🚀 go-pugleaf

I own a Kaypro II circa. 1982, which is a small box (about 1.5' X 2') with
it's own built in screen and two disk drives.  When I got it (fourth hand)
in 1987, it had relatively few problems, save an annoying message which
appeared curtesy of CP/M when the system booted, i.e.:
 
KAYPRO II
CP/M v2.2
A:

I used a sector editor to change this message to:

(Poof) Yes Master?
A:

and the 'warm boot' message to:

Cold Brew
A:

Which was most humorous for about a day and a half.  However, I gave some
copies of the hack to some friends at the local users group, and CP/M machines
tend to get sold, and resold over and over.  Imagine my suprise to boot a
computer in Pullman, about 200 miles from my home near Seattle in Washington
State, and see the message:

(Poof) Yes Master?
A:

:)
 
My Kaypro also tends to go 'out of kilter' now and again, and the only proven
solution is to whack on the side with a rubber mallet (I'm not kidding, I'ts
right here by my side) which cures the problem instantly.  No amount of service
calls, or replacement of components has fixed the problem, but a good whack
will do the trick every time.

If you have the old CP/M version of WordStar, you'll find the message:

Nosy, aren't you?

Placed in every available open space in the executable code....

+--------------------------------------------------------------+
|     Well, you're climbing to a job on the company ladder,    |
|              Hope it dosen't take too long. . .              |
|    Can't you see there'll come a day when it won't matter,   |
|                Come a day when you'll be gone?               |
|                I understand about indescision,               |
|               and I don't care if I get behind!              |
|                 People livin' in competition,                |
|                          All I want                          |
|                  is to have my piece of mind.                |
|                             -Boston                          |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+

|My Kaypro also tends to go 'out of kilter' now and again, and the only proven
|solution is to whack on the side with a rubber mallet (I'm not kidding, I'ts
|right here by my side) which cures the problem instantly.  No amount of service
|calls, or replacement of components has fixed the problem, but a good whack
|will do the trick every time.

Reminds me of the cartoon in an electronics hobby magazine
(pre-computer) where the housewife is saying to the TV serviceman: "At
first I thought of giving it a kick but then I decided I had better
leave it to an expert", as the latter carefully takes a rubber mallet
out of his tool bag. :-)

In article <2...@ns-mx.uiowa.edu> jo...@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879) writes:
>Another story of the PDP-11/20 at the University of Illinois in 1973:
>
>Sometimes the machine would stop working unexpectedly.  When this happened,
>one of the common fixes was to give the CPU a swift kick from below before
>trying to reboot.

When I was a student technician at the university hardware repair center 
("Terminal Repair" I always found the name amusing. ;-)) we used to repair
a terminals (vt52's I think)  in a similar way.  The logic board was
mounted upside-down on the bottom of the computer.  Some of the logic
was socketted.  Occasionally, the chips would start to unseat and the
terminal would be flakey.  When the terminal would come in for repair,
we would take the terminal out of site of the customer, take a wooden
stick (label "for terminals only") and bang the bottom of the terminal
hard enough to re-seat the chips, and then bring the terminal back to
the front counter to check it out.  The expression on the customer's face
was frequently one of utter amazement.  

Note:  The terminals that we did this on always belonged to our computation
center (though they may be in individual offices) and we never did this
to someone who actually *owned* the terminal (at least, we tried not to...)


			steve

>My Kaypro also tends to go 'out of kilter' now and again, and the only proven
>solution is to whack on the side with a rubber mallet (I'm not kidding, I'ts
>right here by my side) which cures the problem instantly.  No amount of service
>calls, or replacement of components has fixed the problem, but a good whack
>will do the trick every time.

A true hardware fix if I ever saw one...

-Tom Hopkins <hop...@bu-pub.bu.edu>

        I'm not sure this counts, because it happened quite recently,
but I recently repaired a hard disk with my bare hands.  Does this
qualify as unusual?  Just over a month ago, the hard disk on my Amiga stopped
working.  It wouldn't read at all, and I wasn't going to risk writing.
        After taking everything apart and testing voltages, etc, I
finally noticed the drive wasn't whining when the power was first applied.
Although the drive is usually otherwise quiet, it sounds like it's trying to
take off when spinning up.
        Naturally, I checked the power at the drive again, but it was just
fine.  Then I remembered a discussion on UseNet regarding a problem with
hard drives where the lubrication builds up and freezes the drive head
in place.
        Being a programmer who had gone too long since my last backup,
I couldn't afford to loose the data on the drive, and I also couldn't
afford to wait for the drive to be repaired.
        Out of shear desperation, I pulled the hard drive completely
out of its mounting, placed it on its side in the palm of my left hand,
and, after a few minutes to make peace with the universe, firmly struck
the other side of the drive with the heel of my right hand.
        I then reconnected the drive, turned on the power, and almost
screamed for joy when I heard the drive spinning up, the only time
I've ever been glad to hear that whine!

