Phone ringer Troubleshooting

Praise Jesus! It's a miracle!

Yea, brother! I just been doing the holy Haleighleujas.

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

Praise Jesus! It's a miracle!

Many years ago, I worked in a printing office. I operated a Varitype typesetting machine which imprinted various typefonts onto paper for photographing onto a litho printing plate. The tabletop machine had an electric motor that wound a large spring that ran the machine, every 22 characters that you typed would start the motor to wind the spring.

One day I started work, and entered the characters and got about two words into a sentence and it stopped dead. I checked the power cord and everything that I could think of but could not get it running. I called service, as it was on a maintenance and repair contract and looked for something to do for the next several hours.

The service man came in and took a look at it and flipped the switch from off to on. Embarrassment! What fooled me was that it started working and then stopped but I didn't think of the wound spring and look for a switch that had been turned off because it was normally never turned off. Then explain to the boss why nothing got done for half a day.

I have spent my entire working life in field service, of thermofax machines ,copiers, duplicators, and these days roll laminators.....

the dumb things people do:(

I remind myself often that if people didnt break machines I wouldnt have a job:)

One of my last jobs in the USCG was to break navigation equipment in an electronics lab so technicians could learn to troubleshoot it before going out into the field.

One test procedure required a timing signal to be sent from the equipment to the O-scope before the scope could be used to test other parts of the system. The scope was therefore blank when you started the procedure. This timing trigger wasn't just for the scope, but also a key signal required for the navigation system to work properly.

When I knew some cocky hot-shots were coming to the lab, my favorite trick was to take the fuse out of the scope. Since they were expecting a blank scope when they started troubleshooting, they would hook the probe to the timing board, attempting to get the scope to display the timing trigger. When they couldn't get a signal on the scope, they'd confidently exclaim "The timing board is bad!"

I'd go get them a timing board to replace the "bad" one, they'd put it in and be very surprised to find that the equipment still didn't operate properly. Sometimes it took quite a while (and sometimes a few hints) before they realized that the scope's power light wasn't even on.

They usually weren't so cocky the next time they came in the lab.

I used to do nationwide field service, which meant I flew all over the US fixing issues when the local techs couldn't fix them. I flew from Denver to Dallas because a monitor on our system had no video. The local tech swapped out the monitor, but still no video. He tried to troubleshoot it but to no luck. He called me and I flew onsite. Within a couple of minutes of looking at the machine, I found the analog/digital switch on the monitor in the wrong position. The local tech had set the switches on the new monitor to match exactly how they were set on the old monitor, and then wondered why no video. Needless to say, that tech got a lecture on troubleshooting.

Me and JH are both disabled but we work all the time when we can walk. One of the companies we work for has national service contracts with a lot of retail stores like Walmart, Kmart, Walgreens and many others. On more than one occasion I've run service calls to Ann Taylor women's clothing stores for a computer or cash register that's not working. Quite often, something is unplugged or switched off. In one manager's office, the computer monitor IEC plug wasn't pushed in far enough to make contact in the back of the monitor's power socket. When the lovely ladies ask what was wrong, I always tell them it had a bad "framistan", I'm not so mean as to cause them extreme embarrassment. ^_^

TDD

My Dad had a machine he called a Varityper. Printed a left column, and then by typing the same text on the right, gave you a good, smooth right margin. Justified, I think it was called. Took a mylar ribbon, and fonts that looked like an upper partial denture.

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

Many years ago, I worked in a printing office. I operated a Varitype typesetting machine which imprinted various typefonts onto paper for photographing onto a litho printing plate. The tabletop machine had an electric motor that wound a large spring that ran the machine, every 22 characters that you typed would start the motor to wind the spring.

One day I started work, and entered the characters and got about two words into a sentence and it stopped dead. I checked the power cord and everything that I could think of but could not get it running. I called service, as it was on a maintenance and repair contract and looked for something to do for the next several hours.

The service man came in and took a look at it and flipped the switch from off to on. Embarrassment! What fooled me was that it started working and then stopped but I didn't think of the wound spring and look for a switch that had been turned off because it was normally never turned off. Then explain to the boss why nothing got done for half a day.

I remember one of the lists, someone worked for a company that encouraged people to fix thier own equipment. They knew it would result in more eventual income.

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

I have spent my entire working life in field service, of thermofax machines ,copiers, duplicators, and these days roll laminators.....

the dumb things people do:(

I remind myself often that if people didnt break machines I wouldnt have a job:)

I'm nominating this one for the award.

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

One of my last jobs in the USCG was to break navigation equipment in an electronics lab so technicians could learn to troubleshoot it before going out into the field.

