OT::Making a PC explode (was Re: Newest spammer trick - non-blank subject lines?)
Kurt Buff さんは書きました: Uh, paranoia is not mitigated by ignorance. Remember the earlier description of her friend: retired and partially disabled. This probably means older and not nearly as educated as we are about computers, and set in his/her ways. This, augmented by scare stories in the mass media, probably contribute to the difficulty. A lot of older people still believe that giving the PC the wrong command will cause it to explode in a shower of sparks, thanks to Hollywood. It seems that Hollywood is still doing that. I can't count how many times my boss's boss would yell at me when a PC quit working, afraid I'd given it some command that would cause it to explode. -- jd
Re: OT::Making a PC explode (was Re: Newest spammer trick - non-blank subject lines?)
Quoting jd onymo...@garlic.com: Kurt Buff さんは書きました: Uh, paranoia is not mitigated by ignorance. Remember the earlier description of her friend: retired and partially disabled. This probably means older and not nearly as educated as we are about computers, and set in his/her ways. This, augmented by scare stories in the mass media, probably contribute to the difficulty. A lot of older people still believe that giving the PC the wrong command will cause it to explode in a shower of sparks, thanks to Hollywood. It seems that Hollywood is still doing that. I can't count how many times my boss's boss would yell at me when a PC quit working, afraid I'd given it some command that would cause it to explode. While explosions aren't a big problem, smoke and damage was completely possible. Back in the olden days before flat panel displays and smart CRTs, it was entirely possible to select a refresh rate or resolution that would cause a monitor to smoke and die. AFAIK, this is not possible with current hardware. Terry
Re: OT::Making a PC explode (was Re: Newest spammer trick - non-blank subject lines?)
jd wrote: A lot of older people still believe that giving the PC the wrong command will cause it to explode in a shower of sparks, thanks to Hollywood. It seems that Hollywood is still doing that. Electronics generating sparks when overloaded? Yes. Generating smoke? Yes. Flames? Yes. A dynamic explosion? No. (Never did figure out why all the electronics consoles in movies seem to contain explosives...) -- Bowie
Re: OT::Making a PC explode (was Re: Newest spammer trick - non-blank subject lines?)
jd wrote: Kurt Buff さんは書きました: Uh, paranoia is not mitigated by ignorance. Remember the earlier description of her friend: retired and partially disabled. This probably means older and not nearly as educated as we are about computers, and set in his/her ways. This, augmented by scare stories in the mass media, probably contribute to the difficulty. A lot of older people still believe that giving the PC the wrong command will cause it to explode in a shower of sparks, thanks to Hollywood. No ageism here please :-) - a lot people will believe all kinds of things about PCs. /Per Jessen, Zürich
Re: OT::Making a PC explode (was Re: Newest spammer trick - non-blank subject lines?)
jd wrote: Kurt Buff さんは書きました: Uh, paranoia is not mitigated by ignorance. Remember the earlier description of her friend: retired and partially disabled. This probably means older and not nearly as educated as we are about computers, and set in his/her ways. This, augmented by scare stories in the mass media, probably contribute to the difficulty. A lot of older people still believe that giving the PC the wrong command will cause it to explode in a shower of sparks, thanks to Hollywood. It seems that Hollywood is still doing that. I can't count how many times my boss's boss would yell at me when a PC quit working, afraid I'd given it some command that would cause it to explode. Back in 1995 one day at Central Point Software I was walking by the server room when I heard a funny noise, I ran in just in time to see the IBM monitor spew out a huge cloud of greasy stinky smoke. I held my breath, ran in and unplugged it and carried it out into the hall. The flyback transformer had melted down. I later found out from someone else that this was a common occurrence with those IBM monitors. The monitor was in a rack, right underneath our fiber distribution panel. That would have been rather messy if it had caught on fire. Ted
Re: [SPAM:9.6] Re: OT::Making a PC explode (was Re: Newest spammer trick - non-blank subject lines?)
On Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:42:46 -0500 Bowie Bailey bowie_bai...@buc.com wrote: jd wrote: A lot of older people still believe that giving the PC the wrong command will cause it to explode in a shower of sparks, thanks to Hollywood. It seems that Hollywood is still doing that. Electronics generating sparks when overloaded? Yes. Generating smoke? Yes. Flames? Yes. A dynamic explosion? No. (Never did figure out why all the electronics consoles in movies seem to contain explosives...) It's a simple mistake - but the repair technician substitutes the 4700uf smoothing caps with Le Maitre theatrical maroons (the very small ones I hasten to add, the really big ones you put into a car a disconnected car stereo, wired across the supply cables and leave the car unlocked :-) If the thief is local, you'll hear the bang)
Re: OT::Making a PC explode (was Re: Newest spammer trick - non-blank subject lines?)
