Posts by Andytug 335 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Apr 2015
Back in the very early 2000s (I think) we had a bad batch of Fujitsu base units where the PSUs would randomly set themselves to 110V first thing in the morning. Which made for a rude awakening for the poor unfortunate on the opposite side of the desk as the usual 240V was applied to it at the press of the power button................the fuse went pop pretty loudly in a quiet office!
There seems to be an assumption that as time goes on the IT literacy of the population should increase. If the people recruited into our organisation are anything to go by, the exact opposite is true. Also, during COVID lockdown, when hundreds of laptops were given to parents for kids to do work at home, the blank looks they got....... people know phones and apps, and that's about it. Anything else is akin to magic, so I wouldn't bother looking at parents for technical solutions. Social ones, absolutely, teach them right from wrong, but not IT.....
Many years ago, after every department but IT had changed their name at least once that year, we sugested many rude acronym names for our department. I did win with an acroymn for CLITORIS (Computer Literacy, Information Technology, Original Research & Infrastructure Support) but then said in our managers meeting it would be no good as half the office woudn't be able to find us....
My neighbour is a first aid instructor for Mountain Rescue and suchlike....he frequently leaves his (pretty realistic) casualty dummies in the back of his estate car on the drive. I'm used to it, but a lot of people driving and walking past do some proper double takes....!
They're the proper expensive ones wiith missing limbs and bits for ketchup to come oozing out of, etc.
Much less stop/start (it's kind of harder to do in a truck so they don't unless forced to), less stress and pretty sure less fuel use. Every time you brake you convert expensive fuel into heat, so if you can avoid braking it saves fuel. In the end you won't lose much time if any, the truck drivers are as keen to get to where they're going as anyone.
is the answer, as I found out as a kid, to the question "If I wire my Scalectrix transformer to my Lego motor, what will happen?"
It went extremely fast for a second or so, then lost its magic smoke and died forever.
13V at 10A into a 4.5V motor doesn't leave room for any magic smoke :(
...also had a messaging feature, which we used from time to time, sometimes for individual messages and occasionally for group ones.
We discovered one day that it re-allocated system user ID's on the basis of one logged off, next logon got the same ID. How did we find this out? Two of the PFYs were messaging one another from opposite sides of the desk, one logged off to stop the messages. Then we got a phone call from a PHB wanting to know why his PC had just flashed up a message to "Stop it!" as soon as he logged on. Just as well it wasn't something worse......
That is as long as you had 2x the recommended RAM, or preferably 4x (which is a general rule of thumb for Windows anyway tbh!).
Then just disable disk indexing and it would speed up no end.
Unfortunately it followed the Microsoft trend of OK/bad/OK/bad versions of Windows, being the bad one in between XP and 7. 11 looks to be contiuing the sequence so maybe need to wait for 12 :)
A student colleague had a summer job in the local leisure park fixing their amusement machines.....the worst ones he had to deal with were the "sit in" type arcade machines (the wireframe Star Wars type ones). For some reason the manufacturers had decided that under the seat was a good place for the mainboard..until a smallchild comes and sits in it and has an accident. Urine and solder do not get on, and there's the smell.........
Way back before the paperless office, we probably had about 4 or 5 HP Laserjet per floor, a 5 Si for bulk prints (built like a tank) and the rest all 4s and 5s. Pretty reliable stuff and I'd never seen a fuser issue......until one day one of the small ones wound a sheet of A4 round and round the fuser roller. Amazingly did not smoke or bursst into flames, but the whole floor stank of "burnt toast" and the paper came out the colour and consistency of an ancient treasure map.
Have also had someone sit a fan heater on top of their desk, then go the toilet....during which time the heater fell on top of the PC base unit, melting the entire plastic casing (one of those white Fujitsu 486s I think). Very lucky it didn't set on fire.
Simple pollen filter replacement, Renault Scenic Mk3. One pane out under dash, reach up behind heater, find plastic door, 2 screws, door off, old filter out, new one in, reverse steps.
