[vcf-midatlantic] Tales from the lab

[Mike Loewen]

    Dave McGuire and I ran into a mysterious problem while working on the 
LSSM's HP 3000 Series 39 minicomputer last month. We moved the 2645A console 
over next to the CPU for convenience and turned it on. The display was too 
wide, and characters were being cut off on the left side. No problem, says I, 
we'll just pop the top and make a quick video adjustment. We moved the 
terminal on top of the CPU to make it easier to work on, and adjusted the 
horizontal width. Moved the terminal back over where it was. The display was 
too wide again. WTF? Leaving the terminal where it was, we raised the top 
again to find that as the top was going up, the width was decreasing. As the 
top was lowered, it increased. It was only then that Dave and I simultaneously 
realized that the terminal was sitting on top of a 79XX series disc drives, 
with a large magnet in it.  Duh!  :-)


Mike Loewen				mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us
Old Technology				http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/