        While it's been interesting watching the personal computer industry
evolve over the last 15 years, there are a few problems with being an
"old timer."  I lost every chance I had at a job a few years back because
the employer thought that I was lying to him.  I claimed extensive experience
with DBase II, but limited MS-Dos experience.  I tried to explain that
I used DBase II under CP/M, but he refused to believe that there where
"Personal Computers" before IBM missapropriated the term.  He honestly
thought that DBase II had been created for the IBM PC.  Oh well, I doubt
I would have enjoyed working for someone that closed minded anyway.

t
Eric J. Schwertfeger, UNLV  man...@arrakis.nevada.edu

Anyone who has ever used what I believe was DEC's first video terminal,
the VT05, probably remembers that the display often got flaky, and you
could almost *always* fix it by punching the right side of the terminal,
hard.  Apparently the backplane (yes, it took multiple cards to implement
this uppercase-only wonder) had cheap connectors and you just needed to
jiggle the cards occasionally.

The worst part of the VT05 was that it was so long it couldn't fit straight
on standard desks -- a real blunder.  It also weighed about half a ton...
-- 
Larry Campbell                          The Boston Software Works, Inc.
camp...@redsox.bsw.com                 120 Fulton Street
wjh12!redsox!campbell                   Boston, MA 02109

In article <15...@redsox.bsw.com> campbell@redsox.UUCP (Larry Campbell) writes:
=>
=>The worst part of the VT05 was that it was so long it couldn't fit straight
=>on standard desks -- a real blunder.  It also weighed about half a ton...

Ah, yes, but it was the *perfect* size for mounting in the computer rack:
the monitor was even with the front of the rack, and the keyboard stuck
out about ten inches, just enough to get your knees under.  Of course,
when the monitor went fritzy, you had to open the cabinet above it and
bang on the *top* of the terminal, but it didn't really happen that often
to me.
				-Garison-

Some definitions may come in useful here:

A layman knows he has to kick it.
An amateur knows where to kick it.
A professional knows how hard.

Many a true word...
-- 
David Brooks				dbr...@osf.org
Open Software Foundation		uunet!osf.org!dbrooks

In article <11...@unsvax.NEVADA.EDU> maniac@arrakis.nevada.edu.uucp (ERIC SCHWERTFEGER) writes:
>
>        I'm not sure this counts, because it happened quite recently,

I bought a Seagate ST251 for an AT that would occasionally be ignored by
the machine at power up.  Turning the machine off and kicking it (after the
disk spun down) would usually revive it.  It turned out that the screws
mounting (and grounding) the pcb to the disk unit were loose.  Hitting it
would re-establish contact.

In article <11...@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM> m...@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM (Mike Smith) writes:
>I bought a Seagate ST251 for an AT that would occasionally be ignored by
>the machine at power up.  Turning the machine off and kicking it (after the
>disk spun down) would usually revive it.  It turned out that the screws
>mounting (and grounding) the pcb to the disk unit were loose.  Hitting it
>would re-establish contact.

I used to have kick-start disk drives around here all the time.

Our CS department bought a batch of off-brand 20M hard drives for their
office PC's.  Almost all of the drives developed the same problem.
Sometimes, when turned off, the drives would spin down and stop in a
dead spot of some sort.  Then when the PC was turned on again, the drive
wouldn't spin up.

The solution?  Open the cabinet and take out the drive, but leave the
cables attached.  Turn on the power and SLAP the drive on the side.
Spun right up every time.  No problem.  (If the disk won't spin up,
the data is gone anyway.  What could it hurt?)

Eventually I figured out how to pick up a PC, turn it on, and bang
one corner of it against the desktop in just the right way to make
the drive spin up.

We eventually replace all of the drives.

-- 
EMAIL: dra...@iitmax.iit.edu+--------------+ Academic Computing Center
BITNET: SYSMARK@IITVAX       | Mark Draughn | 10 W. 31st St.
VOICE: +1 312 567 5962       +--------------+ Illinois Institute of Technology
ALSO: ...{nucsrl|att}!iitmax!draughn          Chicago, Illinois  60616

In article <13...@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> ad...@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Adam Glass) writes:
>I have a small green video terminal that I use occasionally to test
>programs which need well-formatted output and I don't have access to
>a printer.
>
>Sometimes the screen will start whining in an extrordinarily annoying
>pitch (~10kHz). The cure? Hit the side front of the monitor with a
>hard object. When I'm doing a lot of work with the terminal, I keep a
>small hammer on top of the honitor for such occasions.

Purdue has a large number of Zenith z29 terminals in their public
terminal sites, which I use rather frequently.  Several of these have
a similar tendency to squeal, only these do so at ~20kHz, which is
above most people's audible range.  Alas, not mine.  I have been known
to stalk the room tracking down the squealer (it's not easy to
directionalize that noise) and then smack the terminal about several
times until it stops.  Now, if there are other people (who probably
can't hear the squeal), they start to wonder what the f*ck I'm doing
beating up on terminals.....
-- 
		  Help stamp out vi in our lifetime!