On Wednesday 10 February 2010, te...@cnysupport.com wrote: Quoting jd onymo...@garlic.com: Kurt Buff さんは書きました: Uh, paranoia is not mitigated by ignorance. Remember the earlier description of her friend: retired and partially disabled. This probably means older and not nearly as educated as we are about computers, and set in his/her ways. This, augmented by scare stories in the mass media, probably contribute to the difficulty. A lot of older people still believe that giving the PC the wrong command will cause it to explode in a shower of sparks, thanks to Hollywood. It seems that Hollywood is still doing that. I can't count how many times my boss's boss would yell at me when a PC quit working, afraid I'd given it some command that would cause it to explode. While explosions aren't a big problem, smoke and damage was completely possible. Back in the olden days before flat panel displays and smart CRTs, it was entirely possible to select a refresh rate or resolution that would cause a monitor to smoke and die. AFAIK, this is not possible with current hardware. Terry True, but X's paranoia lives on. I have preached before, but perhaps not to this choir. If you enjoy a good rant, by someone who has been there and done that, read on. The grand and glorious failures generally occurred 20-10 years ago for the most part. The usual cause was trying to run the monitors at a lower scan rate than they had transformer iron to handle. Generally speaking this is very very rarely a vertical sweep problem, for 2 reasons, but first foremost, those transformers were iron cored, and because of that had a much softer saturation failure than the highly tuned ferrite cores used in the horizontal scan (and high voltage) circuits. There, the sweep currant amplitude determines the width, but that amplitude delivered to the coils of the deflection yoke is determined by the rate of rise or fall of the current in the transformer. The width is now regulated, usually by adjusting the supply voltage downward at the lower sweep frequencies. However, the slower sweep rates, because this is a 'velocity' to amplitude conversion, allows the current in the transformer to rise for a longer period of time before its turned off reversed to retrace the beam to the left side of the CRT. If this current is allowed to rise for long enough, the ferrite core will become saturated, which is a fancy way of saying the core no longer has an influence on the circuit inductance, and the effective inductance is then no more than if the core had been physically removed. The rate of current rise is then largely un-impeded and can rise many tens of amps per microsecond, quite high by the time the transistor's drive is removed and it _tries_ to turn off. Junction temps in the transistor rise until it explodes, usually blowing bits of epoxy-B off the top. Correspondingly during this same time frame, the circulating currents cause the supplies capacitors to overheat, and occasionally those electrolytics will vent, or at least push the tops up into a definite dome shape. A similar effect can also be triggered by heat in that ferrite core. Most ferrite mixes have a quite low 'curie' point, often below 100C! The 'curie' point is that point in the process of heating an iron alloy, where the iron loses its magnetic properties. So at temp X, the ferrite disappears from the magnetic circuit, and like steel, if cooled quickly enough, will not regain those magnetic properties ever again. Its still steel, or in this case ferrite, but you cannot pick it up with a magnet. Exhaust valves in lots of engines have been made from it since WW-II times, its then called Austenitic (SP?) steel. All this because somebody replaced an ega rated monitor that could run at 22khz, with a vga rated one that was designed to run at a minimum of 31khz, and their card could only muster up 28khz. The results were predictable, a failure, the only question was how long it took. And it was a big enough problem for the monitor makers that they were quickly fitted with protective circuitry. So that is not now a problem in terms of being a fire hazard and has not been for much of a decade now. Conversely, going the other way, at the top end, the power supply runs out of headroom, the high voltage gets soft, the pix narrower and probably dimmer, but generally speaking a 70khz rated monitor will not be damaged by a 90khz drive. Similarly, a 15khz rated monitor is not damaged, even on a long term basis, by running it at 19 khz, I have been doing that for many years on what this group would definitely call a 'legacy computer', a TRS-80 Color Computer 3. It is, when its hooked up, the second, fully independent monitor I can use. So, IMNSHO, X is way overdue to lose that paranoia, the monitor folks fixed that problem nearly a decade ago. They (X) are trying to protect the user from a situation that no longer
Re: OT::Making a PC explode (was Re: Newest spammer trick - non-blank subject lines?)
On Wednesday 10 February 2010, Bowie Bailey wrote: jd wrote: A lot of older people still believe that giving the PC the wrong command will cause it to explode in a shower of sparks, thanks to Hollywood. It seems that Hollywood is still doing that. Electronics generating sparks when overloaded? Yes. Generating smoke? Yes. Flames? Yes. A dynamic explosion? No. (Never did figure out why all the electronics consoles in movies seem to contain explosives...) Explosion? Most certainly a resounding yes, Bowie. I once had a house in Nebraska, with a quarter sized dent in the plaster lathe ceiling about 1/4 deep over the kitchen table. Poor folks at the time, I had bought an old 6 volt CB radio, and _thought_ I had it converted to 12 volts, and was testing it. After about 30 minutes powered up on a 12 volt supply, one of the power supply filters, a 350 volt rated item, decided it had had enough of the 600 volts it was getting, and exploded. The top of the alu can put that dent in the plastered ceiling, and I had a heck of a time cleaning up all the exploded antifreeze soaked kraft paper see through tinfoil they are made of. The antifreeze of course being 1000's of times purer than what you put in your cars radiator, but its still ethylene glycol none the less. Lets just say that I am glad I had no body parts in the way... I realized that I had missed a connection that needed to be moved to the 12 volt position, fixed that, and replaced the filter, and it ran just fine in my hunting truck for as long as I owned it, another 6 or 7 years. The movie folks of course have their own definition of reality. ;-) -- Cheers, Gene There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen. -- Albert Einstein
Re: OT::Making a PC explode (was Re: Newest spammer trick - non-blank subject lines?)
