it drops on the desk". <BANG>

          The printer burst into life and kept printing.

          A known issue where paper dust caused the plastic mechanical flag used to sense the presence of paper to stick in the wrong position. Giving it a jolt freed it.

      2. tinman

        Re: This kind of semi-random, intermittent error is such a pain to diagnose

        And were you able to invoice £1000 for knowing just where to tap, as per the hoary legend?

        1. jake Silver badge

          Re: This kind of semi-random, intermittent error is such a pain to diagnose

          "And were you able to invoice £1000 for knowing just where to tap, as per the hoary legend?"

          As an IT consultant, I implemented a four hour minimum for on-site visits in (roughly) 1990, a couple years after I went solo. Double on weekends/holidays. A few clients balked at the new rate ... I simply told 'em "Don't call me unless you actually need me". Or, as I tell prospective new clients "It's my job to ensure we see as little of each other as possible".

          A new issue arose. Convincing 'em to pay 4 hours for a one minute visit. The old TV repairman's maxim applied, "I'm not charging you for thumping your telly with a screwdriver. I'm charging you for knowing where and how hard to thump your telly, when to stop thumping (if applicable) and for showing up to do it". The explanation seems to have worked ... although a little over five years ago a child CEO wondered why I'd need to thump a telly with a screwdriver.

      3. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: This kind of semi-random, intermittent error is such a pain to diagnose

        >Turned out the one-man-band making them had not actually soldered the connector onto the power cable properly, just dabbed the terminals and bared wires with the iron.

        Probably used the wrong-sized soldering iron.

        When my late father was working you stood well back, the irons he used for seemingly delicate electronic test equipment were huge and not to be messed with; a quick dab with one of those and that connector would have been perfect.

    4. navidier

      Re: This kind of semi-random, intermittent error is such a pain to diagnose

      We had the first -- probably only! -- Commodore PET in Australia. Our engineer was such a stickler that he had a transformer custom-made to account for the differences in input voltage AND frequency over the US original. It was unreliable, to the extent that one saved one's work after each change in the BASIC code, despite the cassette recorder being abysmally slow.

      So I set it up in the lab, CRO and logic probe connected, waiting for the inevitable crash. Which duly happened. I forget exactly what happened next, but I was about to rip out the motherboard and replace the CPU chip, when the actual owner of the machine shone a torch under the chip -- which revealed a shadow where one should not have been.

      Cue a bit of poking around with a small piece of plastic tubing, and out came the clipped-off end of a voltage-regulator chip's lead..

      It had ended up in exactly the wrong place (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTACK_Grounded) to halt the processor, whenever it was nudged enough by vibrations to make the contact.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: This kind of semi-random, intermittent error is such a pain to diagnose

      Way back in the time when VESA Localbus was considered a neat idea, we had some small custom-made servers at a few locations. for some reason vibrations would cause the graphics card to slowly slip out of the connector, short two pins and stop the server. the second time we had that issue, I called a user on that particular location, told him to stand in front of the server, place his left fist against the side of the server, about 10cm from the bottom, move it slowly outwards, then SLAM IT! He did it, too... The card popped back into place and the server rebooted into semi-usefullness(eh, it was running WinNT soomething or other, semi-usefullness is the best you can hope for)

      This taught he users that 'Magic Hands' works over the phone andthat I could fix anything...

      And I learned not to buy 'custom servers' made out of regular PC parts.

  2. Korev Silver badge
    Joke

    Bob, as described by Harp, was "One of those 'larger than life' characters with a low center of gravity, ginger beard, and spectacles."

    So the moral of the story is to not let bespectacled gingers into the data centre?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      That's me out of a job then.

    2. Julian Poyntz

      Sorted

      Gone bald, keep clean shaven - though there is now a decent quantity of grey in the stubble these days

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Or at least only tall thin ones - like Amy Pond

      Excuse me, I have to go and have a little lie down.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I applaud you for your taste sir.

    4. I am David Jones Silver badge
      Mushroom

      That is disgustingly racialist against persons of lesser sight.

