6 ms·
Time for my story. I was a noobie computer programmer in my first job. After being there for a few months my mouse started to have issues. It stuttered and ref
by monk_e_boy 9y ago
Time for my story.
I was a noobie computer programmer in my first job. After being there for a few months my mouse started to have issues. It stuttered and refused to move correctly.
So I'd take the little grey ball out and clean it and it'd be OK again. But the next day it'd do it again.
So I ended up with the cleanest fucking mouse on planet earth. Yet every so often it'd stop working... on parts of the screen. Other parts it'd work. I ended up using the keyboard a lot.
The mouse would work fine all day some days. Some days it would work fine until about 2PM then it may or may not work.
Eventually I figured out that when the sun shone through the window it created a beam across my mouse mat. When the mouse was moved into the beam it would stop working. So I took it to bits and discovered that the ball would roll a little disc, that disc had little holes in it, there was also an LED and a photodetector. So the mouse was counting the blips in light to determine the movement in the mouse. I guess the cheap plastic was allowing the bright sunlight to bleed through the case causing the photodetctor to go bonkers.
A secondary thing about that cheap as shit PC was you could hear the video card render the screen. It'd buzz when the screen was mostly blue, when it was white it would be silent.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoHa, my mouse scroll partially stopped - turns out it's a rotary encoder like you describe, some of the gaps get blocked with dust and the mouse stops scrolling, a bit, still scrolls but seems intermittent (like a software issue), was a couple of days before I opened it up as I was looking for a fault in logs and such. Of course opening a mouse up and not breaking it is quite hard, they're made to break and be replaced. Current bugbear is Logitech keyboard stand pieces that appear only to be there to break and thus require keyboard replacement - again it seems a design with a penny's more of plastic would be almost invincible.
- dghughes 9y agoI recall a story on reddit's talesfromtechsupport a printer would stop working at a certain time of day. I think it was near a skylight or something weird. I have no idea what it was about but your story jogged my memory but not enough to remember it all.
- charleslmunger 9y agohttps://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source Ubuntu doesn't print to Brother printers on Tuesdays.
- KindOne 9y agoThis? https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/2kfazw/the_printer_will_not_work_at_lunch_time_is_it/ https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/2kfaz...
- dghughes 9y agoYes that's it. Excellent search fu you have.
- KindOne 9y agoEntered the next line into Google and it was the first result: site:reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport printer stopped working skylight
- dghughes 9y agolmao I should trust my brain and type it verbatim into Google Even worse than that I had already saved the post when I read it the first time.
- MereInterest 9y agoWait, you had a buzzin when the video card is active as well? Was yours dependent on the refresh rate on the video card? (I haven't found any other mention of a similar problem elsewhere, and mine has been doing that for a few years now.)