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I worked at a computer/software store in the mall that sold the Atari ST (and other computers of the era) while I was in college. I can still remember the reac

I worked at a computer/software store in the mall that sold the Atari ST (and other computers of the era) while I was in college. I can still remember the reaction you would get when you told people whose Ataris had gone haywire that the quick fix for units whose chips were coming unseated from the motherboard was to pick the computer up, hold it level, and then drop it from about a four inch height.

kabdib 8y ago
To be fair the Apple ]I[ (and IIRC, the Lisa) had similar issues. One of those computers had socketed chips mounted upside down, with predictable results . . . and a 3 inch drop wouldn't fix that issue :-/
- analog31 8y ago
  I worked at an Apple repair facility that was part of a large county agency serving public school districts. We didn't charge a minimum fee, so we typically did the job while you watched. Pushing all of the chips back into the motherboard was called "the laying on of hands." The other quick fix was taking a pencil eraser to the edge connector of the disc controller board, which was known to use inferior gold plating. I remember people were horrified when the IBM PC came out with soldered-in chips, but IBM published a solid report showing that the chips were more reliable than the sockets.
  - Zenst 8y ago
    Oh IBM's first MCA PS/2 PC's had a wonderful issue in some models. They used a daughter card to present the expansion slots. Many had a habit of placing the monitor upon the top of the case (as was norm back then) and a gentle tap would momentarily wiggle that daughter card due to the case bearing the monitors weight and cause the system to lock right up. Solution - don't put the monitor upon the PC case was not a happy solution for many, but was the solution.
greglindahl 8y ago
In all fairness, this was a completely normal thing for the socketed chips from that era: dropping the entire thing was easier than opening it up and pushing on all of the chips. And even now, if you are wondering why a particular thing is having problems, and it has any socketed chips, you should push on them.
mikekchar 8y ago
We used Atari STs in a high energy physics lab. The shielding was really poor and we had no end of problems with corrupted memory. However, it was a magnificent piece of hardware for computing at its price point, so it was still worth it. I have a lot of fond memories of that machine.
tvmalsv 8y ago
I used to support a product with a similar fix. We had a bunch of desktop PCs in the field that were only used from January through April of each year, and usually powered-down the other eight months. Apparently, after several months of no use, the hard drive bearings had a tendency to stick, and the temporary solution that often worked was to have the client lift the front of the box a few inches off the desk and let it drop, unseizing the bearing. A lot of reactions along the lines of "I can't believe that worked!"
- bitwize 8y ago
  Ah, the good old ST-506 and its sticky bearing of fail. My IT teacher in high school showed me his fix -- rapping the back of the drive's casing with the rear end of a screwdriver.

kabdib 8y ago

To be fair the Apple ]I[ (and IIRC, the Lisa) had similar issues. One of those computers had socketed chips mounted upside down, with predictable results . . . and a 3 inch drop wouldn't fix that issue :-/

analog31 8y ago
I worked at an Apple repair facility that was part of a large county agency serving public school districts. We didn't charge a minimum fee, so we typically did the job while you watched. Pushing all of the chips back into the motherboard was called "the laying on of hands." The other quick fix was taking a pencil eraser to the edge connector of the disc controller board, which was known to use inferior gold plating. I remember people were horrified when the IBM PC came out with soldered-in chips, but IBM published a solid report showing that the chips were more reliable than the sockets.
- Zenst 8y ago
  Oh IBM's first MCA PS/2 PC's had a wonderful issue in some models. They used a daughter card to present the expansion slots. Many had a habit of placing the monitor upon the top of the case (as was norm back then) and a gentle tap would momentarily wiggle that daughter card due to the case bearing the monitors weight and cause the system to lock right up. Solution - don't put the monitor upon the PC case was not a happy solution for many, but was the solution.

greglindahl 8y ago

In all fairness, this was a completely normal thing for the socketed chips from that era: dropping the entire thing was easier than opening it up and pushing on all of the chips. And even now, if you are wondering why a particular thing is having problems, and it has any socketed chips, you should push on them.

mikekchar 8y ago

We used Atari STs in a high energy physics lab. The shielding was really poor and we had no end of problems with corrupted memory. However, it was a magnificent piece of hardware for computing at its price point, so it was still worth it. I have a lot of fond memories of that machine.

tvmalsv 8y ago

I used to support a product with a similar fix. We had a bunch of desktop PCs in the field that were only used from January through April of each year, and usually powered-down the other eight months. Apparently, after several months of no use, the hard drive bearings had a tendency to stick, and the temporary solution that often worked was to have the client lift the front of the box a few inches off the desk and let it drop, unseizing the bearing. A lot of reactions along the lines of "I can't believe that worked!"

bitwize 8y ago
Ah, the good old ST-506 and its sticky bearing of fail. My IT teacher in high school showed me his fix -- rapping the back of the drive's casing with the rear end of a screwdriver.