Could an insect short out a board?

badgamer

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Just wondering, I'm guessing that an insect could short a board ??

Anyone ever had a fried spider, fly or even a mouse or anything else in their cab or board??



john

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Not sure, and i would like to know as well.....

Trivial - the term "Bug" came from a certain "Grace Hopper" (really coincidence that she had that name!) who was a high ranking official for the US military and was administrator for the ENIAC computer back in the 40's. The machine was shorted and she found the cause - a Moth had shorted the machine by wedging itself / probably dying in one of the vacuum tubes. She coined it "A bug".
 
machine was shorted and she found the cause - a Moth had shorted the machine by wedging itself / probably dying in one of the vacuum tubes. She coined it "A bug".

Technically, the moth didn't short anything, and it wasn't in a vacuum tube. Remember, tubes are sealed glass bulbs - there is no way for anything to get inside.

The moth was caught in a relay, crushed between the contacts, and causing it to not conduct (because the moth was in the way).

And I believe the term "bug" was used before that - the note in the journal was more of a "hey, look, an actual computer bug!".

But no, I've never seen a bug short out a logic board. The voltage that logic chips run at is just too low to "zap" a bug. I have heard tales of fried cockroaches in television sets though, although I've never seen it. Zenith color sets in the 60's used to have a hand wired chassis, with exposed terminal strips at the top - supposedly a cockroach walking across that could get plate voltage across him (400v or more), and get zapped - but again, I've never seen it.

By and large, insects seem to be rather poor conductors. Which would explain why their trains never run on time.

-Ian
 
It's not a board, but I had a mouse get in the fuse box panel in the basement and short across one of the bus bars, and kept blowing one of the fuses. When we opened up the fuse box to fix it, there were 2 more mummified in the box.
 
OT: I heard that the disks in mainframe hard drives used to be gigantic and that, when one failed and went off the spindle, they'd actually bust through the housing where they were held and roll out. Hence, "hard drive crash". Dunno if that's true or not...
 
Twice (once at work, once at home) I've been involved in power outages caused by squirrels bridging terminals on utility pole-mounted transformers and shorting them out.

In both cases, a very stiff and slightly charred squirrel was recovered a small distance from the scene.
 
OT: I heard that the disks in mainframe hard drives used to be gigantic and that, when one failed and went off the spindle, they'd actually bust through the housing where they were held and roll out. Hence, "hard drive crash". Dunno if that's true or not...

That's a myth too - although theoretically possible with early drum memory units - some of those drums were massive, and had an immense amount of rotational energy. Most disks weren't really big enough (14" in diameter is common). A main paging drum, however, could be 12 feet long...

A true hard disk crash happens when the heads hit the media. And yes, I've heard of insects being involved here. Many old minicomputer/mainframe drives were removable. That is, the disk pack (stack of disk platters) was changed in and out of the drive (containing the motor, heads, etc). They were very susceptable to dust, dirt, and any other contaminents, seeming as though the heads fly very closely above the media. Crashes happen any time the head hits the media, or something on it. At the high speed, any head/media contact is bad. Usually it'll gouge some oxide off the disk and clog up the head. A classic story (that has indeed happened many times), is where a disk develops a crash for some reason or another and goes offline. The operator, thinking a the disk pack might have gotten corrupt, swaps in another one and tries to load it. The drive spins up, loads the heads, and crashes the contaminated head into the media, ruining it. The drive still isn't working, so the operator tries the pack in another drive - the good heads hitting the existing gouge in the media, contaminating them. A stupid operator can continue swapping disks until a majority of the drives in the room are crashed, and ruining every good pack loaded into them. This has most definitely happened.

The initial cause can be just about any contaminent, and I've heard stories of the culprit being an ant or other small insect found smeared into the platter, but at the same time, at those speeds, I don't know how you'd be able to identify the insect - there wouldn't be anything left.

