• 🤓 (unregistered)

    Sounds more like a hardware prion.

    (sorry; I had to)

  • Delighted (unregistered)

    I'm really happy I reread this story today, it is a great tale I had almost forgotten about.

  • Somebody Somewhere (unregistered)

    So it's less a hardware virus, more a hardware prion disease.

  • ZB (unregistered)

    Well... that was an incredibly stupid waste of time.

  • DV (unregistered)

    I had this exact thing happen to me 10 years ago and I always called it a “hardware virus” too. Funny.

  • (nodebb)

    Can you say "zip drive"?

    Addendum 2019-12-30 15:40: Specifically, the click of death.

  • (nodebb)

    Head crash on a removable disk drive. Move the pack to another drive and that head crashes as well. Put the old pack on the 2nd drive, and it dings the disk. And so it goes. Same idea.

    Let's be careful out there!

  • I'm not a robot, honest (unregistered)

    So the bent pin is so strong that it distorts the socket - but then the socket is so strong it bends any straight pin? One or the other, not both.

  • Orphan Crippler (unregistered)

    What kind of savages don't inspect the cable pins before shoving it in there?

  • Friendly local telcom (unregistered)

    Is this a joke?

    It's neither believable, funny or smart.

  • (nodebb)

    This happened while I was working on the BladeCenter Advanced Management Module at IBM back in 2006. Not sure what happened, but one of our test chassis had a blocked pin on the midplane connector. It caused two pins to "merge together" and while the system was still mostly functional, we'd get strange readings. Took a few weeks to catch and track down the offending chassis.

  • BIG BOBBEH TABLES (unregistered) in reply to I'm not a robot, honest

    now here's someone who works only in software

  • xXxGokuWeed4LokoXxX (unregistered)

    In my "office" we have a similar problem with Ethernet cables; somehow a brand-new Thinkpad got its Ethernet port mangled in such a way that jacks go in fine but don't come out except with tools. Removing the cable usually damages it bad enough that it has a hard time fitting in normal non-cursed ports, often resulting in damage to the next port it's used with. Then because that port is damaged, it mangles the next healthy jack, and so on.

    Not as dramatic, but it's the same idea. And it's the same fix; cables used with that original busted port laptop go straight to the trash instead of the "wait we can re-use these jacks/cables just splice or re-terminate it I'm not hoarding I swear" bin.

  • Johann (unregistered)

    I just want to point out that this is could be a DVI-I Cable being plugged into a DVI-D Port. The analog pins have nowhere to go. DVI-I Cables are rare though, they usually are DVI-I to a VGA / DVI on the other end. Regardless because of the analog pins not always being able to be inserted,

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