Crashes
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No, not car crashes, if that was what you were thinking. Dave's post about his phone doing odd stuff prompted me to think about other modern electronic gadgetry crashing. It's my personal belief that anything that has any kind of logic based electronics (rather than straight wired componants) can be crashed. On a long journey back from London last week my dad's car radio went mad. The tape player part worked fine, but the radio wouldn't output any sound, and would just lock on to random FM stations when you tried to tune it (and often it showed names of regional stations that there was no way it could actually be picking up). Disconnecting the car battery was the only thing that sorted it out. I've also had my phone do weird things on me (again removing the battery and leaving it off for a while sorted it), I've had an alarm clock flash up odd patterns of symbols and make weird beeping sounds, and once had a personal stereo suddenly decide to pick up what sounded like the audio to a tv station (again the display had gone scrambled) None of these were due to flat or low batteries, as they all worked fine again when I took the batteries out and put them back in again. Anybody had anything else electronic go weird, and sort itself out after it being turned off and on again? -- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
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No, not car crashes, if that was what you were thinking. Dave's post about his phone doing odd stuff prompted me to think about other modern electronic gadgetry crashing. It's my personal belief that anything that has any kind of logic based electronics (rather than straight wired componants) can be crashed. On a long journey back from London last week my dad's car radio went mad. The tape player part worked fine, but the radio wouldn't output any sound, and would just lock on to random FM stations when you tried to tune it (and often it showed names of regional stations that there was no way it could actually be picking up). Disconnecting the car battery was the only thing that sorted it out. I've also had my phone do weird things on me (again removing the battery and leaving it off for a while sorted it), I've had an alarm clock flash up odd patterns of symbols and make weird beeping sounds, and once had a personal stereo suddenly decide to pick up what sounded like the audio to a tv station (again the display had gone scrambled) None of these were due to flat or low batteries, as they all worked fine again when I took the batteries out and put them back in again. Anybody had anything else electronic go weird, and sort itself out after it being turned off and on again? -- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
benjymous wrote: Anybody had anything else electronic go weird, and sort itself out after it being turned off and on again? Yeh - my bloody TiVo occasionally needs a reboot (basically a cut-down Linux box! :-D). Great toy though! :):):)
Faith. Believing in something you *know* isn't true.
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benjymous wrote: Anybody had anything else electronic go weird, and sort itself out after it being turned off and on again? Yeh - my bloody TiVo occasionally needs a reboot (basically a cut-down Linux box! :-D). Great toy though! :):):)
Faith. Believing in something you *know* isn't true.
Hmm, yeah. Digital TV boxes seem a bit dodgy too. Sky TV boxes have a habit of getting programs stuck in their personal planner, and you can't delete them, so you'll be watching something and suddenly a "xxx is about to start" message will pop up. My NTL box has some kind of dyslexia, as the display on the front reads "NLT" briefly before it realises that it's not right and displays "NTL" instead -- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
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Hmm, yeah. Digital TV boxes seem a bit dodgy too. Sky TV boxes have a habit of getting programs stuck in their personal planner, and you can't delete them, so you'll be watching something and suddenly a "xxx is about to start" message will pop up. My NTL box has some kind of dyslexia, as the display on the front reads "NLT" briefly before it realises that it's not right and displays "NTL" instead -- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
benjymous wrote: Sky TV boxes have a habit of getting programs stuck in their personal planner Don't get me started on Sky digiboxes. There is a known problem which can cause the thing to reset after so many changes between certain channels and it drives us TiVo owners NUTS. As TiVo can record "suggestions" when you're not using it, it tends to change channels on the box a lot, hence we seem more prone to the problem than others. Still, according to Digital Spy (http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/displayarticle.php?id=8740[^]), Sky are updating the digibox software this week.
Faith. Believing in something you *know* isn't true.
