Nearly 20 years ago, I was in a computer programming class surrounded by clunky towers and desktops.
Suddenly, a loud popping, then one of the machines starts belching smoke like a budget fog machine. The kid using it is calmly moved to another station while the prof investigates.
Fifteen minutes later - pop. Smoke again.
Turns out the kid was jamming a paperclip into the power supply like he was playing Operation: Arson Edition.
That was his last day.
On the bright side, computers are a lot cheaper now - and kids are still dumb. So, maybe progress?
We just pulled stupid pranks, like setting a repeating function with sound at the highest frequency in BASIC and locking the machines… on all the computers.
They said 20 years ago. We literally had ‘use a paperclip to turn on the computer on the test bench’ as the standard practice. Designing things for people to do them wrong was very much not the style at the time.
Nearly 20 years ago, I was in a computer programming class surrounded by clunky towers and desktops.
Suddenly, a loud popping, then one of the machines starts belching smoke like a budget fog machine. The kid using it is calmly moved to another station while the prof investigates.
Fifteen minutes later - pop. Smoke again.
Turns out the kid was jamming a paperclip into the power supply like he was playing Operation: Arson Edition.
That was his last day.
On the bright side, computers are a lot cheaper now - and kids are still dumb. So, maybe progress?
We just pulled stupid pranks, like setting a repeating function with sound at the highest frequency in BASIC and locking the machines… on all the computers.
This seems like something they should have engineered out of a product primarily used by schoolchildren.
Engineer out the electricity?
You can design something to survive pin shorting.
They said 20 years ago. We literally had ‘use a paperclip to turn on the computer on the test bench’ as the standard practice. Designing things for people to do them wrong was very much not the style at the time.