      Keep out all gingers!

      ps I married one so insulting them is second nature :)

    5. Zarno
      Joke

      Yee be on thin ice, just wait till them gingers snap!

    6. The Organ Grinder's Monkey

      Strictly it was neither his gingerness nor his beardyness, nor even his low CofG that was causing the problem, but rather his, shall we say, particular susceptibility to gravity?

  3. Korev Silver badge
    Coat

    Muppets

    So was the current stopped by a circuit Beaker?

    1. Flightmode

      Re: Muppets

      It was clearly bork bork borken.

      1. UCAP Silver badge

        Re: Muppets

        Sounds like he was a bit of an Animal.

    2. Sceptic Tank Silver badge
  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    'larger than life' characters with a low center of gravity, ginger beard, and spectacles.

    This makes me wonder whether the ginger beard and spectacles are mentioned because their extra weight tipped the balance. This also raises some interesting questions.

    Could this have been fixed by shaving that character?

    Would switching the spectacles to contact lenses help?

    Do ginger beards weigh more than other colours?

    Actually, I'm genuinely intrigued by that last one now.

    1. Vincent Ballard
      Coat

      Re: 'larger than life' characters with a low center of gravity, ginger beard, and spectacles.

      Some quick Googling brings up pages which suggest that ginger hair has the lowest density of strands per unit area and that darker hair has thicker strands, so ginger beards probably weigh less than other colours after correction for beard length.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: 'larger than life' characters with a low center of gravity, ginger beard, and spectacles.

        I see an Ig Nobel in the making. What is the (weight) density of various colors of beard hair?

    2. phuzz Silver badge

      Re: 'larger than life' characters with a low center of gravity, ginger beard, and spectacles.

      Gingers typically have finer hair, and more follicles per square cm, than other people. Which means they tend to shed hair more (as anyone who's shared a house with a ginger can attest).

      So I can imagine loose hairs might be more of an issue with a ginger beard.

      Also the lack of a soul.

      1. BenDwire Silver badge

        Re: 'larger than life' characters with a low center of gravity, ginger beard, and spectacles.

        As Tim Minchin once wrote, "Only a ginger can call a ginger, Ginger"

  5. Bebu
    Coat

    Muppet... broke... heavy way.

    And here I was uncharitably thinking Miss Piggy. :)

    1. chivo243 Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: Muppet... broke... heavy way.

      That gives me a warm and Fozzie feeling

      Right behind you, keep moving please!

  6. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge

    Thats quite the diagnostic feat , even though he just got lucky and saw Bob walk over the floor , its still impressive to join those two dots.

    You consider a lot of factors when diagnosing , but when you have to start thinking external stuff like about who's on duty , or what day it is , or what the weathers like AND its intermittent ... then its gonna be an uphill struggle

    .

    (its not always the cleaner unplugging something!)

    1. KittenHuffer Silver badge

      I'm meeeeeelting!

      I once had a pair of photophobic mice!

      They had worked fine for about 3 months (in the Widdle of Minter) but once sunny afternoons started happening they would suddenly go on strike. They were opti-mechanical mice (ball turning roller with windmill/LED/sensor) that the manufacturer had housed in a wafer thin mechanical mouse shell. The shell was not thick enough to stop bright sunlight from swamping the sensors.

      'Fortunately' we had a set of mole-rats who worked all day in an orifice with no external windows (so not fortunate for the mole-rats). A quick swap of mice with them cured the problem.

      In truth, I think they were just mice that had turned to the dark side!

      1. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

        Re: I'm meeeeeelting!

        I've definitely talked about this before, but when working at a UK Polytechnic, we bought, for student projects, remarkably capable six degrees of movement small(ish) robotic arms that moved by using linear actuators driven by motors with infra red sensors on shaft encoders that counted the number of quarter turns. This worked by having an IR emitter and a sensor and a reflector on the shaft made from white plastic that would bounce the light from the emitter back to the sensor four times per full rotation, allowing the micro-controller to count the number of rotations and thus the position of the actuator.

