On Wed, Feb 21, 2018 at 11:09 AM, Dick Steffens <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 02/21/2018 10:54 AM, Denis Heidtmann wrote: > >> I assume this is due to static electricity creating some sort of >> disturbance. >> >> I have an AST usb keyboard. Keyboard presses are what normally wakes the >> computer. Moving or clicking the mouse does not. >> >> Although this is but a minor annoyance, I would like to figure out what >> part of my system is responding to what I assume are electromagnetic >> waves. >> >> Ideas? >> > > It's the anxiety sensor. I first learned of these from John, a technician > at Prime Computer back in the late '70s. Every summer we would get a crop > of new engineering graduates. They would often get frustrated when trying > to boot up an machine in the lab. The tech told them it was the anxiety > sensor. The machine can sense when the operator is anxious, and will > respond by refusing to work correctly. John would then calmly walk up to > the machine, flip the front panel switches a number of times, and the > machine would boot up. The new engineers would always gawk in awe of this > super tech. > John sounds like a wise technician. It is a shame that his talents were not able to save Prime Computer. Perhaps if he had spent less time bragging to the newbies, the company may have stood a chance at surviving into the modern era. I suppose marketing was always their strong point though. As for the question that was asked, there are a number of reasons why this could happen. Your keyboard is registering input, I doubt there is EMI involved. If you are sure you aren't the one hitting the keyboard, then you might have a sticky key, or the suspend feature is struggling for some reason. Suspend/resume, if thats what you are using, can behave differently from one motherboard to the next. Perhaps you are using a keyboard shortcut to sleep the machine, and are experiencing the side effects of hardware failure? I bet Doctor Who would want to know more about the specific circumstances surrounded this odd problem. But of course Doctor Who wasn't able to save Prime Computer, so we can do this without him. On Wed, Feb 21, 2018 at 11:15 AM, Rich Shepard <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, 21 Feb 2018, Dick Steffens wrote: > > It's the anxiety sensor. I first learned of these from John, a technician >> at Prime Computer back in the late '70s. Every summer we would get a crop >> of new engineering graduates. They would often get frustrated when trying >> to boot up an machine in the lab. The tech told them it was the anxiety >> sensor. The machine can sense when the operator is anxious, and will >> respond by refusing to work correctly. John would then calmly walk up to >> the machine, flip the front panel switches a number of times, and the >> machine would boot up. The new engineers would always gawk in awe of this >> super tech. >> > > :-) > > Rich > > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
