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by defaultcompany 393 days ago
This reminds me of the “drop fix” for the sparc station where people would pick up the box and drop it to reseat the PROMs.
2 comments

Amiga had a similar issue. One of the chips (fat Agnes IIRC?) didn't quite fit in the socket correctly, and a common fix was to pull out the drive mechanisms and drop the chassis something like a foot onto a carpeted floor.

Somewhat related, one morning I was in the office early and an accounting person came in and asked me for help, her computer wouldn't turn on and I was the only other one in the office. I went over, poked the power button and nothing happened. This was on a PC clone. She has a picture of her daughter on top of the computer, so I picked it up, gave the computer a good solid whack on the side, sat the picture down and poked the power button and it came to life.

We call this: Percussive Engineering

Apparently you also had to do this with the Apple ///.