        I had just put one of the kits together on a desk by a window, and I was testing it out, and it was working quite successfully, right up until the sun broke through the cloud cover. This flooded the area the robot was in with warm sunlight. Cue the next operation I started, which was an extend to maximum position for all of the actuators, and the arm tried to tie itself up in knots as each of the actuators extended to, and then beyond their maximum position, pulling the robot off the desk, and causing a couple of the switch transistors to pop as the motors got stopped by the safety stops, stalled, and tried to draw more current than the transistor could handle.

        Turns out that the white IR reflectors also allowed light from the outside to pass through, and the sunlight swamped the IR sensor, which prevented it from seeing the pulse of IR light from the emitter. This resulted in the motors keeping turning until they were physically stopped!

        We talked to the supplier of the arms, and they agreed to replace the motors with the blown driver transistors, and also devised an opaque cover for the shaft encoders to prevent the same thing happening again.

        It actually pains me that very few students even considered using these robots, or any of the other goodies we had, to do their final year project (most of them did pure programming projects), and the robots mostly sat in a cupboard until the lab. was decommissioned. If I had still been working, I would have offered to give one of these robots a home rather than seeing them thrown away!

        1. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge
          Terminator

          Re: I'm meeeeeelting!

          Vampire robots!

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I'm meeeeeelting!

        We had a seat at the lab table that kept eating PS/2 power supplies, one after another. We moved the computers around, and it was still the same seat. Alrighty then.

        Turned out it was a mouse with a crushed and shorted cord, confirmed by a DMM.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: I'm meeeeeelting!

          Yup. Had a hardware xterminal that wouldn't boot. Tried unplugging everything but the power cord and monitor, but still wouldn't boot. Put in a known-good replacement xterminal - which also wouldn't boot. Again unplugged everything but the power and monitor - started fine. Plugged in ethernet, mouse, keyboard one at a time - and when the mouse was plugged it, the xterminal wouldn't boot.

          Careful examination of the mouse plug showed a pin bent over and touching the shield. Glad it didn't pop the known-good replacement too!

          (P.S. This was only a couple months ago. There's an upgrade-to-modern-system project in the works...)

      3. Montreal Sean

        Re: I'm meeeeeelting!

        Xerox had this type of problem a few ago with one of their Workcentre printers.

        These printers would have print quality issues intermittently and no one could figure out why.

        It turned out that one of the ventilation grills on the side of the printer would let sunlight in and this somehow affected one of the optical sensors.

        I'd love to meet the person who figured that one out, as it would only happen if the sun hit this grill at just the right angle.

        Xerox created a new part to fix the problem and retrofit any printer that had the issue. the part was basically a hard plastic awning.

      4. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

        Re: I'm meeeeeelting!

        I had that issue, and I found a mouse cover on sale. A fur skin with a tail, for your desk mouse to wear. I think that fixed it.

    2. Lazlo Woodbine

      One place I worked, we had a couple of Compaq servers that would intermittently reboot.

      The reboots were completely random, and server logs gave no clues whatsoever.

      We had support guys in almost every week running all kinds of tests.

      One day, the servers both rebooted while the tech guys were in the server room (room is rather grand, basically a large cupboard, and by in, I mean the were standing there with the door open looking at the servers). This meant they spotted exactly what happened as the servers rebooted.

      The manager had walked past and answered her cordless phone, this was an old analogue cordless, the EMP as she answered the phone must have been enough to trip the servers.

      The solution, we got her one of the new DECT cordless phones and never had a random reboor problem again...

      1. ColinPa Silver badge

        Whoops there go the tape drives

        Many years ago, in our big machine room, some of the idle tape drives would mysteriously open and close. It only happened when one operator was on duty. It turned out that she wore nylon, which got charged with static electricity. When she touched the tape drive unit, she would discharge and the tape drive doors would open.

        When she wore cotton, it was fine.

        Once the problem was identified, she didn't wear nylon, and the engineer earthed the cases of the tape drives.

