🚀 go-pugleaf

j...@karazm.math.uh.edu (J. Eric Townsend) writes:

>What about flat-pack socketed chips (don't know what they're called,
>but the Amiga uses it for a chip)?  Are these less likely to
>corrode their way to failure?

>Some anecdotes (like anyone cares :-):

>I had a roommate (hi Phaed) who, as a monthly ritual, took apart his
>Radio Shack CoCoII and cleaned every cardedge and contact.  If
>he ever skipped a month, there was an inevitable failure of some
>item on the bus.

>When the Atari ST first came out, a common "debugging process" when
>an ST was on the fritz was to unplug any peripheral devices and drop
>the unit onto a table from about 6".  This was to reset the chips.
>(I watched a friend do this while on the phone to an Atari support
>person.  It was done at the Atari-dood's direction.)
Hmmm. strange you should mention the Atari Fix - My mate Dino used
to work for Silca Shop fixing Atari computers. He spent most of his
time pushing the PLCCs back into their sockets (somewhat more friendly
than dropping the machine, but more time consuming). He was looking
for a source of cheap PLCC sockets with retaining clips. He gave up
in the end, and left to become a games coder.
While working for Systime in Leeds we always used to have to ``fix''
the Tardis (a multibus 1 machine) by re-seating all the cards & connectors
about once a week. I think it had something to do with thermal cycling...
I used to have a double headed dot matrix line printer that responded
quite well to having all of its (six!) interface cards removed and
replugged whenever it started playing up. Wonderful printer that.
UC only, proprietry parallel interface, all the motion control performed
using massive motors and friction breaks. Couldn't half shift paper though!
-- 
Here I speak neither for Specialix, nor myself. What you see is all you get.
Jon Brawn, jo...@specialix.co.uk  (or for you bangers: ..!mcsun!ukc!slxsys!jonb)
  ``Once upon a time, not so very long ago, in a place not so very far away''