wierd 386 error

[Alex Pournelle]

I ran into a really really wierd one today--thought I'd share it with
you.

System that previously worked fine, suddenly stopped --when booted up,
it wouldn't get past cron startup.  Just crashes.

Looked at it for a while -- suddenly realized that the customer had
taken the printer away, but left the parallel printer cable connected.
Removed it, rebooted, and it's fine.  What could have been a panicky
multi-hour problem turned out to be ten minutes' luck.  Damfino how a
simple cable could cause cron to hang, though.

ANY idea?  Cable seems fine, on MS-DOS systems.  You'll understand I'm
not too interested in trying it on the XENIX system!

	Alex
-- 
		Alex Pournelle, freelance thinker
		Also: Workman & Associates, Data recovery for PCs, Macs, others
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