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: Whoops there go the tape drives

          Sounds like an HR-worthy conversation was involved

          In a strictly scientific attempt to understand the problem did you have her wear a wide variety of other exotic materials?

          1. Alan Brown Silver badge

            Re: Whoops there go the tape drives

            Banning nylon underwear in computer centres happened often enough that it's become a standard trope

            1. Noram

              Re: Whoops there go the tape drives

              I'm probably showing my age a bit here, but I remember one of the old Computer magazines having a cartoon about it, from memory it was an office full of people (including a couple of women) in leather cat suits and one of the men stating to a visitor(?) "the new anti static policy works wonders".

              Or the slightly newer one from megatokyo.com where the main character walks in on his friend upgrading a computer with no clothes on and asks what's going on and gets given an explanation about static safety and told "fear my leet naked skills".

        2. Roland6 Silver badge

          Re: Whoops there go the tape drives

          Just show how important all those earths are in data cabinets. Everyone things they are there for electricity leaking from the power supply, not for static. It is probably useful to put an earthed metal handle on a cabinet door than the more typical plastic handle with no earth…

      2. Alan Brown Silver badge

        It must have been a hell of a cordless phone. Most designs emit less than 10mW

        1. Lazlo Woodbine

          Combination of proximity and delicate servers I suspect

          Anyway, the replacement solved the problem...

        2. uccsoundman

          The oldest phones used 49 Mhz for one side of the conversation and 1600 Khz (the upper side of the American MW Band) for the other side. Under Part 15 of the FCC's rules about low power unlicensed transmitters, you could have up to 100mw of transmit power (at least at the time) I worked for a Radio Shack then, and the manager used to take one of those phones and go two doors down the street to eat dinner and still be able to answer the phone. At that time, radios (such as scanners) that could pick up random frequencies around 49Mhz were not that common, but you could pick up the 1600 Khz signal on just about any AM radio. And it included the sidetone so you could hear both sides of the conversation. I lived in an apartment complex and you could hear some very NSFW conversations on the most ordinary of radios. Also, it wasn't that hard to hot-rod those phones (just change a resistor) and you could go to the next block.

      3. David Hicklin Bronze badge

        I can still remember the early mobile phones where a PC audio or an audio system would warn you of an incoming text or phone call by emitting a series of digital blip sounds (only way I can think of describing it!) before the phone went of

  7. Inventor of the Marmite Laser Silver badge

    Hidden intermittent faults

    I've posted this before, so I'll apologise to those who've already seen it but it's pertinent to the tale of obscure intermittent faults.

    Had a site visit donkeys years since upon - pre PC days, in fact. The client, a research bit of a major oil company, had an ISC3651 colour desktop computer. 8080 based, with a staggering 16k of plug in ROM for the operating system on the A3 sized mainboard and a 50 way parallel expansion port on the back, which we'd plugged into our interface.

    This is a similar beast: https://vintagecomputer.ca/intecolor-3600-series-computer/

    The client had been complaining of random crashing and muggins was sent up to have a firkle.

    Disconnected the expansion cable and extracted the mainboard. Had a close look and no obvious issues. Maybe it was one of the myriad connectors. Reassembled the machine, tested and crash. Rinse and repeat several times, increasing the scope of connector unplugging/reseating.

    Crash, crash, crash.

    After the umpteenth time I had just reassembled and was powering up when I realised I'd forgot the expansion cable. I reached across the top of the machine to plug it in (ok to do live). As I leant on the top of the case - crash. Lift off hand - back to life. Repeat with the same outcome.

    Interesting.

    Pulled mainboard again and got a magnifier. Started scrutinizing the board with a really intense scrute.

    Found one data pin in one of the plugin ROM holders had never ever been soldered. The pin was just pressed against the side of the plated thru hole

    30 seconds with a soldering iron and it was fixed.

    And that thing had been running an engine test bed for 2 years like that.

