I read the article twice now, and feel like there is something missing? Maybe a second cuppa will help me put my finger on it.

There is normally red text at the top of the article that says 'ON-CALL' that is missing.

The "something missing" is - "...for that is not his name..."

How on earth did the editors let that omission through? Heads should roll!

It looks like this one was done in a bit of a hurry.

I noticed that part was missing right off, I chalked it up to part of the El Reg redesign, first remove Paris, then Dabbsy (https://autosaveisforwimps.substack.com/ )... then the banner for the category. What's next, removing the Vulture??

However I was referring to the story, too short, not enough action, other than running to the client.

25-pin D-type RS232 plug rammed upside down in a socket. Socket survived, culprit made to replace 25-pin plug (most of the pins wired!)

Cup of tea... how about glass of very agreeable sherry at 9am (on the premises of a wine merchant)

Used to train students using "AIM 65" development boards - 6502 with all I/O on 4mm breakout to a side panel. The kids blew the 6522 i/o ports up all the time so, exasperated, we decided to investigate how. Those boards had +/-5V in all directions, 12V from an RS232 and even +/- 12V from external PSUs - everything that was available to students in the lab - shoved up every external orifice and we could not just blow the 6522 i/o ports ... We gave up, accepted that the kids were better at destruction than we were and bought another load of 6522s.

Static.

tried that as well ... could never just blow single 6522 i/o ports

When I was doing electronic systems in college - certainly with a few people that shouldn't have been allowed near anything electrical, we had one guy who produced entertainment.

They used to have these plug boards with which you could fit components that was sort of a bit like lego, you could slot in these blocks that had components and a description of what it was on it, they were powered by a separate 12v power supply.

We heard a big bang and everyone turned round to see a mushroom cloud billow up to and across the ceiling and a look of horror on the guys face.

We never worked out how he managed to cause a transistor (I think it was) to lose its magic blue smoke.

We did jokingly create the "Theory of Random Connections" off of the back of what he done which was the running joke for the rest of the college year.

Fun times.

I have expressed my love of USB-C as it works either way now my eyesight is failing. I was not aware that pushing hard enough would cure that problem, if only to cause a greater problem. The W95 is just the cherry on the cake but raises further questions - who installed W95 on a new PC and why?

I don't think I've even walked a mile at work never mind run, maybe around corridors with some paper in my hand avoiding work. I've cycled to work on 24 hour callout, breathless and sweaty implies dedication.

"You've put the disk in upside down. I'm going to have to take it back to my lab to fix it." Saved a week of stupid fault calls.

A company I worked for was installing Win95 on "new" machines well into the 2000s. The owner was a cheapskate and had a lot of spare Win95 licences.

I know of a major company which ran the entire factory production on Win3.1 for a *long* time. The argument was that worked, worked very well and was very reliable. Any upgrade would mean new hardware, OS and production software to integrate with an existing system which might work ... might even work well ... and would provide no obvious benefit (at the time) to production or user experience in return for a massive financial outlay and huge amounts of work ... The upgrade to WinXP was not happening and I couldn't really argue with that one.

Just a variation of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

To be fair to them: They were likely not connected to the outside, a Win3.1 (and even 3.11) system fighting you to connect to anything even remotely modern. I'm too young for having really worked on these systems, I had them on my own PC waay back when Pluto was still a planet.

So I can totally get that. Having to replace a hard disk would have been tricky. Those machines did not like anything larger than... 205MB, I think it was? Could be tricked into accepting it with a special driver (or just limiting the partition to the @amountallowed). We all passed a lot of water since then.

Back in 2004, I did data entry for DHL after uni classes - sweet gig, 5:30 PM to 8:30 Monday to Friday, paid for my beers. The couriers had handheld scanners for registering what they picked up, these scanners integrated with a single air gapped PC in the depot running a DOS program that transferred the data from all the scanners to a floppy disk, which was then taken to another PC and uploaded to the mainframe. Once the data was uploaded, we could start our job, which was taking these partial records and filling them in from the couriers paper copies.

This DOS PC was elderly AF, the floppy disk was elderly AF (of course it was the same disk each day, erased and re-used), so it was quite common to turn up at 5:30 and do nothing/drink tea/chat for an hour whilst the duty manager swore at the old machine.

At college, when given a blank 3.5" floppy and a sticky label, one student on finding that the label was larger than the target area, placed the sticker so it partially covered the metal shutter. When inserted into a floppy drive, which offered some resistance, it then broke the drive!

