Windows might have frozen, but at least my feet are toasty
- Reference: 1608538509
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/12/21/who_me/
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Today's tale from Register reader "Mark" takes us back a good few decades to his time spent in the IT support barrel. It was a heady time, and the IT team had just completed a rollout of new PCs, connected together via the magic of networking.
The PCs themselves were exciting: not the beige boxes of old, but a new generation of slimline devices that purred with power. We've not named the PC maker because, as will become clear, what transpired wasn't really its fault.
"Although the fans in these were, I thought, fairly small and quiet," said Mark, "one of the managers didn't like the fan noise."
The ungrateful so-and-so noted that the fan was in the side of the case rather than at the back where all the cables were connected. He hit on a bonzer wheeze: "He could quiet the noise by putting the PC on its side next to his desk with the fan downwards so that it was muffled by the carpet it was resting against."
Simple, right?
Not quite. Computer fans are there for a reason and while today's CPUs will throttle themselves back as the heat rises, things [2]weren't quite so straightforward in decades past. Indeed, this hack has not so fond memories of destroying hardware by failing to consider the cooling needed for that ham-fisted attempt at overclocking.
And then there is the power supply and all the ancillary components, none of which would appreciate a fan wheezing on carpet fibres rather than doing the important job of shifting air around.
"Unsurprisingly, his PC eventually caught fire."
Ever witnessed a perfectly good bit of equipment destroyed in a conflagration caused by management muppetry? Or seen smoke seeping from every port because you'd forgotten to connect the fan? We've done at least one of those things. Perhaps you've done worse? Send us your confession to [3]Who, Me? ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/Tag/who-me
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgOmMAasqto
[3] mailto:whome@theregister.com
[4] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Once
I let the magic smoke out of the computer. Like a colleague says, it's easy getting the magic smoke out... it's a bugger to get back in!
Always expect th unexpected from users
People have been trying to use their devices wrong long before the iPhone 4.
I just don’t comprehend why people think it’s ok to cover things like fans or vent holes. But then perhaps designers could put the, in places where they couldn’t get covered?
Many older laptops had vents in the hinge area which was great for hiding them and keeping clear from obstruction but not so great for the screen or hinge.
My Lenovo laptop vents out the side where the power plugs in, always guaranteed some clearance there, and it does vent a lot of heat.
Re: Always expect th unexpected from users
Many modern laptops do it as well - my Huawei Matebook D from last year does it, as do the Asus laptops in the house. All Ryzen 2k or 3k series.
Even worse with heaters...
…~~~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.
Re: Even worse with heaters...
I worked for a while in an International Haulage company for a few years. Their offices at the remote sites tended to be porta cabins next to the open yards. I saw at least 2 melted boxes as described above and my home monitor had a slightly melted corner and had been thrown out by the company.
Icon - could it be anything else for this story?
Re: Even worse with heaters...
this reminds me of the secretary that worked at the last company i worked for... she was always cold, so the boss gave her a heater, an electric radiator one.
She always used it under her desk, to keep her legs warm, until the day the plastic coating of said desk started melting and the whole office had to be cleared for half an hour (in february!) to let the smell get out. Fortunately i had my new car whose climate control worked perfectly.
Manglement
It never ceases to amaze me, the things they manage to think of, or perhaps thought is not actually involved.
At one job, I had a brilliant suggestion from the senior manager that we should replace all of our machinery every 18 months (the standard warranty period for our commercial kit at the time), his reasoning being we could halve the maintenance engineer staff and just claim warrnty.
I suggested he should go and read any random Ts&Cs for an item of kit. The company was a grounds maintenance contractor and he genuinely thought that a warranty would be paid if one of the guys drove over a piece of kit with a tractor.
In his defence, he had an MBA and had been a local council technical officer, so had no experience of proper work.
Re: Manglement
"...In his defence, he had an MBA and had been a local council technical officer, so had no experience of proper work..."
Seems somewhat harsh! I bet he thoroughly enjoyed hard work. Watching others do it, that is...
A neighbour once asked me to look at her laptop, which kept cutting out. A couple of minutes investigation showed that the thing got very hot before shutting itself off. Suspecting a faulty fan I turned it over to find that the fan vents were all clogged with a brown sticky substance. Long experience in bar work in my younger days led me to imediately identify this as tar and nicotine from cigarette smoke. She and her partner would sit at the laptop for hours on end, surfing the web and chain smoking tabs. The reult was absolutely disgusting.
