General > General Technical Chat
This Janet Jackson BASSLINE breaks laptops
ebastler:
Going as far back to the source of this story as I can, I find the following on Raymond Chen's blog, https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220816-00/?p=106994:
--- Quote ---A colleague of mine shared a story from Windows XP product support. A major computer manufacturer discovered that playing the music video for Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” would crash certain models of laptops. [...]
--- End quote ---
"I heard this from a colleague, who had heard it from someone at some major computer manufacturer...". Oh, this is how all urban legend stories start? Oh, right... ::)
Buriedcode:
--- Quote from: BrianHG on January 08, 2023, 03:34:11 am ---Note, my HP laptop has an accelerometer feature for the HD protection which can be enabled/disabled in the advanced HP tools. I wonder if the music is just tripping such a protection feature in these laptops.
--- End quote ---
I'm pretty sure most 2.5" drives have shock sensors, at least in every one I have seen/repaired. They look like ceramic resonators, a few of them are used to park the heads before impact.
https://www.murata.com/en-global/products/sensor/shock
I suspect you're correct. It's either mems accelerometers (which are, what 15 years old now?) or the above which have been about since 2.5" drives. Either way I can't imagine it being particularly damaging, especially as few laptops have any real audio power to their speakers. Interesting video, but "breaks" is a stretch.
EEVblog:
--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on January 07, 2023, 09:01:24 pm ---
--- Quote from: wraper on January 07, 2023, 08:49:14 pm ---
--- Quote from: Benta on January 07, 2023, 08:43:25 pm ---I call bullshit as well.
I read the story elsewhere (can't find it right now, sorry), but the point was that extremely agressive copy protection wreaked havoc on Win machines (as always). It's a Big Music plus Microsoft thing.
--- End quote ---
The story is not about DRM but about vibration at certain frequency causing HDD malfunction. FWIW HDDs are sensitive to vibration, so the story has some plausibility.
--- End quote ---
Yep. The less plausible part is that the laptop's speakers would have high enough output for low frequencies to cause any issue.
Those tiny speakers usually have a pretty poor low-freq response. So it sounds pretty unlikely to be able to couple vibration with enough amplitude to cause damage to a hard drive. So yeah, not impossible but rather unlikely.
But it's a funny story nonetheless.
--- End quote ---
Yep, I'm in that camp as well. Technically possible, but highly unlikely in practice.
The hard drives would have been vibrationaly frequency sweeped during operation to verify this isn't an issue.
Ed.Kloonk:
--- Quote from: BrianHG on January 08, 2023, 12:13:39 pm ---Accelerometers with built in free fall detection is actually a big feature, like this one:
https://www.st.com/resource/en/design_tip/dt0100-setting-up-freefall-recognition-with-sts-mems-accelerometers-stmicroelectronics.pdf
Yes, some of the settings will directly trigger the interrupt output pin within a detected 50-100hz sweep.
(Googled...)
If the sensitivity of the laptop's accelerometer was set too high, yes it will pick up audio just like a microphone as you can see in the .pdf that it is sensitive way into the 400hz region. Have a laptop where the accelerometer is next to the speaker, yeah, it's gonna trigger when set to it's minimal quickest response sensitivity setting.
--- End quote ---
At the risk of being pedantic, when they say it "turns off the hard drive", I wonder if they mean park the heads.
One of my computer dealers used to say that the sudden power outage forces a head park, too many of those and it's goodnight drive since it's not good for the heads to do that too often. That's what I was told, don't know if it's bullshit or not. The accelerometer could be performing this task, but it swings the heads pretty hard into park, as I understand.
BrianHG:
--- Quote from: Buriedcode on January 09, 2023, 01:20:21 am ---I'm pretty sure most 2.5" drives have shock sensors, at least in every one I have seen/repaired. They look like ceramic resonators, a few of them are used to park the heads before impact.
https://www.murata.com/en-global/products/sensor/shock
I suspect you're correct. It's either mems accelerometers (which are, what 15 years old now?) or the above which have been about since 2.5" drives. Either way I can't imagine it being particularly damaging, especially as few laptops have any real audio power to their speakers. Interesting video, but "breaks" is a stretch.
--- End quote ---
These Murata shock sensors mounted on the HDs controller board probably just temporarily park the HD head. Such an event might even be logged in the Windows Event viewer.
However, the Laptops with the feature of a mems Zero G free-fall and shock detection sensor are placed on the laptop's motherboard. Some of those probably have a kill the system power function.
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