Tech Stories

1. Mongo Push! An incident from a couple of weeks ago. Customer brings rather old PC into our offices: "Doesn't work, just beeps at me." As we're busy he leaves it with us. I'm first to finish my current job so I have a quick look. Power it up and sure enough all I get is a stream of BIOS beeps. Check Mobo manufacturer's website for beep codes = memory issue. Ok, so lets yank off the case and have a look-see. Hmmm, now that's strange. Three memory sticks. Not two. Not four. Three. OK, so some mobos can take DIMMs in singles, but not this particular one. First two DIMMS in slots 0 and 1 are identical and look like the originals. The third one, however, is different. And stuck. I mean really, really, stuck. Jammed in good. Which is strange because the fastening clips on each end aren't even down properly. So after some rather colourful language directed at it I eventually manage to wiggle it loose. I look at it. I look at it some more. Realisation dawns: it's DDR. The other 2 memory sticks are DDR2. How in the name of the FSM did he get it in there? I mean the notches are in different places for $deity's sake (close, yes, but not that close - or so I thought) so it should be impossible, right? Not for Mongo, apparently. Mongo needs more memory in shiny box, Mongo gets! Even with the "upgrade" removed, however, it still won't recognise any memory in any slot so on the plus side (from our point of view, at least) Mongo now has to pay for a new mobo. Larting is so much easier when the customer does it to themselves, yes? [By: Erraticus] Comment on Story Comments Things were much easier back when I was running a computer store - chips, then SIPPs. They had pins, so almost all the customers were afraid of screwing up. As a result, all but a tiny fraction of the memory upgrades were in-house installs...especially when the customer had an AboveBoard card in it! -Grue Mongo fucknugget. Mongo get out of pool. Mongo take gaspipe. -vacuumtubes Just because the other two chips are DDR2 doesn't mean the slot this piece was in is DDR2 as well. There are some bastard hybrid mobos out there that mix DDR and DDR2 - with disastrous results. -Calydor Regarding RAM in pairs: I had once bought a Zotac Mini-ITX MBD and 2 2GB sticks of RAM. The machine would boot fine with either stick in either slot by itself, but would start producing errors if both were in at the same time. -AmazingKreskin My RL nick is Mongo, btw. -HappyCrappy Maybe Mongo first computer Apple III: http://vectronicsappleworld.com/appleii/appleiii.html "Magic box no work? Mongo lift box, drop on desk, magic box work again!" -MeanDean The relevant bit from the link above: "Steve Jobs' insistence that the Apple III be fanless, coupled with the cramped aluminum chassis designed to reduce radio-frequency emissions without regard to the demands of the electrical circuitry was a recipe for disaster. As the computer was used, its chips got hot, expanded slightly, and slowly worked their way out of their sockets, at which point the computer simply died. Apple's solution was to recommend lifting the front of the computer six inches off the desktop, then letting it drop with the hope that the chips would reseat themselves." (Mongo smart! Mongo fix magic box --- *THUNK* --- by himself!) -MeanDean Back in the DOS days, certain Epson PCs - or rather the Epson HDDs fitted therein - would regularly suffer from stuck head syndrome. Epson's own recommended fix (we were Epson PC dealers at the time) was to make sure the customer wasn't looking, lift the PC about 6" and drop it again. Worked every time... -Gromit MeanDean, I heard the same fix also worked for Atari STs. Luckily they were not very popular downunder and were usually sold in music stores because of the built-in MIDI port. Otherwise the Amiga outsold the ST by a ratio of about 1000:1. -Wraith556

Customer Misconceptions

2. Hi there - Long time lurker / first time poster. Co-worker misconception - that just because I only work here part-time that it's ok to leave my desk looking like an Autobot has vomitted all over it after a heavy session of whatever it is Autobots have on a good night out. Seriously guys, there must be the guts from over a dozen or so PCs and laptops here, just randomly strewn about: in one corner, hard-drives are stacked like a miniature copy of the Tower of Pisa (complete with vagely unsettling lean); opposite there must be 30 or more SATA and USB cables twisted together (why, I can't even guess) in what looks like a modern interpretation of the Gordian Knot; and in the centre are the motherboards, arranged (if you can call it that), as if someone was trying to shuffle them together like a pack of cards. And over everything - DIMMs, CPUs and heatsinks, sprinked like confetti. Oh yes, and wedged between the mobos are several CDRs, all completely unlabeled. (Apart from one that appears, at first glance at least, to have something scribbled on it in Latin). Biosicus Updateicus, perhaps? At least all the screws have been kept neatly together. ALL the screws. From all the PCs. All together in one cup. In ... my ... coffee ... cup. Sigh - It's gonna be a long day. [2012-03-29]

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