  8. Sam not the Viking Silver badge
    Pint

    Holmes deduces

    Not quite in the same vein, but we had a job overseas where there was clearly a temperature-issue. The site equipment had air-conditioning but overnight the temperature would rise causing a trip at anti-social hours. It always reset and then operated normally. Sometimes we would stay on site to try and catch the event but it never happened when we were there.

    The site was protected 24 hours a day by a security company and they reported no unusual events. We asked these security people to make a log of a few temperatures; indoor air, outdoor air, just so we could try to get a handle on what was happening. Every hour, as they did their rounds they would record the thermometer readings.

    These logs showed remarkable consistency in the values. After the initial set of figures which we recorded before leaving site, the temperatures would remain constant all night. Correctly for the indoor temperature but, my dear Watson, surely the outdoors should have a bit of variation?

    An unannounced visit in the small hours revealed the problem: The security people were putting up covers over the air vents in the equipment room. You will already have guessed that this made their 'office' cooler and they could have a nap (for 8 hours!) in a beautifully cool environment. The temperature logs were just copies of the first set of figures written up before going to the land of nod.

  9. Anonymous Coward Silver badge
    Go

    Sizing

    Never actually had weight cause a problem, but in my younger days I did carry around a fair bit of excess. There have been a few times recently where I've needed to gain access to enclosed spaces and the thought has gone through my head that in the past I wouldn't have been physically able to fit.

    Indeed in one instance the client had an electrician who also needed to access said enclosed space... and couldn't. Knowing that I'd done it already, he asked me to sub for him.

    1. LessWileyCoyote

      Re: Sizing

      I do remember working somewhere which had two very generously sized gentlemen. They were known as, and cheerfully answered to, FB1 and FB2. No, the acronym wasn't Funderbird (for those that remember the Thunderbirds puppet series) but something much blunter.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Sizing

        reading between the lines was it either

        Fat Bloke 1 and 2

        OR

        Fat B'stard 1 and 2

        1. LogicGate Silver badge

          Re: Sizing

          Friendly Bigfoot 1 and 2

      2. Mast1

        Re: Sizing

        In a prevoius life, we had several of that size, but with a bit more muscle than adipose tissue. Affectionately, they were known as the "sweat and groan" brigade, and they were great at doing odd jobs.

        There was one time when they were moving a large bit of equipment in a lift with doors on opposite sides. Once they loaded then followed the equipment in, it was realised that they could not get out again around the equipment when at the other end of travel which would have required use of the other doors. In the interests of H&S they were requested not to travel in the lift and take the stairs.

        1. Mast1

          Re: Sizing

          Apologies missing detail from above re lift with two doors. Lift was so old that there was only manual opening of the doors....... hence prospect of getting stuck on wrong side of equipment.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Sizing

          We had some of those at the mining operation I worked at.

          The Boss had obtained a couple of isolation transformers for the S-100 boxes, due to the huge motors doing crap things to the power.

          These were about the size of 2 shoeboxes, but were pretty much 100% iron, so they were at least 100lbs.

          The designer must have been a cruel bastard, because there were these leather straps on top, as if you could lift them with those.

          We were moving offices and one of the guys was like "here, I'll get those" and before I could shout "no, wait!" he gave them a hefty tug. I heard his spine go SPROING from across the room.

        3. Giles C Silver badge

          Re: Sizing

          I’ve worked in several building where you load up the lift with equipment and then take the stairs, as the lifts were that dodgy nobody wanted to ride in them. If the equipment got stuck or damaged that could be replaced, the workers not so much.

          The problem used to be if someone was waiting for the lift because the buildings were a few floors and occasionally you get stopped by someone on the way up or down the stairs.

  10. chivo243 Silver badge
    Coat

    Boldly going where no portly tech has gone before

    I worked at a place where a switch cabinet was placed as an afterthought by our good friends the architects in a closet that measured about 1m20 wide, and about 1m70 deep, and located in the basement. This made the side panels on the cabinet useless, leaving only the back door usable. Being 185 cm tall and about 175lbs, I was the only trustworthy person who could shimmy between the cabinet and the wall, to access the back door. Good ole cabinet 8, I always got the call if there were issues in that area I wonder how they manage now? My replacement, I’m told, fills my old chair and then some.