One test procedure required a timing signal to be sent from the equipment to the O-scope before the scope could be used to test other parts of the system. The scope was therefore blank when you started the procedure. This timing trigger wasn't just for the scope, but also a key signal required for the navigation system to work properly.

When I knew some cocky hot-shots were coming to the lab, my favorite trick was to take the fuse out of the scope. Since they were expecting a blank scope when they started troubleshooting, they would hook the probe to the timing board, attempting to get the scope to display the timing trigger. When they couldn't get a signal on the scope, they'd confidently exclaim "The timing board is bad!"

I'd go get them a timing board to replace the "bad" one, they'd put it in and be very surprised to find that the equipment still didn't operate properly. Sometimes it took quite a while (and sometimes a few hints) before they realized that the scope's power light wasn't even on.

They usually weren't so cocky the next time they came in the lab.

Some logic, to set the new one like the old one. I can imagine that.

When I was in the high school AV club, some kids wanted to watch TV after class, and a TV and VCR cart was in the room. They were trying things for antenna, and never noticed the rocker switch by the volume knob that set from VCR to TV.

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

I used to do nationwide field service, which meant I flew all over the US fixing issues when the local techs couldn't fix them. I flew from Denver to Dallas because a monitor on our system had no video. The local tech swapped out the monitor, but still no video. He tried to troubleshoot it but to no luck. He called me and I flew onsite. Within a couple of minutes of looking at the machine, I found the analog/digital switch on the monitor in the wrong position. The local tech had set the switches on the new monitor to match exactly how they were set on the old monitor, and then wondered why no video. Needless to say, that tech got a lecture on troubleshooting.

Had to replace the oscillator?

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

Me and JH are both disabled but we work all the time when we can walk. One of the companies we work for has national service contracts with a lot of retail stores like Walmart, Kmart, Walgreens and many others. On more than one occasion I've run service calls to Ann Taylor women's clothing stores for a computer or cash register that's not working. Quite often, something is unplugged or switched off. In one manager's office, the computer monitor IEC plug wasn't pushed in far enough to make contact in the back of the monitor's power socket. When the lovely ladies ask what was wrong, I always tell them it had a bad "framistan", I'm not so mean as to cause them extreme embarrassment. ^_^

TDD

I've spent the better part of my adult life troubleshooting as well.

The number one rule... no matter how obvious an issue seems to be, is to check the simple stuff first.

Some related I came across a while back:

I remember one early morning operations at Goldstone tracking station doing a satellite pass after working all night. Us four in the tracking RF section did all the prepass checks and back to back loops. Everything going good on acquisition. Running smooth, then no data or something like that. One RF guy to another, THROW THE SWITCH. Other RF guy looking at hundreds of switches says, WHAT SWITCH? Everything smoothed out after the right switch was throw.

Greg

I've had several leaky tires, in the last few weeks. One was weather cracked. One picked up a nail.

The one I just took in, he sprayed some soap on the valve stem, it's blowing like crazy. Tightens the valve core, and we're good. I coulda done that, but I didn't do the diagnosis.

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

I've spent the better part of my adult life troubleshooting as well.

The number one rule... no matter how obvious an issue seems to be, is to check the simple stuff first.

Some related I came across a while back:

Orders from a Wiccan officer who tattle tales.

"Which switch, witch snitch?"

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

I remember one early morning operations at Goldstone tracking station doing a satellite pass after working all night. Us four in the tracking RF section did all the prepass checks and back to back loops. Everything going good on acquisition. Running smooth, then no data or something like that. One RF guy to another, THROW THE SWITCH. Other RF guy looking at hundreds of switches says, WHAT SWITCH? Everything smoothed out after the right switch was throw.

Greg

And so begins another annoying episode of top-posting foolishness.

A friend of my uncle's used to teach electronics in high school and before that, the military. One of his tricks was to clip pins off tubes (a few moons ago) to simulate failures. One day, when he was active duty, he noticed his former students checking the pins on all the tubes on the gear they were working on.

As have I, though I don't have the luxury of knowing that the widget I'm debugging ever worked or will ever work (as is). It makes the game a lot different. ;-)

Yep. Always check power first. I always add LEDs to the power controls to tell me what power supplies are supposed to be running. A glance at them tells me if they're operating as intended. When something changes for the worst, glance at the indicators.

I don't know if it's common, but I saw the dash board of a race car that had all the dials installed kind of crooked. Turns out they were installed so that all the indicators pointed at 12 o'clock under normal operating conditions. While cruising around the track, the driver barely even has to look down to see if everything was OK. No processing needed.

When I think back to all the dials on the transmitters I used to work on, I can see how much easier it would have been if we had used the same set up.