....except if your car is RHD, where changing the pedals to the other side without moving any of the master cylinders etc (as this would cost money) means the entire clutch pedal assembly, hydraulic pipes and all, is in front of the nice little door for the filter. Reaching all this is also hampered by the steering wheel and column, etc.
I've managed to find one video of an RHD car (a normal Megane, but they're the same) and you could tell by the bloke that filmed it's demeanor that he had defnitely been cursing all things French off camera.....
Mine is in a box in the attic, with all the games, the big magnifier thingy for the front and the TV tuner (sadly defunct now due to TV going digital, but might work abroad somewhere maybe). Waiting for the day when it becomes a collectors item.......
Great machine, even got Lemmings for it. Biggest drawback a rapacious appetite for batteries, 6 AAs at a time, 45 mins a set if you were lucky. Though it did introduce me to the idea of having a load of rechargeables and a charger that can do 8 of them at a time, still a boon for cameras and the Xbox controllers..........
Simple cruise control is excellent once you're used to it, it means less aches in your right leg from holding it in a constant position. If you are concerned about not having time to react if something happens, it sound like in that kind of situation (busy traffic, close to vehicle in front) you shouldn't be using it - I tend to use it only when the road far ahead is pretty clear, you still have to anticipate a way in advance what might happen in the next 15-45 seconds and act accordingly.
Its best use by far is on dual carriageways with average speed cameras, so you can watch the road not the speedometer!
Once when fixing a shared folder permissions issue, nice and easy, right click folder, permissions, reset permissions on child objects, job done.
.....except if you have accidentally highlighted the workgroup folder for the whole office, not the single folder at the top that you actually wanted to reset.
Correct folder resets, then it started on the next one......ohsh!t moment. Frantically cancelled out of it....after 5-10 seconds of terror, and it had only got part way through folder 2, which fortunately had no special permissions or structure under it.
Step away from the computer.......slowly. Get drink, calm down. Resolve to be more careful in future.
or the fallout may not be what you wish for.....
Also sometimes good practice to prime those around the victim so they can (a) support the joke and/or (b) won't turn on you if it goes wrong....
Did something similar back in the day with a fake virus checker that moved a person's files off their (3.5") floppy on to the HDD and displayed a message saying a virus had been detected. Panic ensued, until I "recovered" the files after a suitable time lapse and then explained the scam. Person selected was known to be both able to take a joke and deliver one, although even he did suffer a partial sense of humour failure briefly......
There's a very simple couple of reasons why companies are trying to push stuff that's Internet-connected.
Monthly subsription
Personal data that can be monetised.
They sell the initial product cheap (e.g. doorbell camera) then rake in the money from subs. If you had to buy the storage etc for your home to keep the videos it would cost more initially, but cost little in the long run. Only benefit in this case is being able to view footage remotely on your phone.
Although it's in a "proper" (well sort of, rather clunky) full size keyboard case, we got sick of the membrane very early on. Plus the case makes the (non Sinclair) RAM pack much less likely to wobble.
Chess in 1K of RAM, 3D Monster Maze, Catacombs, etc etc. Even had a Dig Dug in Hi Res by the time it got updated (to an Acorn Electron). No idea how someone managed to get that to work. I remember it being a swine to load from the tape though.
...lack of back button etc, but for the elderly Apple is usually the answer
Yes, overpriced, hobbled in file transfer, etc etc but the volume of "IT Support" calls drops to almost zero once you get them off laptops and onto iPads. And they last a fair while too.
For those who must have a PC or laptop, an SSD upgrade from spinning rust (where possible) is a cheap way to speed up an older PC or laptop.
The older stuff does have an analogy with old cars - the people who can keep those running are the ones with the knowledge, the cupboards stuffed with old parts, and so on.
Even one that had had lager spilt into it smelt better.
One possibly worse....way back when I was at college a fellow student got a maintenance job at the local amusement park, sorting out all the arcade machines. It was when the "sit inside" machines like Star Wars and the tank battle one were popular. However the manufacturers chose under the seat as a good place to put some of the mainboards, which is fine until a Very Young Person decides to sit in there, play around with the controls and have a "little accident".