    Coat icon because I’ve moved on, and the stickman is skinny!

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: Boldly going where no portly tech has gone before

      I have one of those. The back doors have been replaced by a sheet of cardboard because there isn't enough room to open them.

      You have to Ministry of Silly Walks over the network cables to even get behind it.

      This is in a "secure data center" as required by ISO 9001 but is actually a locked cleaners cupboard in the basement.

      1. Zarno
        Pint

        Re: Boldly going where no portly tech has gone before

        Beware of the Leopard!

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: Boldly going where no portly tech has gone before

          How did you get the root password?

  11. Pierre 1970

    Reward

    I know that solving this type of technological puzzle is almost always a painin the rear, but when we finally reach a solution—through an unknown mix of knowledge, experience, and luck—the rewards to the spirit are unparalleled.

    Of course, if you’re only after the money...

  12. low_resolution_foxxes

    Oh dear. This reminds me of an unfortunate incident involving one of our shortly hired IT engineers ~8 years ago. Very unfortunate situation. I would say it's bad to chuckle, as I did genuinely feel bad for the chap, but dear God the rumours snowballed into something of legend.

    We had an IT chap who was of a larger waistband than 99% of the population. Very pleasant and hard-working IT guy. Not meaning to be judgemental, but this information is relevant to the tale.

    We had some kind of late-night IT maintenance happening (I was an electronic engineer who dabbled with the servers) and there were minimal staff on site.

    Some of the details are sketchy. But what appeared to happen, is that the gentleman in question required a lengthy bathroom visit. During this incident, he leaned over and fell off the toilet seat, resulting in his leg going through the plasterboard wall, and after some thrashing to free himself, managed to rip the toilet cistern off the wall (genuinely perplexed by this side of things, but fight or flight will do strange things). Alternatively, it seems plausible but unlikely, that he just smashed up the place for no obvious reason during the laying of a #2.

    With one leg still in the neighbouring cubicle (he'd left a shoe in the neighbouring cubicle), he'd managed to flood the bathroom (including solids) and was caught on camera leaving the premises drenched from the waist down, without telling anyone what had happened. The maintenance team were called an hour later to find complete chaos, a flooded shipping area (these toilets are on the 1st floor) and a lengthy solid on the neighbouring kitchen floor.

    He resigned shortly after bless him. Can you imagine the absolute farce in the office on Monday morning when the regular staff come back in....

  13. DS999 Silver badge

    I remember seeing some OLD datacenters

    Back when I was doing consulting gigs that would have me spend time inside a datacenter. Rooms that were probably built in the 70s or 80s still in use 25 years later, taht had housed mainframes, then minis, then Unix and Windows servers. Probably the only constant was EMC arrays and tape libraries.

    I never had to deal with the stuff under the raised floor, but it was always interesting to see what was under there when tiles were removed. They all seemed to have so so many of these really thick serial cables (some sort of mainframe thing) as well bulky SCSI cables (from before fibre channel obsoleted that) snaking all over the place. They never removed them because they were so bulky and heavy the datacenter guys were worried that even trying to pull them out with the end cut off would tug on other cables, rub them against sharp edges in the tile support system, etc.

    I think these sorts of intermittent errors were probably well known and that's why they seem to have all adopted a "never remove old cabling" policy. As a result the space underneath the floor in an old datacenter always looked like Indiana Jones' worst nightmare!

    1. Giles C Silver badge

      Re: I remember seeing some OLD datacenters

      There is a story of mine about the cables shorting under a comms room florr, but we had a couple of load problems,

      The first was someone drove a 4tonne cherry picker in through the loading doors to replace a pane in glass in a 4 storey atrium. The atrium didn’t have big enough doors to let he machine through, the loading bay did. However the loading bay had a raised floor as it was just part of the office. I was on the 3rd floor when it drove in (the building was still being fitted out, it managed about 2 m before the inevitable happened, one the red floor I think it moved about 10cm from the shockwave.