Crashes did happen, usually they aren't catestrophic, but can result in nice grooves gouged into the media. The fix is to replace the heads in the drive and discard the pack.

Drive crashes still happen, it's just that modern drives are fairly sealed, so it's usually caused by bearing failure or as a result of dropping the drive. I've seen modern IDE disks full of aluminum shavings with huge gouges in the media. I have a 9" platter from a CDC 496mb drive on the wall in my cube with some deep grooves cut in it from a drive crash at a customer's site when someone walked on the wiring behind the computer and bounced the power to the disk cabinet.

-Ian
 
i used to deal with modding the original xbox
and was buying broken ones in bulk

i came across several that were dead and upon opening them i found a chared spot on the motherboard with a crispy cockroach right nex to it
 
RetroHacker said:
But no, I've never seen a bug short out a logic board. The voltage that logic chips run at is just too low to "zap" a bug.


OK, good to know....I was a little concerned to see spiders had moved into a machine that hadn't been used for some time.

Either way, I make It a habit to "debug" my machines every couple of months, just incase!



john

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I believe the answer to this question is yes. By profession, I am an exterminator. And the common German cockroach should very well be capable of destroying a pc-board as I have seen them live in other electronics and short them out or at the very least, make them operate improperly. Its not that the roaches are particularly conductive, nor is it likely that a single bug would short out a board. But when the game is operating, it generates heat. The roaches would be drawn to it (sometimes in mass). And constant excretion of waste on the circuits and chips coupled with tiny amounts of moisture could short circuits or chips. Of course, this is just an educated guess.
 
Black Matrix - and not to sidetrack this thread (hopefully the questions been answered) - my biggest fear is German Cockroaches. I can go face to face with a rat, a snake, whatever - but a cockroach disgusts me so much i jump like a girl. One of my biggest fears is to pick up a game that has "eggs". So far, maybe 20 games i've gone through, havent had the problem. Is it common / what are the odds? While you are at it, if you can, tell us one of your horror stories!
 
OT: I heard that the disks in mainframe hard drives used to be gigantic and that, when one failed and went off the spindle, they'd actually bust through the housing where they were held and roll out. Hence, "hard drive crash". Dunno if that's true or not...

Someone burned me a CD at work and did not close out the session. I took it home and when I tried to access it on my PC found I could not access the data. The drive kept spinning and when I pressed the eject button, the drive opened while the CD was spinning full speed. It banged around some prior to the door fully opening then flew out into the room like a frisby. The CD was chewed up but the drive still worked afterwards.
 
I would say your odds would depend on how you look at it. If you consider that there is little in a cab to eat on with the exception of the glue in the particle board, you should have a relatively low chance of getting roaches via a cabinet.

On the other hand, if you purchased a cabinet from a person who already had a bad case of roaches, the chances of you getting them could be quite good. This was the case of which I was speaking that could actually short out a game board or more likely a power supply.

Of course, its more likely that you would pick up roaches from your local supermarket buying a sack of potatoes than buying a game with roaches in them. Or more likely picking up roaches from buying something at a flea market/yard sale than an arcade machine from a collector. Just remember that once you have a case, they are in your house. They have to get established. If you start seeing them, call an exterminator, or pick up some home defense bug spray or the like. Don't leave any kind of food source laying about for them so they can easily feed. Which means no dirty dishes in the sink and don't leave a lot of pet food out for the cat or dog. Some of our worse cases have pets.

As for horror stories, I won't go into any. I will just say that we have had a couple that we have fought for over a year. But many, many contributing factors have made getting rid of them difficult. If you find you have roaches, don't wait. Consider that 16 roaches can hatch from a single egg sack and can hatch out a new genereration in around 16-18 days, you can do the math. You could have a bad case in 3-6 months. Start trying to get rid of them immediately. Either start applying sprays and baits yourself, or call a good reputable local exterminator that you have heard good things from via word of mouth. Personally, I would look for a small local exterminating company over a large franchise. Perhaps I am just biased as that is what our company is, but I think you would get better service for your money that way. And pick an exterminator who sprays monthly if at all possible. Spraying quarterly seems to be all the rage in the industry right now, but roaches need to be sprayed monthly for 3+ months minimum to truly be rid of them. 6 months will take care of most of worse cases. So when I say we have sprayed a couple for more than a year, that is a horror story.