On Wednesday 10 February 2010, Per Jessen wrote: jd wrote: Kurt Buff さんは書きました: Uh, paranoia is not mitigated by ignorance. Remember the earlier description of her friend: retired and partially disabled. This probably means older and not nearly as educated as we are about computers, and set in his/her ways. This, augmented by scare stories in the mass media, probably contribute to the difficulty. A lot of older people still believe that giving the PC the wrong command will cause it to explode in a shower of sparks, thanks to Hollywood. No ageism here please :-) - a lot people will believe all kinds of things about PCs. /Per Jessen, Zürich That is only because common sense is a limited availability trait, and with more people, there simply is not enough to go around. Like this dirtball, we haven't made any new dirt, not in big enough quantities to count since that crater near the yucatan 65 million years ago. Same for common sense. If you happen to run across some, grab it hoard it. -- Cheers, Gene There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Piece of cake! -- G.S. Koblas
Re: OT::Making a PC explode (was Re: Newest spammer trick - non-blank subject lines?)
On Wed, 10 Feb 2010, Bowie Bailey wrote: jd wrote: A lot of older people still believe that giving the PC the wrong command will cause it to explode in a shower of sparks, thanks to Hollywood. It seems that Hollywood is still doing that. Electronics generating sparks when overloaded? Yes. Generating smoke? Yes. Flames? Yes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire -- John Hardin KA7OHZhttp://www.impsec.org/~jhardin/ jhar...@impsec.orgFALaholic #11174 pgpk -a jhar...@impsec.org key: 0xB8732E79 -- 2D8C 34F4 6411 F507 136C AF76 D822 E6E6 B873 2E79 --- Rights can only ever be individual, which means that you cannot gain a right by joining a mob, no matter how shiny the issued badges are, or how many of your neighbors are part of it. -- Marko --- 2 days until Abraham Lincoln's and Charles Darwin's 201st Birthdays
Re: OT::Making a PC explode (was Re: Newest spammer trick - non-blank subject lines?)
Gene Heskett wrote: A lot of older people still believe that giving the PC the wrong command will cause it to explode in a shower of sparks, thanks to Hollywood. No ageism here please :-) - a lot people will believe all kinds of things about PCs. /Per Jessen, Zürich That is only because common sense is a limited availability trait, and with more people, there simply is not enough to go around. +1 /Per Jessen, Zürich
Re: OT::Making a PC explode (was Re: Newest spammer trick - non-blank subject lines?)
On Wed, 10 Feb 2010, Bowie Bailey wrote: Electronics generating sparks when overloaded? Yes. Generating smoke? Yes. Flames? Yes. A dynamic explosion? No. (Never did figure out why all the electronics consoles in movies seem to contain explosives...) Self-destruct mechanism, obviously! :) PS. Explosions are not 100% unreal. Ever had a capacitor pop? Even the small ones can make quite a loud bang :) - Charles
Re: OT::Making a PC explode (was Re: Newest spammer trick - non-blank subject lines?)
On Wednesday 10 February 2010, Per Jessen wrote: Gene Heskett wrote: A lot of older people still believe that giving the PC the wrong command will cause it to explode in a shower of sparks, thanks to Hollywood. No ageism here please :-) - a lot people will believe all kinds of things about PCs. /Per Jessen, Zürich That is only because common sense is a limited availability trait, and with more people, there simply is not enough to go around. +1 Thanks Per. That is an observation based on 75 years of observing. ;-) /Per Jessen, Zürich -- Cheers, Gene There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) How should I know if it works? That's what beta testers are for. I only coded it. -- Attributed to Linus Torvalds, somewhere in a posting
Re: [SPAM:9.6] Re: OT::Making a PC explode (was Re: Newest spammer trick - non-blank subject lines?)
On Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:32:06 -0800 (PST) John Hardin jhar...@impsec.org wrote: On Wed, 10 Feb 2010, Bowie Bailey wrote: jd wrote: A lot of older people still believe that giving the PC the wrong command will cause it to explode in a shower of sparks, thanks to Hollywood. It seems that Hollywood is still doing that. Electronics generating sparks when overloaded? Yes. Generating smoke? Yes. Flames? Yes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire Wow, forgot about that! Thanks for the memory!