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No, not car crashes, if that was what you were thinking. Dave's post about his phone doing odd stuff prompted me to think about other modern electronic gadgetry crashing. It's my personal belief that anything that has any kind of logic based electronics (rather than straight wired componants) can be crashed. On a long journey back from London last week my dad's car radio went mad. The tape player part worked fine, but the radio wouldn't output any sound, and would just lock on to random FM stations when you tried to tune it (and often it showed names of regional stations that there was no way it could actually be picking up). Disconnecting the car battery was the only thing that sorted it out. I've also had my phone do weird things on me (again removing the battery and leaving it off for a while sorted it), I've had an alarm clock flash up odd patterns of symbols and make weird beeping sounds, and once had a personal stereo suddenly decide to pick up what sounded like the audio to a tv station (again the display had gone scrambled) None of these were due to flat or low batteries, as they all worked fine again when I took the batteries out and put them back in again. Anybody had anything else electronic go weird, and sort itself out after it being turned off and on again? -- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
When I was designing consumer hardware, andything that had a CPU driving it would automatically get a 'watchdog' circuit that would kick out a RESET pulse every 100ms, unless it was reset. When writing the code to run the unit, I would scatter reset commands in strategig places (but not interrupt driven routines). That way, if the program ever hung, the CPU would get a kick where it needed it. I don't recall that we ever had any come back saying that they just 'hung'. It seems that today's manufacturers are more confident of their products that this kind of failsafe is not required. Paresh Solanki "To the world, you may be just one person, but to one person, you may be the world"
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No, not car crashes, if that was what you were thinking. Dave's post about his phone doing odd stuff prompted me to think about other modern electronic gadgetry crashing. It's my personal belief that anything that has any kind of logic based electronics (rather than straight wired componants) can be crashed. On a long journey back from London last week my dad's car radio went mad. The tape player part worked fine, but the radio wouldn't output any sound, and would just lock on to random FM stations when you tried to tune it (and often it showed names of regional stations that there was no way it could actually be picking up). Disconnecting the car battery was the only thing that sorted it out. I've also had my phone do weird things on me (again removing the battery and leaving it off for a while sorted it), I've had an alarm clock flash up odd patterns of symbols and make weird beeping sounds, and once had a personal stereo suddenly decide to pick up what sounded like the audio to a tv station (again the display had gone scrambled) None of these were due to flat or low batteries, as they all worked fine again when I took the batteries out and put them back in again. Anybody had anything else electronic go weird, and sort itself out after it being turned off and on again? -- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
I've also had my phone do weird things on me (again removing the battery and leaving it off for a while sorted it), I've had an alarm clock flash up odd patterns of symbols and make weird beeping sounds, and once had a personal stereo suddenly decide to pick up what sounded like the audio to a tv station (again the display had gone scrambled) Don't worry, it's just the aliens coming for you. Wearing a tin-foil hat should do the trick. :) / L-G --- $> cd /pub $> more beer
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No, not car crashes, if that was what you were thinking. Dave's post about his phone doing odd stuff prompted me to think about other modern electronic gadgetry crashing. It's my personal belief that anything that has any kind of logic based electronics (rather than straight wired componants) can be crashed. On a long journey back from London last week my dad's car radio went mad. The tape player part worked fine, but the radio wouldn't output any sound, and would just lock on to random FM stations when you tried to tune it (and often it showed names of regional stations that there was no way it could actually be picking up). Disconnecting the car battery was the only thing that sorted it out. I've also had my phone do weird things on me (again removing the battery and leaving it off for a while sorted it), I've had an alarm clock flash up odd patterns of symbols and make weird beeping sounds, and once had a personal stereo suddenly decide to pick up what sounded like the audio to a tv station (again the display had gone scrambled) None of these were due to flat or low batteries, as they all worked fine again when I took the batteries out and put them back in again. Anybody had anything else electronic go weird, and sort itself out after it being turned off and on again? -- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
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Hmm, yeah. Digital TV boxes seem a bit dodgy too. Sky TV boxes have a habit of getting programs stuck in their personal planner, and you can't delete them, so you'll be watching something and suddenly a "xxx is about to start" message will pop up. My NTL box has some kind of dyslexia, as the display on the front reads "NLT" briefly before it realises that it's not right and displays "NTL" instead -- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
