Brownouts, shorts, explosions and the unix pc.

[David Keaton]

In article <37644 at cup.portal.com> thad at cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes:
>
>And for those electronics hobbiests amongst you, don't play with Tesla coils
>within 400m (1/4 mile) of computers ... you WILL zap CMOS ICs.

True.  Back in high school we had a PDP-11/40.  A physics class meeting
in a nearby classroom fired up a Tesla coil and blew a chunk of our
memory.  The chips had holes burned in them and were literally smoking.

On a related note, I have an electrostatic precipitator (air cleaner,
not an ion generator) at home.  Every once in a while, it arcs 6000
volts across its plates.  It used to crash an old Osborne-1 I had until
I ran an extra ground cable from the keyboard to the main unit.  It has
never bothered my 3b1, though.

					David Keaton
					uunet!dmk3b1!dmk