As a product designer, I don't usually do computer tech support, but if asked by a client, I will help with their problems if it's something I can handles. Here's my worst case story:
My client sells a line of pre-tested, qualified electronic components. Their one and only test system comprises a hand built tester that runs a small batch of devices at once. It was powered by a 386SX machine running DOS 6.22.
Don't knock the machine. DOS is great for these tasks.
Anyhow, one Friday morning I got a hair on fire call that the machine was down. The president of the company said they thought the motherboard was ruined because they could see where someone had spilled something corrosive on it, and it looked like there were fried traces.
He also tells me he has an open account with a shop that has a number of used, known good AT boards that will accept the CPU and RAM in the machine. I head out there, stopping along the way to pick up a few motherboards, a random handful of 486's and some extra pieces of EDO RAM, and I tell the guy to note what is taken, and I will return whatever is not used for the fix.
I get to my client's place. It takes several hours to pull the system apart from its installation and find a combo of parts that looks like it should run. We power it up, and...
< beep > < beep > ...
I try another likely combination, and get the same thing. :disgust:
It's closing time, and I pull the hard drive, I tell my client I will take it home to evaluate, and I ask for his backup of the test program. Of course, you 've guessed his reply...
What backup?
Over the weekend, I pop the drive into my trusty old 486-DX4, and power it up. I can hear the drive grinding and spinning at an uneven rate, so I reconfigure it with the regular drive and my client's drive as a slave. The system recognizes the drive in the CMOS, but there's nobody home from the DOS prompt.
Now, I look closely at the drive. It's a ten year old early MB IDE drive. Well, at least it's IDE. It could be worse, like EDSI, etc. This beast is so old, and the motor is so thick, that the spindle actually protrudes through the circuit board.
A friend who was over suggests hitting it with WD-40. At this point, there's nothing to lose, so I give it a spritz and try again. We can hear a change in the grinding noise, but the machine still can't find the drive from the DOS prompt.
I try other things a few more times, over the weekend. Monday morning, I give it one more try. It still won't boot on its own. I give it one more go as a slave, and
THERE'S DRIVE D: !!! The entire contents take less than 10 MB, so I quickly XCOPY the entire drive to a subdirectory on the main drive.
Only after the test program is safe do I take a tech look at their drive with my Norton DOS tools. It's got more cross-links, fragmented files, lost clusters, etc., etc. than any drive I've ever seen. Of course, this no longer matters, because at this point, the hardware is only good for use as a doorstop!
Once I got him up and running, he took my advice and bought a complete backup machine. He was so relieved that this was the only time he didn't complains about the size of my bill. I keep pointing out to him that he has paid me as much to fix other people's dumb mistakes in various product designs, and now this computer problem,than he has paid for my own designs, all of which work.
For reference, I was scheduled to go there
on the day Code Red was scheduled to hit at 5:00 pm PST. I called and reminded him that his office ran on NT, and I asked if he had taken the appropriate precautions. He says they have discussed it, but they haven't done anything. I remind him that drop dead time is that afternoon, and he should contact his network guys, within the next few nanoseconds. He tells me they're out of town for a few days, so I ask him if he wants me to take care of it while I'm there.
I did, and he needed it. I finished updating his office around 4:45 pm.
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