Gremlins in the computer

[atrax27407]

A couple of weeks ago, I was faced with a daunting problem. I turned my TI on and was greeted with a lockup instead of my usual MENU screen. More puzzling was the fact that the light on my HRD16 stayed on along with the AVPC card. I reckoned that maybe there was a problem with the battery in the HRD16 since it has been more than five years since I got it.

 

I tried to resolve the problem by pulling the battery jumper which should have effectively dumped the ROS and erased the contents of the RAMdisk ( I had everything backed up). No dice! When I put the HRD16 back in the P-Box and powered up I had excatly the same result. Time for a repair.

 

I packed up the HRD16 and sent it off to Richard Bell who is the best and most knowlegeable about such things. He kept the HRD16 for about a week and thoroughly tested it. Nothing appeared to be wrong at all. Strange. indeed. I got it back today in the mail. I got out the "canned air" and gave the contacts in the P-Box a couple of long blasts. Richard was kind enough to have changed the CRU addres to >1900 (it had been >1800). I reloaded the ROS and the contents and, much to my relief, I'm up and running as normal. The only thing that I can figure out is that my TI was attacked by Gremlins!

[Shift838]

Those little bastards! I have never been able to catch them..

[Opry99er]

I saw them once... Tried to catch em on video. They looked like the rolling "worms" on Invaders... Even had the same pixel definition.

[Willsy]

I like Gremlins as it usually means Pheobe Cates is not far behind, and that is OKAY WITH ME. OH YEAH BABY!

[atrax27407]

Just don't feed them after midnight!

[Shift838]

I like to give mine a bath!