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Date: | Thu, 30 Aug 2007 15:29:21 -0500 |
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Richard Fiorello writes:
> months. Apparently one of his beloved classmates accidentally turned the
> tiger software on and had no idea how to shut that little mechanical
> person
> off. It was good for a laugh anyway.
I can imagine since it was probably a typo that started
the voice.
I first started working at our computer center in 1989
on the Help-desk which is where they started everybody out. I
noticed that our telephones had a pretty simple electronic ring
sound so I wrote a program in 8086 assembler that would
faithfully duplicate the sound of one of the phones ringing over
the speaker of an IBM XT computer. My little program had a
30-second pause that would let you start it and then move away
from the system. Soon, one would hear a telephone ringing. I had
the cadence right and the pitch so it sounded authentic. Folks
were running all over that little room full of computers and
phones, picking them up, and being very confused. I loved it.
Finally a guy realized that the sound was emanating from a
computer, not a telephone, and he rebooted it which was the only
way to break out of the loop I had written. Fortunately, nobody
got mad. That was 18 years ago and I still work here but
fortunately, not on the help-desk.
Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK
Systems Engineer
OSU Information Technology Department Network Operations Group
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