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New Nofer trunnions? I thought it was the density of high...
velocity positron annihilators.

I'm reminded of a long weekend, ~1967, ten of us from IBM Kingston (NY), spent at Stanford University trying to "exorcize" an IBM host (S/360-67) that had been getting excessive "machine checks". It was a little red light but somewhat like the "Blue Screen of Death". While we found things that could be tweaked and replaced, at the end of the weekend, we were defeated. It was back home and to the drawing boards.

The problem was a combination of things. Stanford had the finest glossy raised floor money could buy, fantastic electrical insulation. The high speed printer was used without metallic discharge braids, so the continuous paper was quite charged up. The machine operator would of course unload the printer paper periodically. The operator's chair had fiberglass fabric. That's good for building up a charge as well. The computer console was getting zapped with 7-8 KVolts on a regular basis. Sometimes, it was too much and the machine would fail.

Until a proper solution was found, and it was, Stanford had to use a conductive mat in front of the CPU, an old wood and leather chair for the operator, and of course metallic discharge braid put in the output path of printer.

The fix (IBM called them ECs, engineering changes) was put into production and propagated to all similar machines in the field.
Alex

Only two things are certain: the universe and human stupidity;
and I'm not certain about the universe.
-- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
New Heh - HV..
Whenever I entered the Cockroft-Walton cage (480 KV at ~ 100 mA DC - with a bouncer for regulation to a fare-thee-well) I most carefully lodged the heavy.. 4/0 cable-connected grounding hook in place, then hit each stack of PSs with the lighter ground rod. No contempt with familiarity.. There.

Wimpy computers.. a mere 7 KV!

Er the tankered bolling shims are a feature of The Turbo-Encabulator in Industry, a fine lampoon orig. from a GE engr. (?) maybe in late '40s. I have a copy somewhere and maybe it's hit the web. Too lazy to ask Google. Believe Turbo was mentioned years ago in a IWE thread, too.

Another feature from Turbo- needing a modern application:

hydrocoptic marzelvanes - possibly these could be adapted to provide security, in future M$ OSs. (Certainly nothing actually existing.. could.)


A.
New Re: Turbo Encabulator
One link:

[link|http://www.csd.uwo.ca/staff/magi/personal/humour/General_Audience/The%20Turbo%20Encabulator.html|Turbo Encabulator.]

The weak spot in this CPU was the Capacitive Read Only Storage, the ROM (Read Only Memory) of it's day. A bit was in effect a pair of capacitors made something like 1/16" x 1/16" gold plated foil separated by thin mylar film from a 1/16" strip of like material. Anyway, there would be a pulse of current along one dimension of this rig and sense amps would pick up a signal along the other. The signals were tiny and the amplifiers high gain. Hence the susceptibility to high electrical noise caused by static discharge.
Alex

Only two things are certain: the universe and human stupidity;
and I'm not certain about the universe.
-- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
New Ah yesss.. alas, nostalgia ain't what it used to be..
     Palm fries Dell ?? The Reg reports. - (Ashton) - (6)
         Not dumb: just lawyers trying to make a buck (or a million) -NT - (tonytib)
         Crap. Noone show this to our Network Admin - (Steve Lowe)
         Nofer trunnions? I thought it was the density of high... - (a6l6e6x) - (3)
             Heh - HV.. - (Ashton) - (2)
                 Re: Turbo Encabulator - (a6l6e6x) - (1)
                     Ah yesss.. alas, nostalgia ain't what it used to be.. -NT - (Ashton)

The only reason the bongos are the worst is because AIs have never tried chicken nuggets before.
101 ms