Who, Me? Techie sent to fix Nobel Prize winner’s PC almost set it on fire

personal tech

Even the greatest scientific minds are at risk of rogue 9-pin connectors

WHO, ME? Every Monday morning The Register asks the same question – “Who, Me?” – because that’s the name of our weekly reader-contributed column that shares your stories of workplace scrapes, escapes, and japes.

This week meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Marc” who told us that he graduated in the early 1990s and soon scored his first job – supporting PCs for Very Important Professors (VIPs) at the graduate school run by his alma mater.

“Some of these VIPs went on to win Nobel Prizes,” Marc told The Register – although at the time this story took place none had become laureates.

One tool that helped them work toward academic greatness was an IBM PC powered by an Intel 286 processor.

“Take a moment to remember the physicality of the humble nine-pin RS-232 connector,” Marc urged, recalling that the plugs were brilliantly simple – but that in the early 1990s not all used the same pin for the same purpose.

“For an actual serial RS-232, the power pin is well defined. But those of a certain age will remember a different IBM pinning for the physically identical connector,” he reminded The Register. “Specifically for the power pin on IBM’s proprietary mouse.”

You can probably guess where this story leads.

One of the VIPs was doing Very Important Work, but their mouse wasn’t working.

Marc brought a replacement mouse, plugged it into the first port that looked appropriate, and rebooted the PC.

“Immediately it started to smoke!” he admitted. “Foul smelling, unforgiving, electrical smoke.” Smoke that could destroy Very Important Science.

Marc’s response was to kick the PC’s power cord out of the wall socket, an act he told us he performed “with the fury of a Baguazhang assassin.” (We had to look that up; it’s a Chinese martial art.)

“I took a few deep breaths to assess the situation and realized my simple mistake,” Marc wrote. “I had plugged the new mouse into the wrong – but physically identical – nine-pin port.”

Power had therefore flowed into the wrong port, causing the smoke.

“After a few minutes putting things into their best and proper place, I powered up again and … no smoke! The mouse worked perfectly!”

Marc tested the PC to make sure it was still sound, found no reason to suspect it was broken, then opened the VIP’s office door to dispel the olfactory evidence of his error.

“My VIP did eventually get that Nobel Prize,” Marc wrote. “History will record his achievements but will never know the man who almost set his PC on fire to replace a Very Important Mouse.”

Have you put the wrong plug into the wrong socket? If so, what went wrong? Click here – not here! – to send us your story so we can feature it in a future edition of Who, Me? ® ®