    Ford Prefect                g...@mentor.cc.purdue.edu
    (a.k.a. Scott Goehring)     ...!purdue!mentor.cc.purdue.edu!gt4

In article <13...@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> ad...@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Adam Glass) writes:
>
>Sometimes the screen will start whining in an extrordinarily annoying
>pitch (~10kHz). ... Anyone know why the thing does this?
>
Yeah. It's 15,575 Hz, and its a mechanical vibration in the flyback
transformer.  If the transformer is loose on the yoke, the stress of
the 15575 Hz sawtooth causes it to vibrate.

TV addicts who live with bad TV sets have blocked out this sound.  Me ...
I can't be in the same room with one of the original IBM 3270 displays:
the flyback transformer is a field-replacable part and therefore is not
potted to the tube.

Whine :-)
-- 
Elliott Frank      ...!{hplabs,ames,sun}!amdahl!esf00     (408) 746-6384
               or ....!{bnrmtv,drivax,hoptoad}!amdahl!esf00

[the above opinions are strictly mine, if anyone's.]
[the above signature may or may not be repeated, depending upon some
inscrutable property of the mailer-of-the-week.]

In article <31...@iitmax.IIT.EDU> dra...@iitmax.iit.edu (Mark Draughn) writes:
>In article <11...@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM> m...@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM (Mike Smith) writes:
>>I bought a Seagate ST251 for an AT that would occasionally be ignored by
>>the machine at power up.  Turning the machine off and kicking it (after the
>>disk spun down) would usually revive it.  It turned out that the screws
>I used to have kick-start disk drives around here all the time.

I figured others had this problem! Glad to see I'm  not alone ;-)  I've got an
ST-4038 with similar problems. If you don't use  it for a  few days it refuses
to spin on power  up.  It's easy  to fix, just remove  the top board and turrn
the counterweight until the drivve spins. Then, power the sucker up!

                I love the brute force method,

                                                reb
                                r...@rtech.com reb%rt...@lll-winken.llnl.GOV
                                h:861 Washington Westwood NJ 07675 201-666-9207
I've been warped by the rain,
driven by the snow drunk and dirty don't you know and I'm still willin'...

In article <62...@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> g...@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Ford Prefect) writes:
|Purdue has a large number of Zenith z29 terminals in their public
|terminal sites, which I use rather frequently.  Several of these have
|a similar tendency to squeal, only these do so at ~20kHz, which is
|above most people's audible range.  Alas, not mine.  I have been known
|to stalk the room tracking down the squealer (it's not easy to
|directionalize that noise) and then smack the terminal about several
|times until it stops.  Now, if there are other people (who probably
|can't hear the squeal), they start to wonder what the f*ck I'm doing
|beating up on terminals.....
|-- 
|    (a.k.a. Scott Goehring)     ...!purdue!mentor.cc.purdue.edu!gt4

Scott...

I know the feeling.  I too am 'blessed' with sensitive ears.  What REALLY
gets me irritated at times is that I hear strange noises, and track them down
as having come from a powered up TV or computer monitor, esp. those w/ no 
'image' being displayed.  I did some research and found out where this is
coming from.  One of the retrace pulses in the monitors is usually in the
18-20Khz range.  It is this that I've been hearing.  I remember as far back as
4th grade, I used to suddenly hear it as I neared the classroom with friends,
and sometimes said something like "$5 says we're seeing a movie today", and 
usually several people took me up on it.  :)  I only lost once...the class 
before ours had seen a movie and the equipment hadn't yet been powered down.

Tom.


-- 
Thomas J. Kopp:	Carroll College, Waukesha, WI knows not what I say.
tk...@carroll1.cc.edu - uunet!marque!carroll1!tkopp
"It's not how long you live, but how much you live" - Me.

In article <62...@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> g...@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Ford Prefect)
writes:

>Purdue has a large number of Zenith z29 terminals in their public
>terminal sites, which I use rather frequently.  Several of these have
>a similar tendency to squeal, only these do so at ~20kHz, which is
>above most people's audible range.  Alas, not mine.  I have been known
>to stalk the room tracking down the squealer (it's not easy to
>directionalize that noise) and then smack the terminal about several
>times until it stops.  Now, if there are other people (who probably
>can't hear the squeal), they start to wonder what the f*ck I'm doing
>beating up on terminals.....
 
	This technical approach does not, of course, simply end with complex
 computers/terminals, but extends way back into the past when my rather
prehistoric TV was made. I have lived in the house I'm in now since June, and
the TV came as part of the rent agreement, and for a while, it would start to
whistle and squeal and would be quite happy to shut up on introduction of
violence (i.e. walk up to set, open hand wide, and ******BLAT!!!!******). Now,
however, it has developed immunity to this serious violence (having gone 
through a stage of needing harder and harder BLAT's to shut it up), so I now
watch a lot less telly than I used to. Perhaps it's a small electronic device
secreted in the set by a committee of opticians, or the Royal Society for the
Prevention of BLATting of Televisions. I dunno. I do know, however, that it's
a pain in the bum.

	Dave C, UEA, Norwich.