Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!purdue!decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!mcvax!ukc!stl!stc!idec!camcon!mfr From: mfr@camcon.co.uk (Mike Richardson) Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: Computer Follies Message-ID: <1962@titan.camcon.co.uk> Date: 22 Sep 88 10:50:36 GMT Organization: Cambridge Consultants Ltd., Cambridge, UK Lines: 20 An earlier folly mentions watering some bit of computer equipment. I once spilt a cup of coffee into the electronics on a drum line printer. OOps, I though, as the output became scrambled, I'm going to have to admit to this. However, on closed inspection, the line lengths were OK and the line and page throws were still correct, just the printing characters mixed up, so it looked like the coffee had just got to the circuits controlling the print hammer timing. Intrigued, I peered closer and, after a minute or so, some characters seemed to be coming out correctly. I quickly set some more print jobs going, to keep the machine busy, and, lo-and-behold, over a few minutes, everything gradually corrected itself. Phew, I got away with it, and the printer worked fine until scrapped a few years ago. On a different note, there was a report in a computer paper here a few years ago about an operator who had been sacked (dismissed) after being discovered one night shift with his car in the computer room, having removed several of the false floor panels to use as a work pit!