Cue an interruption to the lesson for a brief demonstration on where to place the label.

I had to think about that for a minute - yes the labels wrapped around the bottom of the disc (when did the name change from diskette?) - Nurse! more dried frog pills please.......

I worked with a colleague who many years ago was fixing a PC and complained that it was not working when powered on. I took a look a litle later and the BIOS chimes were pretty much indicating "no ram". The box had 2 sticks of RAM in them so that is wrong. I took the sticks out and to my surprise, I saw 2 sticks of DDR which were in a slot where there should be DDR2. I was baffled as the notches are wrong, so I compared the chips and the notches were correct. My colleague came back I asked "how did you get these into the motherboard ?" and was told "it took some pressing, but they finally clipped in"

correct RAM and MB worked, RAM into an older bit of kit to test and it worked, so no real damage, just bewilderment on my behalf at how they didn't stop, but just persevered, and this was a colleague with years of experience in the support team - so not a PFY from college

Well, he was only following the instructions on the memory stick : RAM.......

Years ago my then boss took it on himself to do a RAM upgrade on a PC. I generally tried to keep him away from such things for good reason!

After some huffing and puffing on his part he switched the machine on, only to be greeted with a nice curl of smoke and a smell of burning. He'd somehow managed to half insert the DIMM the wrong way round, despite the asymmetric slot, and decided that would do.

He probably had 40 years experience in IT, just not with PCs of course.

Reminds me of someone who for shall remain nameless.

He inserted an SD card into his new digital camera - this was back in the early noughties. It didn't want to go in. So instead of turning it round and trying again he used welly. It broke the socket and he had to pay to get it repaired.

It's all of a piece. Given that users will use way more force than you'd imagine necessary, why are we still designing connectors that only work one way round? If it were me, I'd design a card with contacts on both sides so it wouldn't matter which way round it was inserted.

Oh wait: costs....

Any machine is a smoke machine if you operate it wrongly enough.

Did that with my first 486DX CPU. Pin 1 was not in the right orientation, and it made some pretty lights.

Was not impressed. Lesson learnt the hard way.

First time building a pc.

Fitting an ATX P1 mobo into an old AT case; not all of the holes and riser lined up of course, so I used lego to insulate.

Finish plugging everything in, or so i thought, and turned it on, happy to see the bios flash up.

Then - ERROR: no FDD detected

Realise I missed the power plug on the FDD, and rush to plug it in, forgetting to power off first. Managed to misalign the holes and start to slide it in one pin over where it should have been (somehow the slots and notches didn't prevent this). BZZT-CRACK! Flash! PC power dies. Strange whine.

In shame, turn off, unplug. Align and insert correctly. Expecting nothing, I turned it back on. Whirr, Beep! All is fine!

That's when I learned this PSU had a circuit breaker instead of a fuse (or worse, soldered in fuse; blew a few of those with the 115v switch in the wrong place in my time).

Lesson learned; Measure twice, cut once. And they don't make 'em like they used to.

Only about 80% of the users I've had to support over my career ...

When I was younger I thought I could change the world. Now that I've been teaching on and off for about 40 years, I've come to the realization that probably nine out of ten humans are ineducable beyond "eat here, sleep there, bathe occasionally & don't poop in the living room".

About right. No point trying to push water uphill...

I remember back in the days when I worked in the local IT department at a hospital. The ambulance crew bought a, back then, new and modern digital camera to take pictures of car accidents and other situations for whatever reason. Looking for an easy way to transfer the files to the computer, the bright star and IT master (in his own eyes at least) amongst them wanted to upgrade one of the computers to Windows 2000 so he could get USB support. Back then we were still on Windows 95, so he wanted to take matters in his own hand. I was sent down to talk with them about the matter, and as he explained the situation he slammed a Windows 95 cd down on the desk saying something along the lines of "Look at this, this crappy OS doesn't support USB, that's why we need Windows 2000!". Unfortunatley for him, it was a CD with Windows 95 OSR2, and on the CD itself (or the cover, can't recall for sure) it said 'Windows 95 OSR2 - with USB support'.

I just pointed at the CD and asked him to read out loud what it said.

Support staff running to a job - outrageous behavior. If we don't get a BOFH today it's because Simon read this article and is in shock.

Agreed. Support staff should take thier time to sample the various delights from pubs along the way.

That kind of behaviour just leads to unrealistic expectations.