Oh. My. God.

[kengr]

someone pointed me at this entry on thedailywtf.com (in this case WTF stands for "worse than failure")

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/It%E2%80%99s-Just-a-Wiring-Problem.aspx

*runs screaming into the night*

Comments

Hehe. Seen worse.. gave an estimate of 15K back in 1987 for..

[capybyra.livejournal.com]

Details elided to protect the stupid. It was a shop of AT/286 and ADM3 gear. One database for their SKU's was a package called "Alloy" and it tied somehow into the loved/hated beast called Triad. The shop in question fabricated weird weldments and overhauled truly alien electrohydraulic cruft that was used on production lines. Well- they had token ring running as described-Taped alongside power cord- in their case- Romex! to ADM's in crude weather boxes on their build floor and in the parts racks- outside- Somewhere halfway to Gary, IN.. They also had welder power lines on Festoon racking that allowed 600A welding cables to brush across the taped to floor data cables. Did I mention the Decwriters in weather boxes that had been noise boxes? LA36 strike a bell? Powered from transformers roachclipped to the busbars of an overhead crane. You could not make such a fucked site up as a scare tactic!

I gave a verbal, initial estimate of $15K labor to rewire it properly for the data only. And told them that they had to have proper, in conduit etc IG power for the systems. They shrugged- and said it was cheaper to keepon having people like me bash it together for another month or so each time. I told my boss to handle the next call there himself if he doubted my report. Boss cut them off after one trip there. Told me I was insane for having not done so 3 trips ago.. Then he told me my 15K estimate got his brother a 10K contract to do their other site..that was worse :}

BOFH never did a factory service route I guess..

Re: Hehe. Seen worse.. gave an estimate of 15K back in 1987 for..

[kengr]

When I worked for a silicon wafer manufacturer that shall remain namesless. They had a PC on the saw room floor. Literally an IBM PC. (this was around 1990 though).

The saw room is where they slice the wafers from the silicon ingots. Silicon dust is *everywhere*.

They did have a dust cover sort of thing that press-fit into the drive "bay" area on the front of the PC. This at least meant no dust was sucked in *through* the drives.

But it got sucked in by the power supply fan and accumulated all over the insides.

Fortunately, since it was only used as a terminal to talk to an IBM (and later DEC) mini, all it needed the drives for was to boot up and load the terminal software. Since it only got shut off every few months, the drives weren't getting destroyed very fast.

Usual problem fixing amounted to:

Open case, drag bottom of case and internals over to nearest compressed air hose. Blow out accumulated silicon dust. Reassemble.

Or, occasionally, make a copy of the boot floppy to replace the one that'd given up the ghost.

At least the wiring was good. Though we did occasionally discover that some plant electrician had tapped the clean up lines for instruments and computers and put machine tools on them.

And then there was the time that someone on one of the 10base-2 (coax thin-net ethernet) segments moved his office, and rather than disconnecting the cable at the back of the PC, he disconnected the cables at the wall bringing down the entire segment. Leaving us to check and see which of a dozen places the break was.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Ouch. Just...ouch. I believe every word of it, too; thereifixedit.com is made of this.