Seems urine is very good at attacking solder, so not only was there a bad smell but the board was trashed..
Not only the exploitation of workers, but the even bigger elephant in the room, low prices bankrolled by billions in VC capital, which if a state subsidy would be illegal, and that subsidy provided on the proviso that once competitors are driven out of business then "surge pricing" will deliver a hefty profit for the VCs.
Customers don't come into it, apart from as cows to be thoroughly milked come the day they realise it's too late and they have no alternative.
Only ever seen that happen once, with an old Fujitsu 486DX (I think), the sudden bang and silence as the CDR shattered into several pieces was a bit of a shock to the surrounding company.....
Although just like yours, after dismantling and removal of all the (many) shards of shattered CDR, the drive still worked perfectly. CD/DVD drives are built tough......
....specifically for removing smart cards from laptops where the user had managed to insert them fully into the gap between the DVD drive casing and the laptop casing, conveniently positioned just a couple of mm below the actual smart card slot. Thanks HP, great piece of design there.......
Can remember driving past RAF Fylingdales (missile early warning radar station in Yorkshire) and the music being drowned out by a loud brrrrrrrtttttt for most of the way past. Think the radar interfered with the playback head in the cassette deck.
A staff member who suspended herself at the login stage and couldn't understand why.....until we discovered that her nice electric rise/fall desk was pushing her keyboard (particularly the enter key far right) into the underside of her bosom. The embarrased IT person explained....the lady in question fell about laughing!
There is also a special level of hell reserved for whoever thought that Ethernet sockets at skirting board level were a good idea, when they are exactly the same height as the ends of the legs on a standard office chair........so many broken/pushed into the socket box :((((((
Many years ago we had a dud batch of auto sensing PC power supplies that were supposed to set themselves to whatever you connected them to......except every so often one would set itself to 110 on a 240v plug, so when you switched it on the fuse would blow with a nice "pop". Very entertaining first thing i the morning when people are half asleep......
Put one next to a live speaker with unshielded inputs. Then ring it and listen......
Just under a second before the phone rings you'll hear a buzz as (I think) the handset responds to the base station. Older phones had much more transmit power than modern ones do.....
Same happens just before a text lands but a bit less so.
Can still hear same if you stand near the door in our local chemists, as the call patient intercom speaker is above the door.
Same here, all you need to do is find your local friendly firm that takes ex business laptops at refresh time, fits new SSDs, reinstall W10 and sells them at 1/3 of the original RRP or less. Choice of models etc. Had 5 from our local one and every one a good one. Buying new is stupid in my view,
The original "Space Invaders" machine in our local sports club was finally removed after many years when the management discovered that punters had for some time been flicking a piezoelectric lighter in front of the screen, which then gave you free credits....
which a friend has asked me to look at as "the fuse had gone". Took the back off, new fuse, switched plug on and fizzbang, large spark, fuse gone again. Get someone who knows what they're doing please, I'm out.
Although you are correct that to make an arc in dry air needs 3kV per cm, etc, the presence of dust, metal debris or anything else flying about can make for a larger (if only briefly) spark (I used to make good "fireworks" with a 13V supply as a kid, due to tiny metal bits flying off glowing). Also the image left burned on your retina will probably be larger.....
…~~~wavy lines~~
Back in the day when the office had lovely white plastic-cased Fujisu PCs, for the important people only.
One Important Person was cold, and placed a fan heater on top of their desk, on a box. Then went to the toilet for some time, during which the heater fell forwards.....on to the PC base, blowing right on it. The result looked like Mr Soft's (from the Softmints advert) PC, only the internal metal casing stopped the whole thing from flowing off the desk like lava. Very lucky not to cause a fire.
We had a bunch of faulty Fujitsu base units back in the day which auto-sensed 110/240V and set the PSU accordingly.
Faulty in that every so often one would get it wrong. Picture the scene, 0700 or so, desks back to back, user sans coffee so barely awake, colleague over the desk turns their PC on and "bang" there goes the fuse. User is now thoroughly awake!!
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