[sdiy] Magic Smoke!

[Dave Kendall]

What you have there is piece of kit with a RPDIC fitted. (Repair Person
Detector IC). Its purpose is to cause a malfunction in the equipment it's
installed in, after a manufacturer-determined time period. When a Repair
Person examines the faulty equipment, or with some advanced PRDICs, simply
walks in the room, the artificially induced fault ceases to exist.

Its main functions are to frustrate operators of the equipment, waste time,
provide opportunities for insulting/comic remarks, and generate revenue for
Repair Persons. However one of the RPDIC's annoying flaws is that very often
the Repair Person is the one left baffled. Rumours exist that during the
original design, a disgruntled employee with a grudge against RPs influenced
the original programming of the chip, ensuring that both operators and RPs
suffered.

Options exist in the RPDIC to set initial fault time after manufacture,
reset to normal after RP detection, and repeat fault and random modes.
Some are resettable with a Kinetic Reset (doesn't work with newbies, interns
or work experience people).

Advanced versions of this chip are able to detect the presence of important
clients, and/or projects, and contain AI programming to select the optimum
moment for irritation and embarrassment.




a on 1/11/06 6:18, Bob Weigel at sounddoctorin at imt.net wrote:

> God works in..mysterious ways.  That one may remain a mystery for some
> time.. The excessive current was resolved by trimming bias down which
> had gotten out of spec a bit...but why I didn't notice that earlier..I
> dunno.  But the thing with the relays shutting down at 10V signal.
> that's baffling. -Bob