Ten minutes scrubbing with alcohol wipes and a stiff paintbrush fixed the problem.
Site services...
Our helpdesk was reorganized. The desks moved around and the tanks in the floor with the power and networking along with them. These plugged into a power rail and only plugged in one way... At least in theory.
Somehow the site services guy managed to rotate the box 90° and wedge it in place. So, now, life = neutral, earth = live and neutral = earth...
I plugged my PC back in and flicked the (hardware) power switch. BANG a 12" long spark shot out the back of the PSU and everything went dead! Unfortunately, I had turned the PC on first, not the dodgy old monitor I wanted replacing... Hey ho.
Another time, in Germany, I had a similar problem. The German sockets are similar to the UK ones, in that the Earth connector connects first as the plug is pushed into the socket. All very good and safety conscious. The German system, however, has the earth connectors standing proud in the socket. You can actually touch them. They are great for working on electronics, you attach your anti-static wristband direct to the earth prongs.
I was standing in my office and leaning against the wall, I then leant forward and lost my balance. I reached out behind me and managed to stick my fingers in the socket to save me. My left hand touched the earth prong, no problems. My right hand followed and BAM! The electrician that had wired up the sockets had switched the phase and earth on that socket! All the other sockets were correct, just this one was wrong and, in over 15 years of use, nobody had ever plugged anything into that socket!
Re: Site services...
"...I plugged my PC back in and flicked the (hardware) power switch. BANG a 12" long spark shot out the back of the PSU and everything went dead! Unfortunately, I had turned the PC on first, not the dodgy old monitor I wanted replacing... Hey ho..."
Nope, sorry.
I don't argue that it maybe flashed and went bang as well as made you jump and in your own mind it would've seemed like it did what you describe, but really...it didn't. To create an arc isn't actually that easy over anything other than small gaps and tends to require a combination of high voltage and/or high frequency.
Besides, trying to work through your 90 degree change suggests L and N were switched which wouldn't cause a bang. L to E should've tripped an RCD (they've been a thing for a long time now) but in this case the E from the supply was going to the L of the PC so I am really struggling to fact check this one but it feels like it's grown in your mind over the years, sorry.
Happy to be corrected, here.
Cold breeze
It's strange how folks that log helpdesk calls for the computer causing a (depending on the season) warm/cold breeze across their ankles don't really appreciate a response that consists of one word: "Socks".
Re: Cold breeze
Sorry to educate you:
Some people have chronic poor circulation. It's not at all rare. 'Socks' is like shouting louder to a deaf person. At this very moment I have my feet on a 200w tubular heater driven through a dimmer switch. The soles of my feet are now warm but my knees are icy. I might have to set the 650w 'silent' fan heater going.
Only once
Only ever had issues with cooling once - a PC I'd self assembled many years ago and hadn't put enough thermal paste on the CPU. ISTR it was an AMD Athlon, so probably about 20 years ago... It kept freezing on me and took me a while to figure out the problem and a few iterations of taking it to bits, putting on paste, cleaning heatsinks of dust, upgrading fans etc before it got stable again. Good cooling is very important to the correct functioning of computers I learned from that...
Re: Only once
It kept freezing on you so you made sure it stayed cool.
Isn't the English language odd?
Re: Only once
If the temperature in your fridge is too high, you should turn the fridge _up_...
I did once blow up a 80287 co-processor inserted in the image processing "workstation", inserted there by our supplier. When I opened the case to inspect the damage, I noted the lettering on the chip: 80287-10, indicating it was a 10 MHz part inserted in a 12 MHz machine. Not a massive degree of unintentional over-clocking, but enough to fry the part after some time. I complained about the issue, and the company in question first stated I was wrong, after which I gave them my copy of the Intel data sheet on said component. I got an 80287-12 as replacement after that.
I actually inserted a home-made, hand soldered ISA-bus board to control both the exposure time on our cameras and the shutters on the fluorescence and phase contrast light sources on our microscopes. Switching the computer on after installing the experimental board was quite scary, but nothing shorted. Much to my surprise, it worked straight away (once my heart rate was back to something approaching normal)
That's one way to fry your chips...