Fresh cotton underpants fix series of mysterious mainframe crashes

I do have one from deep in the vault from a 15 years ago. I did laptop support for one of the big vendors at the time. A customer called in saying if they touched the right speaker grill of their laptop it would cause the laptop to lock up. We sat and discussed the call and the theory of static discharge was floated. So we retrieved an identical unit from our stock proceeded to try and shock the right speaker grill. People rubbing balloons on their head and putting it up to the speaker grill. At one point it looked like a conga line of a bunch of pastey tech support guys dragging their feet and touching the speaker grill. Finally someone found a very plush mat and we were able to make the laptop crash on command when dragging our feet across that mat. Once we verified the claim. We disassembled the laptop to find out why. Our contract manufacturer for this unit were taking short cuts and not running the speaker wires through the track that was designed but a slightly parallel path that got sort of crimped under the speaker grill. We re-ran the speaker wire in the track and all was well. A really interesting case but the conga line of pastey nerds was quite a sight and I don't recommend it to anyone.

Bah!

and dry, dry California air on a 105°F day might have been too much for a mainframe's anti-static protection.

Wot, no humidity control? In a mainframe machine room? Sounds ... debatable to me.

Whilst at a previous employer, (a West Yorkshire based manufacturer of consumer electronics products of a tele-visual nature), the management decided that because targets had been met, it would give the workforce a company sweatshirt each.

The following morning, our PCB functional test failure rate shot through the roof. Most of the products were VLSI based and quite static sensitive. We were well aware of this, and regular anti-static control audits were normal, making sure that everyone was wearing a wristband and heel grounders when on the factory floor.

It turns out our loyal production line staff had decided to wear aforementioned sweatshirts en masse. No one had even considered whether the material was suitable for a mass production environment involving delicate microelectronics. Turns out they weren't.

Urgent request to remove sweatshirts issued - defect rate returns to normal.

Anonymous - because some of those products are still out there, but could be "walking wounded" - a CE industry term for static damaged silicon which operates normally for a while.

Anti-static, Schmanti-static. Ten years I repaired computers for a company who sound a little bit like "Nixons". Ten years of only grounding myself with the appropriate kit if someone important was visiting the site, like a manufacturer.

I assume I got away with it, not through lack of "pesky kids" but more through my standard work practise of slouching over my workbench, elbows grounded through the ESD matting. Nothing else there was ESD - standard office chairs, standard flooring, no air treatment, no testing.

I do remember buying one of those little AA-powered soldering irons, wondering how they worked. Turns out they work by turning 1.5V into high voltage, low current and creating a spark hot enough to melt solder. Who'd have thought that a computer mainboard wouldn't like having its USB ports reflowed with one of those?

Methinks this is an IT/Urban legend... The story I heard, 1970 or so, had the event occurring at a Univac facility in Minnesota, in the winter (ie. low humidity from the heated air) and involved a woman walking past the computer room wearing nylon hose.

Back in the dark days of discrete MOS (Metal Oxide Semiconductor) components in the mid-1970s, the US military had to specify cotton underwear and clothing for technicians attending training classes. This was before the days of ISO9000-specified heel straps, etc. Seems there's really nothing new to this.

Aircon in server rooms

Back in the day, at my first place of employment, I was reliably (or possibly highly unreliably) informed that by proper (by which I mean highly improper) adjustment of the temperature and humidity controls, it was possible to get it to snow in the server room.

One for the Mythbusters team?

That electrostatic discharge engineer should be fired, or at least censured.

Notice to all data center employees

"All underwear must be removed when in the vicinity of the mainframe."

The sign painters have the work order.

Electro-Explosive

Many years ago, when the earth was cooling, I worked with electro-explosive devices (EED). Normally, EEDs are little bombs that make big bombs go boom.

Static discharge can be a death sentence, so, Uncle Sugar issued us cotton parkas, cotton underwear, special anti-static wool socks—you get the idea.

One Friday, a coworker was doing his job when suddenly there was a sharp report, a big flash with debris, and he went flying across the room. After a few minutes of deafness, hyperventilation, and effing colorful language, he admitted he had a date, later that night, and wore his sexy nylon underwear to work to save time.

I had a similar case in the 70-ies:

Almost every day an IBM 360/65 was crashing at 7:30 +,- few minutes. Nothing in log, any other indication. My usual starting time was 08:00 but I decided to start earlier and to watch the machine. At 7:30 the cleaning lady moved with her trolley near the gate which contained the core memory of the mainframe and the system crashed.Next day I asked her to take another route and nothing happen. Most likely the reason was static electricity developed by the wheels of the trolley.