Alarm bells started going off in my head. This guy is an electrician. What else might electricians carry in their shirt pockets? Small screwdrivers like the one I had hanging from my office bookshelf, hanging by a magnet! Not necessarily the best companion for a magnetic data disk. This started the following conversation:
"So after removing the disk, you put it in your shirt pocket?"
"Yes," he replied.
”Do you have anything else in that pocket, like maybe a screwdriver?”
"Yes, I do," he said.
"Would that screwdriver happen to be one that is magnetized?"
The light obviously came on in his head, too. "Oh... yes it is. Let me try putting the disk someplace else," he said.
The issue immediately disappeared and the maintenance station functioned productively for many years.
This entry was submitted by Jack Rupert and edited by Rob Spiegel.
Jack Rupert, PE, MBA, is an engineering and project manager with business, leadership, and technical experience. His background includes automation and control system, software development, and global project management. He is the author of various articles, presentations, and training and marketing materials for multiple audience levels that introduced new technologies and launched products. Currently, Jack is a contractor leading a team of professionals in the commercial engineering group for a large control and automation company in the Milwaukee area.
Tell us your experience in solving a knotty engineering problem. Send stories to Rob Spiegel for Sherlock Ohms.
IF you read about it, or was told about tremors & data corruption being from a "source" on the internet, it's probably a bunch of malarkey!!!!! Just like IVORY soap commercials of decades ago, "It's 99.9% pure, so it gfloats!" Well, what you read on the internet is also 99.9% "PURE" ....... pure B.S., that is!!!
No actually this was told to me by a my boss shortly after he came to the company for which I worked it the late 70's. This was a time when companies were first moving into computerized inventories etc. We were advised to always keep our back-up files at a remote location. I asked why and was given the tremors explanation. He claimed to have experienced the corrupted data/tremors relationship.
As to Ivory soap, I recall a study in the early 70's, I think by Consumers Union that the claim was true. All Ivory were claiming was that it was soap. No detergents and no by products or impurities, and that claim was factual. Then again that was 40+ years ago so I may be in error.
As far as Data Corruption & Tremors, is concerned, since you reference many decades ago as the reference, maybe it was because disk crashes were very prevalent back then. The read/write head technology wasn't as mechanically secure as it is nowadays, and any low frequency vibration could cause the head to literally plop down (a computerese technical term!) onto the spinning platter, literally causing it to dig into the highly polished & coated surface, thus causing the "crash".
Cncerning the IVORY soap commercials, going back as long as I can remember into the 1940s, that was their slogan ...... "So pure, it floats". And, you're exactly correct .... it was to counter some "modern" soap products that included perfumes, and other additives which some claimed detracted from the purity of the soap product. I guess IVORY still floats .... we don't use it ..... have "graduated" to more modern alternatives. Oh, well, time marches on!!
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