Four techies flummoxed for hours by flickering 'E' on monitor

Re: "by the size of his Micro Channel Adapter"

Sadly most of the PS/2s I worked on required a Phillips (or another crosshead flavour) screwdriver to remove the case lid. The case lids were badly fitting too.

So it was one minute to remove the lid and one minute to expose the motherboard. Do the job, two minutes to refit disk drives etc, five minutes to refit the case lid and five minutes to wipe up the blood.

Re: "by the size of his Micro Channel Adapter"

"the ability to pull apart a PC in seconds with that small blue lifting tool under the hood of the IBM PC"

The early PS/2s were like that. Older models, not so much.

But the article also brings back memories of a summer job writing code for a now-defunct company(1) whose main product was project management software. This was 1987, so Microsoft Project was some way in the future, and the software ran on a wide range of mainframes and different sizes of minicomputer. What would today be the server room had an IBM 4300-series something or other, VAXen, a Wang, probably a DG thingy, and so on. (The office was in Westborough, MA, if that helps.)

Anyway, there was this big contract with IBM, and my fellow student and I were provided with brand-spanking-new PS/2s, a desktop Model 50 and a tower-format Model 60. Trivial to open and dismantle, with floppies full of ADF files, especially with the 3270 terminal emulator cards we got so we could log onto the 4300, produce text-mode data dumps from the software running there, and download it onto the PC for post-processing to produce graphical displays.

And of course, the IBM contract provided those cards, which duly arrived and they let us two students loose to install the cards in the machines, and then to install the support software.

And there was the pen plotter. For an American size of paper, approximately the same as A1. It had a bar over which you draped the paper, and the head ran left/right along that, while the paper moved front/back. We had fun putting weird colour combinations in the pen carrier and then plotting things. The manual included detailed instructions, with pictures and words of about 0.75 syllables, on how to put the mains plug into the socket. (The socket on the wall that provides the electricity.) There were similar instructions for the other end of the cable, with just a normal kettle-type plug.

Fun times. (To say nothing of the 3.5-inch external floppy drive for the PC/XT on the other desk. It was mounted on its side, and the friction between the edge of the floppy and the bottom of the drive was low enough that the eject button could throw the disk entirely out of the drive and onto the floor.)

EDIT: forgot the footnote.

(1) "a now-defunct company": these words feature a *lot* in descriptions of my career. Maybe I'm cursed, or maybe I'm just bad at choosing companies

Re: "by the size of his Micro Channel Adapter"

You can download a direct port of Dune II for Android for nowt... It lends itself well to tablets!

Re: "by the size of his Micro Channel Adapter"

I fondly remember my first ever (attempted) PC upgrade was to add a MC Soundblaster to an IBM 286. I never managed to make it work; which meant I didn't get to listened to sampled speech in Dune II - which made me very sad; but also probably set the path for my career.

So you've never got anything to work EVER?!?

Re: "by the size of his Micro Channel Adapter"

Man, Dune II was terrific.

-

My first paid IT work was with BBC Bs but my PC IT career is largely down to memory management skills honed by trying to get Civ running on university PCs without uninstalling the hideous printer drivers, the absence of which caused serious tantrums among the non-gaming users.

I imagine there's quite a few commentards who started out in much the same way.

Re: "by the size of his Micro Channel Adapter"

You had to change the IRQ from the default IRQ 7, that conflicts with the LPT1, to IRQ5.

I am sure that you are glad your problem haas a solution. ;)

Re: "by the size of his Micro Channel Adapter"

My first hardware install was a sound card into a 486 DX33. Physical install went fine, Win 3.1 played the startup sound, my brother and I gave each other high-fives... and suddenly File Explorer was "not found". Not a single program worked. Huh. Restarted - no Windows. In our inexperience, we didn't know what IRQs were, much less realize that having the sound card on the same IRQ as the hard drive could cause problems, like corrupting the entire Windows directory. My parents were NOT happy.

I still have my folks' Atari Video Pinball machine (white version). 7 built-in games, no cartridge capability. Still worked last time I tried it.

Re: "by the size of his Micro Channel Adapter"

Dune... the building of a dy...nasty

Re: "by the size of his Micro Channel Adapter"

Back in the early nineties (in the dark days before email) I had the luck of mentoring a new far younger workmate who had just joined us. This job wasn't anything technical but we did use computers mostly for Word and Excel. Anyway on the first day I suggested that we go for lunch and then I'd go off to a meeting from there. When I came back there was an IT support bloke sitting there reattaching the VGA cable to the monitor. Puzzled I asked what had happened and VGA wasn't screwed in and had fallen out over lunch. Except I knew that couldn't be the case because I'd tightened the screws a week earlier when it looked loose after moving the monitor. Weird but then these things happen, thought nothing of it and continued on with the day explaining things to my new workmate.

I was off the next day but after lunch the day after that he complained that his computer wasn't working again and started turning the monitor on and off. I really didn't know what he thought was wrong but I asked if I could help.

Do you know anything about computers?

A little.

During lunch my computer crashes, this is the third time.

What are the symptoms?

The screen goes black

Okay what are you using as a screensaver if anything?

What's a screensaver?

Turned out he was new to IBM compatible computers and had never encountered a screen "time out" before. The first day he'd thought it must be the cable and had disconnected that, then phoned IT support. Second day he called IT support and the computer had magically "fixed itself" whilst he was waiting for someone to turn up. When I showed him that he only had to touch the mouse or the keyboard for it to work the look on his face was priceless. His only previous computer experience was on an Acorn.

Re: "by the size of his Micro Channel Adapter"

The 23cm Radar has gone now.. http://nats.aero/blog/2014/12/end-era-iconic-heathrow-landmark/

We had a user with a constant 60Hz flicker on his crt. Wasn't a nearby fan. Swapping monitors didn't fix it. The same monitor worked fine elsewhere. Changing settings just changed the patterns.

I was totally stumped until I realized that the ginormous breaker panel that fed half a factory office floor was directly on the other side of the wall. The user simply rearranged his desk with the monitor on the opposite side and all was well.

CRTs were great. Used to put my GSM mobile under mine. The wobbly image told me the phone was ringing no matter how loud the rock was in my earphones. Bloody flat screens stopped that dodge.

The boss of a friend of mine continues to deploy new 1920*1200 monitors connected using the VGA cable that, for some reason, still even nowadays comes in the box. Invariably, a support call is received after a few days from most people complaining that their new monitor is blurry and flickery. The solution, obviously, is to swap the VGA cable for a DisplayPort cable instead: instant miraculous improvement!

No amount of gentle reminding by my friend seems to ever sink in to the boss (who seems incapable of comprehending that the ancient analog VGA connection has a very definite usable upper bandwidth limit), and they feel like they're banging their head off a brick wall...

>but from a long, long time ago

No, it wasn't a long long time ago........

Ohhhh we used to DREAM of having a cassette recorder! Woulda' been almost magical to us. We used to load games by slotting them into the front of a wooden panelled Atari. We got woken up every morning by my Mum shouting about who'd not swapped the leads back on the telly! Cassette Recorder!? Hmph.