But also remember that just because you see a roach doesn't mean its a German roach. There are 3 main types. (German, American or Wood Roach, and Oriental or Brown Banded.) The German is the worst and most prolific breeder. He's about .5-.75" long body. An American roach has wings and is about .75 to 1" long. The Oriental has a brownish band on its back and falls in between the other two size wise. If you live near woods, the large roach you see could just be an American roach. They will fly to your house lights at night and often be seen on porches and decks the next morning. However, if you flip on the kitchen light at midnight and see 6 roaches run under your fridge, then you can start worrying and start trying to get rid of them. Bottom line, don't overreact cause you saw just one. But take care of them quickly if you think the evil brown menace is mounting its forces for an attack. ;)

Black Matrix - and not to sidetrack this thread (hopefully the questions been answered) - my biggest fear is German Cockroaches. I can go face to face with a rat, a snake, whatever - but a cockroach disgusts me so much i jump like a girl. One of my biggest fears is to pick up a game that has "eggs". So far, maybe 20 games i've gone through, havent had the problem. Is it common / what are the odds? While you are at it, if you can, tell us one of your horror stories!
 
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I'll never forget the time I watched creepshow as a kid, and that last story with the roaches was the worst. Then my eyes started playing tricks on me. Hate them things.

I have a problem with ants at times coming in the window of my apartment, only a few but still. I grabbed my ant/roach spray and did the door ways, and under the sink and kitchen. When I went to the windows I caught an ant just making it's way in. And my cab sits by the window.

Sucks because I have the horizontal sliding windows that allow a gap and they can just crawl all in, even if I douse my window area with raid. Every now and again when I get a itch or a tickle, I start thinking "It better not be a damn ant."
 
While it's true that there is little for any to eat in your typical cabinet, I do have a tron game that had termites.
The cabinets are a warm place to hide out. The last game I got I had to take it apart because parts of it had rat dropping with the typical rat urine smell to it. Parts of the cabinet just need to be rebuilt from the ground up.
 
Yes i think my fears came from Creepshow.

So ive been in my house for 6 years now. About three years back we had a guy who does great work paint the outside of the house and the back kitchen door. My wife called me at work and asked if it was ok that his tarp was all over the kitchen - i said why not? She said she thinks he could bring in bugs. I said Pish posh and hung up the phone.

Not even two days later (he was done with the job) in the dining room my wife called me over - she asked me to identify a bug. I looked and sure enough it was an effen roach - german! I tried to catch it but it darted off. Now i am freaked out. Maybe it was isolated incident, maybe it came in from the supermarket, maybe the guy bought it in. But like you said i had to act fast. That night, i stood up going through the dining room, but didnt see anything. I went to bed. My wife on the other hand stood out with a flashlight, and around three hours later woke me up (around midnight) - she caught one in the kitchen. It was a roach. We spent the night throwing out everything we could!

Next morning called the exterminator - he planted those traps (red ones - Dmaxx?). Two nights later my cats (i had two at the time) were chasing these things around the house. Ok enough was enough. I bought two tubs or boric acid and alot of the Raid Gel (the brown stuff). I remember i spent around 100 dollars on this stuff. I went through every light switch in the house and puffed boric acid. I lined corners with the gel. Behind furniture i used boric acid. I was on a mission.

Its three years later and i havent seen another. Let me say though that was a very scary experience. I really despise those things. *Shudders*.

If i had rats, snakes, mice, racoons, squirrels, panther or tiger problems i wouldnt care - they can be taken care of. Roaches - you are right need to be removed fast.
 
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