Soviet Railroad Computer Crashes Caused by Cows Rubbing Against Building
By
indrora
Crispy enough to crunch, soft enough to enjoy. A good bake.
Summary
A Soviet programmer in the 1980s was troubleshooting a mysterious bug in a railroad routing computer system that would crash only at night when no one was present. After extensive investigation, he discovered the cause was cows rubbing against the computer building's exterior, causing vibrations that disrupted the magnetic tape drives. The solution was to install a simple electric fence to keep the cows away from the building.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledThe crashes would always occur once everyone had gone home for the night, but despite extensive investigation, the computer always performed flawlessly during manual and automatic tests.
The computer was housed in a small building, and the magnetic tape drives were particularly sensitive to vibration.
The cows would come up to the building at night to scratch themselves against the corners of the building, and this vibration was enough to crash the computer.
The solution was to install a simple electric fence around the building to keep the cows away.
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