      The second was the new storage unit for the iseries in the comms room started buckling the floor, the solution was to stack reams of A4 paper to support the floor, I think we used about 15 to preserve the floor.

    2. Andy A
      Pint

      Re: I remember seeing some OLD datacenters

      One place I worked instructed me to clear out a load of such ancient cabling under the machine room floor.

      I spent my spare time over a fortnight extracting piles of electronic archaeological artefacts.

      Then an early departure on Friday to officially dispose of all that wiring, complete with a management pass to get it past security. There's a lot of good quality copper in data cabling, and the proceeds were put to good use. ================>

    3. Bowlers

      Re: I remember seeing some OLD datacenters

      The "realy thick serial cables" were probably mainframe parallel cables, a pair for every channel. Some mainframe DCs wanted a new machine up and running before uninstalling the old one. That meant old cables could be difficult to remove until it became so bad that floor tiles would not sit flat. Then the fun began...WE overtime and squeaky bum time.

    4. Francis Boyle

      Indiana Jones' worst nightmare

      SCSI. Why does it always have to be SCSI?

  14. Terry 6 Silver badge

    Fluffy

    In those early days of educational computing I had a nice 486 in my off-site class' office. And for its period it was really reliable and efficient.

    Then shortly after a new member of staff started sharing the room, using it on days when I was out visiting schools. She kept reporting that it was crashing. I still had no problem when it was my time in there. This went on all term, until the first day of the new term, when the schools weren't back yet. So we were both in there. I was working on the machine as she walked past. CRASH.

    I rebooted, and asked her to go past again. Crash.

    Had a third go. Crash. Only this time I noticed the faint crackling sound emanating from her furry woolly jumper ( there's probably a name for the stuff- but it's that kind of woolly material that has lots of hairy strands to make it fluffy).

    After she stopped wearing that kind of woolliness in the office the problem stopped.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Fluffy

      "there's probably a name for the stuff"

      Probably the name is acrylic.

  15. cman52

    Worked at a pharmaceutical company. About once a month the fire alarms would go off for no reason.

    After a few years the cause was found. In the sprinkler systems there are paddles that move when the sprinkler goes off and they set off alarms. There were two buildings that had the pipes running underground and under the driveway entrance. When a very heavy truck would drive in the pressure started a current in the pipes that moved the paddles.

  16. Yes Me Silver badge

    No ginger hair involved

    Once worked in a newish building, and at a certain time of year the fire alarm started going off just at the end of the morning tea break. "Some joker" we thought. Very inconvenient since we then had to stop lazing around in the common room and evacuate until the fire brigade came and cancelled the alarm.

    Turned out that for a few days, the sun was accidentally focussed on some heat detector or other at exactly that time.

    1. yetanotheraoc Silver badge

      Re: No ginger hair involved

      Tea Henge.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    First thought which muppet got the muppets and sesame street mixed up? I must read the article first before commenting!

    1. Ace2 Silver badge

      The Sesame Street characters are muppets.

  18. Chris 239

    passion fingers

    Back in a previous life when I was a lot younger we had a colleague we nicknamed "Passion Fingers" because of a habit of fucking any equipment he touched!

  19. Richard Pennington 1

    Sme problem, different setting (a variation on a theme)

    I'm long retired from the IT world, but I have stayed on for nearly 30 years as a church organist. My church, not having a building of its own, meets in a school hall.

    The organ (actually a keyboard with delusions of grandeur) is powered via a long lead, with a protective cover to alleviate the obvious trip hazard. A few years ago we had a recurrent [so to speak] problem with the power dropping out from the organ in mid-service (so I would play the introduction of the next hymn ... and nothing would happen). We eventually figured out that if anyone stepped on the (shielded) power cable, it would cut the power. And, just to make it more entertaining, powering back on would cause the sustaining pedal to reverse its action (so that it "sustained" when the pedal was unused, and stopped sustaining when the pedal was pressed down).

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