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Hmm, yeah. Digital TV boxes seem a bit dodgy too. Sky TV boxes have a habit of getting programs stuck in their personal planner, and you can't delete them, so you'll be watching something and suddenly a "xxx is about to start" message will pop up. My NTL box has some kind of dyslexia, as the display on the front reads "NLT" briefly before it realises that it's not right and displays "NTL" instead -- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
benjymous wrote: "xxx is about to start" Its Spamming you :)
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No, not car crashes, if that was what you were thinking. Dave's post about his phone doing odd stuff prompted me to think about other modern electronic gadgetry crashing. It's my personal belief that anything that has any kind of logic based electronics (rather than straight wired componants) can be crashed. On a long journey back from London last week my dad's car radio went mad. The tape player part worked fine, but the radio wouldn't output any sound, and would just lock on to random FM stations when you tried to tune it (and often it showed names of regional stations that there was no way it could actually be picking up). Disconnecting the car battery was the only thing that sorted it out. I've also had my phone do weird things on me (again removing the battery and leaving it off for a while sorted it), I've had an alarm clock flash up odd patterns of symbols and make weird beeping sounds, and once had a personal stereo suddenly decide to pick up what sounded like the audio to a tv station (again the display had gone scrambled) None of these were due to flat or low batteries, as they all worked fine again when I took the batteries out and put them back in again. Anybody had anything else electronic go weird, and sort itself out after it being turned off and on again? -- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
benjymous wrote: Anybody had anything else electronic go weird, and sort itself out after it being turned off and on again? Yeah my Sky Digital box. It always going screwy but a power off and back on again always cures it. It usual goes wrong just after Sky had updated the software. You can also be flicking through the channels and it decides to go back to channel 205 (E4). Very annoying. Michael :-) Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana
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No, not car crashes, if that was what you were thinking. Dave's post about his phone doing odd stuff prompted me to think about other modern electronic gadgetry crashing. It's my personal belief that anything that has any kind of logic based electronics (rather than straight wired componants) can be crashed. On a long journey back from London last week my dad's car radio went mad. The tape player part worked fine, but the radio wouldn't output any sound, and would just lock on to random FM stations when you tried to tune it (and often it showed names of regional stations that there was no way it could actually be picking up). Disconnecting the car battery was the only thing that sorted it out. I've also had my phone do weird things on me (again removing the battery and leaving it off for a while sorted it), I've had an alarm clock flash up odd patterns of symbols and make weird beeping sounds, and once had a personal stereo suddenly decide to pick up what sounded like the audio to a tv station (again the display had gone scrambled) None of these were due to flat or low batteries, as they all worked fine again when I took the batteries out and put them back in again. Anybody had anything else electronic go weird, and sort itself out after it being turned off and on again? -- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
I've caught my answering machine more than once making calls on it's own! It's spooky, arriving home only to find messages like, "The time allotted for you to dial has expired. Please hang up and try your call again." or, "Operator 42 - What city please?" The first I can understand, as it indicates an open in the circuit which the telco system senses and interprets as on off-hook condition. But the second can only result from a sequence of tones that equates to a call for directory information. I know that answering machines have a DTMF decoder in their circuitry so that one can check for messages from a remote phone. But I've never heard of one that had an encoder circuit, as well! It's a comfort to know that my answering machine enjoys a rich social life in my absence, chatting up other answering machines, flirting with the occasional fax machine, and whatever. But I'm concerned that it may one day learn about 900 numbers, and in it's quest for self-realization begin asking Ms. Cleo for advice! "Knock, knock." "Who's there?" "Recursion." "Recursion who?" "Knock, knock..."
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I've caught my answering machine more than once making calls on it's own! It's spooky, arriving home only to find messages like, "The time allotted for you to dial has expired. Please hang up and try your call again." or, "Operator 42 - What city please?" The first I can understand, as it indicates an open in the circuit which the telco system senses and interprets as on off-hook condition. But the second can only result from a sequence of tones that equates to a call for directory information. I know that answering machines have a DTMF decoder in their circuitry so that one can check for messages from a remote phone. But I've never heard of one that had an encoder circuit, as well! It's a comfort to know that my answering machine enjoys a rich social life in my absence, chatting up other answering machines, flirting with the occasional fax machine, and whatever. But I'm concerned that it may one day learn about 900 numbers, and in it's quest for self-realization begin asking Ms. Cleo for advice! "Knock, knock." "Who's there?" "Recursion." "Recursion who?" "Knock, knock..."
Ok, that's disturbing -- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!