No user input required, but still on the clock
Many years ago, Autumn 1997 I believe, I was looking after the hardware of a radio broadcast network I's built , or more accurately had designed and had built by people who knew what they were doing - mostly.
One of those knowledgeable folks had created something that was still uncommon at the time, a hard disk music playout system. It consisted of a pair of identical, mirrored servers, each running a single 20GB SCSI drive (gasp!) via Adaptec cards with the OS being Win 95 SR2 (sharp intake of breath perhaps?).
The system went in during the summer and performed flawlessly, until 02:00 on an Autumn Sunday morning, when the overnight jock suddenly found himself a little short of material. All of the music on the servers had vanished. He called me and reverted to CDs which, since most of the music was locked in the library, involved the demented jock rushing around a large building trying to find random CDs before the next track ended.
To make a long story boring, it turned out that Windows had automatically adjusted from BST to GMT and simultaneously the MBR on each disk had been erased. At this juncture I can't remember if if was both copies, but the audio data was still there, just not visible to the system.
Once I had put everything back together I started making calls. Adaptec, M$ and the writer of the playout software denied all knowledge and responsibility of course, but when I pointed out to the M$ techie that copies of Win 95 SR2 would soon undergo their first "fall back" in the US, there was a looonngg silence.
The world of Windows 95 didn't end, so I'm guessing it was a glitch in the playout software, but I've always wondered.
Paris because, well, what would I have preferred to be doing at 02:00?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
