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A Story About ‘Magic' (1994)

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11–20 of 62 posts

Re: A Story About ‘Magic' (1994)

#11

Uh... How was this not obvious from looking at it? Every geek who's put together or taken apart a computer knows the metal frame is grounded, and most geeks have enough basic understanding of electricity to understand you only need one wire for a ground. The switch enables or disables grounding. Since that is literally the only thing it can do, that is what it does.

I think we are talking late '60s here. Perhaps we are better off now with accessible electronics.

Re: A Story About ‘Magic' (1994)

#13

Uh... How was this not obvious from looking at it? Every geek who's put together or taken apart a computer knows the metal frame is grounded, and most geeks have enough basic understanding of electricity to understand you only need one wire for a ground. The switch enables or disables grounding. Since that is literally the only thing it can do, that is what it does.

most switches don't have one terminal internally connected to the switch body, which then may or may not be connected to ground (or some other potential) depending on what it is mounted on.

Re: A Story About ‘Magic' (1994)

#14

Uh... How was this not obvious from looking at it? Every geek who's put together or taken apart a computer knows the metal frame is grounded, and most geeks have enough basic understanding of electricity to understand you only need one wire for a ground. The switch enables or disables grounding. Since that is literally the only thing it can do, that is what it does.

You're close, but not quite there. The ground plane of the machine was almost certainly grounded either way. But this switch likely introduces a connection to a separate ground, resulting in a ground loop. When you disconnect that loop it's not surprising at all that you would get a bit of a voltage spike in the ground plane, hence the crash.

(I was a power electronics engineer a few years ago, before getting into the web.)

Re: A Story About ‘Magic' (1994)

#19

I love things like this. In my old Dreamcast, I found after I'd packed it up and moved it a few too many times that it wouldn't start, but would show signs of life when the lid would open and close. I found that there was a position you could put the lid in at which it would boot, and that position could be reliably reached if a SweeTart was placed in the tray near the edge of the disc. I licked the flat side of the…

Way back in the day I did EA Technical Support (on DOS games!)

Anyway the PS2 had a known issue where turning it on its side or over would put the CD closer to the reading laser and "fix it" it was really the only tangible fix the guys in the PlayStation queue had.

Re: A Story About ‘Magic' (1994)

#20
post #18

I liked the story because I absolutely love arguing with people who will tell me to trust the map over the terrain. :-|

What does "trust the map over the terrain" mean?

when the map tells you one thing, and your eyes tell you another thing, go with what your eyes tell you, because the map is full of shit.

you would be surprised how often people trust "the map" more than reality. "the map" can be anything, i.e. an instruction manual, an authority figure, folklore, a rumor, whatever.

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