If Your Terminal Is On Fire
If Your Terminal is On Fire I work for the U.S. Geological Survey as a computer programmer / electrical engineer. One of my more mundane tasks is fixing broken equipment. We have a lot of really old terminals around, and it seems that different brands of terminals always fail in characteristic ways. So... a user comes into my office clutching a GraphOn 140 monochrome graphics terminal. There are soot stains on the top! Now, the problem I *ALWAYS* see with the GO-140 is the plug on the 117 in desolders itself due to heat inside the case (scientists like to stack paper and books on top of thier terminals ;-). When this happens, the terminals blink off, it cools down, and comes back on. So, I always just re-melt the solder and blob a little more on there, and the problem goes away for another year. But what happened to this one? After all, there's this soot that is around the cooling slots. I open it up, and the board around the 117 connection on the circuit board has completely burned away, leaving a 2" hole in the middle of the power supply board. Components are hanging from the twisted remnants of traces. I ask the fellow, who is a manager, how long the terminal had been smoking. He replied "Oh, for about a week." Dumbfounded, I asked him if he turned his terminal off at night. The answer was no... he had left his terminal gently smoking in his office all night every night. Absolutely amazed at this manager's level of intelligence, I gently suggested that if he ever found a piece of electronic equipment smoking in our office or lab that he unplug it and call me for help. He said "Really? Well you should write a policy memo then!" (It became apparent that he blamed me for his terminal failure because I had never written a policy memo concerning flaming terminals). So I did. (I don't have it with me, I'm at home right now). Basically, aside from the USGS logo at the top, and the from:/to:/subject:/date: garbage, it says: If your terminal is on fire, unplug it and call Ben Mesander for help. All the scientists got a good giggle out of that one. I resurrected the terminal, BTW. We have a tiny budget (there's nothing like 50 people running numerical models, databases, and mapping software on a Prime 9955-II at the same time...), so I couldn't buy a replacement terminal. I got out another GO-140, mapped the circuit with a VOM, and constructed it with heavy gauge wires bridging the gap in the circuit board. I'm interested to see if my handiwork will be less susceptible to heat than the original design. So far the terminal has worked fine. -- | ben@epmooch.UUCP (Ben Mesander) | "Elvis, you take so many pills, | | ben%servalan.UUCP@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu | how can you feel anything?" | | ...!chinet!servalan!epmooch!ben | --Priscilla Presley |