[rescue] mysterious hard hangs, two different sun4m's

[David L Kindred (Dave)]

>>>>> "Brian" == Brian Dunbar <Brian.Dunbar at plexus.com> writes:

    Brian> ...  then one day in September the two
    Brian> users on the outside wall coulldn't login.  When all 3 of our
    Brian> pagers went off at the same time with garbage messages, and
    Brian> the user's radio wouldn't pick up anything across the band
    Brian> but the college radio station a few blocks away ... which had
    Brian> started operation after summer hiatus ... we knew something
    Brian> was up.

We used to a have a facility within sight of the tower for what was then
WCAU, 50Kw 1210Khz.  That stuff got *everywhere*.  It was especially
annoying trying to debug hardware when processors used to run at about
that speed.  The only good news is that we found all the "gotchas" in
the analog and voice circuits.  It's not a very scientific theory, but I
think the higher the RF power the more things look like diodes :)

We also got sporadic reports that a WWVB clock we were reselling would
display the wrong time in downtown Chicago.  We never believed the
reports as we never saw any errors ourselves, nor did any other
customer.  One day the vendor released a tech bulletin confirming their
unit was susceptible to high RF fields.  Turns out the Chicago
installation had line-of-sight to both of the buildings in Chicago with
the big TV/radio broadcast towers.


-- 
David L. Kindred <mailto:d.kindred at telesciences.com>
Unix Systems & Network Administrator
Telesciences, Inc. <http://www.telesciences.com>
Support: <http://support.telesciences.com>
2000 Midlantic Drive, Suite 410, Mt. Laurel, NJ 08054
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