x=5; print x; doesn't print 5

[rfclown]

I was watching a YouTube video about getting a old Data General mini computer running. The guy commented that the unit didn't come with a multiply/divide card. It made me remember a time in college in the early 80s when I couldn't figure out why my BASIC program wasn't working correctly on a PDP 11/70. There was a conditional statement that was never getting executed and it didn't make any sense. In desperation to figure it out (although it made no logical sense) I assigned a variable and then printed it, something like x=5; print x.... and the display showed something other than 5. ? Right after that the guy in charge of the system came out of the back to say that something was wrong with the system. Apparently there was some arithmetic processing card that went bad. Any other weird computer stories that you'd never see on modern systems?

[Phil_G]

Hoping that this will amuse. I recall one of the routine maintenance jobs on our GEC2050 was changing the filters in the cooling system. This was a sturdy aluminium case about the size of a shoe-box. It was strictly drilled into us that these were microfine molecular filters and would be packed with germs, Bubonic Plague and worse.  Consequently it was a surgical operation, wearing full gear, a meticulously careful but swift transfer from the chassis to a sealed container for disposal, followed by an operating-theatre standard of cleaning the machine and its surroundings.  The old filter and its deadly contents were disposed of in a special sealed bin collected by the hazardous waste guys from the local council.  By that time of course, the bin was actually empty - I'd stay late and take the aluminium filters for project boxes - 40+ years on I still have a mains inverter built into one and I never caught any zombie virus from them   

[m k]

How you know you are not actually dead, do you have mirrors?

I was once repairing a PC, warranted 286/386 era Schneider and a new model.
Its RS-port speed was 8x, it was also a BIOS programming error.
Maybe the use of a serial port was already so rare in Germany.