USMCSgt
08-07-2004, 20:57
I am going to tell a couple of strange stories & I hope everyone will respond with a story of their own. Perhaps these will help someone having a perplexing problem.
Way back before some of you were born, I had a Commodore 64 (a computer with a big 64k of RAM, that's 64k, 1/16th of a mb). Since the system did not have a hard drive, I had to place the system disk in the drive, then boot the computer. I had an OS called Geos (Graphic Environment Operating System). IBM clones cost around $5000 & up at that time. The computer we had at the plant was considered state of the art small as it was only about twice the size of a refrigerator!
I would start the system up in the AM, then try to do something, i.e.,write a letter. The word processing program would frequently screw up in an apparently random fashion. I might be typing and the line would not wrap. The letter could be 1 page long, but all on one line! The next day, it would be something else.
One day, I noticed that the computer screwed up only on days when I had a cup of tea. I would start the computer booting up, then go into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. It turns out that the computer in the living room was on the same circuit as the microwave in the kitchen. When I hit the button on the microwave, the inrush current spike messed up whatever happened to be loading at that exact moment. Since I did not start the microwave at precisely the same moment relative to the computer loading, I got random malfunctions.
Putting the computer on it's own circuit fixed this completely.
A few years ago, I had a Dell Dimension. I got the computer in July. It worked great until September, when it started this random error stuff. I had no idea what was wrong. It ran just fine at the computer shop (with the side cover off, which I didn't know about until later). One day, while just messing around with it, I left the side cover off for a while. The computer ran flawlessly. It was overheating with the cover on, but what changed since August? The answer? Air conditioning. the computer ran cool all summer because it was near the room air conditioner. When the weather turned cooler, there was no need to air condition the room. Thus, the computer overheated as there was no cold air blowing on the computer case!
I put a larger fan, separately powered in it, problem gone. I should have written to Dell about this, but I never got around to it.
Way back before some of you were born, I had a Commodore 64 (a computer with a big 64k of RAM, that's 64k, 1/16th of a mb). Since the system did not have a hard drive, I had to place the system disk in the drive, then boot the computer. I had an OS called Geos (Graphic Environment Operating System). IBM clones cost around $5000 & up at that time. The computer we had at the plant was considered state of the art small as it was only about twice the size of a refrigerator!
I would start the system up in the AM, then try to do something, i.e.,write a letter. The word processing program would frequently screw up in an apparently random fashion. I might be typing and the line would not wrap. The letter could be 1 page long, but all on one line! The next day, it would be something else.
One day, I noticed that the computer screwed up only on days when I had a cup of tea. I would start the computer booting up, then go into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. It turns out that the computer in the living room was on the same circuit as the microwave in the kitchen. When I hit the button on the microwave, the inrush current spike messed up whatever happened to be loading at that exact moment. Since I did not start the microwave at precisely the same moment relative to the computer loading, I got random malfunctions.
Putting the computer on it's own circuit fixed this completely.
A few years ago, I had a Dell Dimension. I got the computer in July. It worked great until September, when it started this random error stuff. I had no idea what was wrong. It ran just fine at the computer shop (with the side cover off, which I didn't know about until later). One day, while just messing around with it, I left the side cover off for a while. The computer ran flawlessly. It was overheating with the cover on, but what changed since August? The answer? Air conditioning. the computer ran cool all summer because it was near the room air conditioner. When the weather turned cooler, there was no need to air condition the room. Thus, the computer overheated as there was no cold air blowing on the computer case!
I put a larger fan, separately powered in it, problem gone. I should have written to Dell about this, but I never got around to it.