High Jinx - Miscellaneous Damage
There is plenty of opportunity in the workplace to damage things.
I'm not talking about intentional damage here,
kicking a computer out of sheer frustration and watching parts
of it fly off really don't count here.
There is just plenty that can "go wrong" and
usually it is because of stupidity on the side of engineers and
technicians.
Maybe it was lack of sleep the previous evening,
possibly they have their mind on something else, maybe it's out
of sheer curiosity, by accidents and "damage" happen.
Switching Power Supply
This was one of those "curiosity" moments.
We've all seen those power supply units with the
US/UK voltage switch on the back. The idea that the power supply
can be manufactured and then sent to any country in the world
and it should work.
A lot of modern power supplies do this switching
automatically now and alas this means you cannot mess around
with them, it's a shame but you'll never get to experience the
sheer panic when the switched is moved.
We very rarely took delivery of Hewlett
Packard computers. We mainly built our own systems be they
workstations, desktops or servers however sometimes a customer
would ask for a particular make of server and to keep the sale
we would order one in.
So there it was on the desk, a shiny new
Hewlett Packard server and it needed the OS installed and to be
fully tested before it went out to the customer. On the back of
this large unit was a switching power supply.
The same thoughts went through the technicians
head "What exactly would happen if I flicked that switch and
then switched the machine on?"
A combination of curiosity and the "hands moving
faster than the brain" resulted in this switching being
activated while the server was switched on.
The result, for those who are really
interested, is one hell of a loud bang followed by the computer
powering down very rapidly. Soon plumes of black smoke will
escape from the power supply and a really awful smell of fried
electronics.
On this particular occasion we phoned up
Hewlett Packard and complained bitterly that they should send us
a server with the PSU switched to US - we shouldn't be expected
to have to check all machines before switching them on.
They were extremely apologetic and dispatched an
engineer to us the same day to replace the power supply unit,
they really were sorry for the "mistake".
Bent Pins
What better place to store a Pentium processor
when you need to take it up a flight of stairs than inside your pocket?
Receiving CPU's in "tray" form means that a tray
of some fifteen or twenty processors would arrive in our stock
control department. Of course stock control wouldn't let us take
a tray of fifteen processors away just so that we could install
one, so when we needed one for installation we were given a CPU
with no protection.
If we also had other items to carry placing the
processor in your pocket was a good idea, it was out of the way
and unlikely to come to harm.
That is until you are a technician who somehow
managed to fall "upstairs" and in the process land on the CPU
with a current value of around £300.
I'm sure we've all bent pins on something in our
lives, maybe we've been a little bit too forceful with an IDE
cable or even bent the corner pin on a processor.
Imagine if you can for a second a P90 processor
with every single (and I mean every single) pin bent flat.
The poor technician in question spent the rest of
the day with one eye closed and a pair of long-nosed pliers
straightening up every single pin one by one so that it could be
used in an upgrade.
Alas stock control would not accept "It was
like that when I got it" as a reason to swap it over. I am
however pleased to report that the pin straightening exercise
was a success and somewhere in England there is a computer with
a P90 processor in it that at one point had x bent-flat pins on
it.
Smash The Case
Our "smoking like a chimney" technician rested
his cigarette on one too many computers while speaking on the
phone and the result was another melted case.
On this occasion the customer was due in later
that day to collect his machine and unfortunately for him the
showroom PC's were under heavy guard from the salespeople - they
knew what they were likely to get back should this technician
request to borrow a display model for a little while.
A new case was taken from stock control and
the insides of the machine were carefully transferred over to
the new case. The machine was powered up and all was working
well, this was a nice quick computer transfer and the company
was only out of pocket by one case.
The technician then took the damaged top part
of the case and proceeded to cause it some real damage.
Jumping up and down on it, twisting the side
panels until they almost snapped. This case was going to be
skipped so why not let him have a little fun?
Once the case lid was more or less destroyed the
technician fitted the new top part of the case to the customers
machine ready for its collection in around an hours time.
It was at this time that the horrible truth was
discovered, our technician friend had jumped up and down on, sat
on, twisted the sides off the nice new case lid, the case safely
on the technicians work bench was the faulty one with the
cigarette damage to the front.
A quick trip to stock control relieved them of
their final in stock case and at last the technician had a
machine that could be safely returned to the customer - so the
company was out of pocket on two cases.
Screw Fight!
While the technical and engineering
departments were still on the ground floor a prelude to the
infamous Rag Fight was an occasional "screw fight".
As you can probably imagine from the name
these were extremely dangerous, very stupid and resulted in a
fair amount of damage.
They were not organised, they were silly once
again but they did happen now and again and the man most likely
to start them was known as "Carter" from engineering.
I can recall two such unprovoked screw attacks on
the technical department, both of them resulting in some pretty
exciting damage.
The first of these was when a stray screw fell into a power supply unit that had just
had a dry-joint repaired and was running "open topped" on a desk near by.
The screw managed to short out some pretty major
components and the resulting bang and plumes of black smoke were
exciting to say the least.
On another occasion an "open-top" monitor was the victim.
This had just been adjusted by the engineers
because it was rather old and was starting to get a little bit
dim, a slight increase to the tube voltage was enough to give
the monitor another 12 months of life before it would require
replacement.
The stray screw that fell into the back of this
monitor resulted in a rather accelerated replacement for the
customer, this one "on the company".
Maybe the transition from screws to rags was a good one?
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