Programming stress

The first computer I owned was an Acorn Electron. It was a wonderful machine, taught me to how to code at the appropriate age. It also gave me nightmares, of which I was reminded today.

This page is about Electron maintenance, and it says:

Dust the PSU board off, then INSPECT the area highlighted in this image for cracked solder joints. Its a common fault on Electrons. Repeated removal/insertion of power lead weakens the joint.

Indeed. What happens is that the computer will switch off at random intervals and reboot, throwing all your carefully coded programs in the bit bucket. When I was young, I feared opening the machine, but discovered that chances of keeping it alive were better if I leaned on my desk just so. Great, because now whenever the machine went down I could blame it on myself.

Months of agony were finally resolved by a soldering iron in my shaking hands. Because of my poor soldering skills, I ended up fixing the machine at least once a week.

posted at: 05:45 | path: /en/computers | permanent link