Why does smacking the s**t out of tech make it work?

Factual Questions
1

I’m in Cape Town, South Africa, now for my companies annual meeting. That means I’m living in a hotel room for a few weeks. The past few nights the TV hasn’t been working right- the remote only worked occasionally, it got stuck on channels, etc. Last night it simply stopped working at the worst moment. Byron Allen was about to show an interview with Lionel Richie- RUN AWAY!!! But no, the channel was stuck, and the buttons on set itself weren’t working. So I did the only thing I could think of- I slammed the remote down on top of the nightstand- HARD.

Presto! No more problems. Everything is just working fine. Why did that work?

Earlier this year I was working on a massive Excel spreadsheet- over 20 megs. I had been working for a few hours, but had forgotten to hit ‘Save’. (Yeah, I know better). We had to send the report out that night and were in the middle of copying the charts and tables over when all of a sudden, my whole computer froze. It was dead. Mouse didn’t move, nothing happened, just simply frozen. We opened up the file on the server from another machine and found out it had been forever since I had saved, so we were really worried. I got pissed (mainly at myself) so I smacked the side of my monitor- HARD.

Presto! No more problems. Everything just worked fine. Why did that work? Especially that- I smacked my monitor, not my computer. Whahuh? I hit save and we finished the project.

Why does smacking something make it work? I don’t understand why it should work. I can maybe understand the remote control- a battery was out of place or a button became un-stuck. But other things like that simply baffle me.

Take care-
-Tcat

2

I don’t know why it works (loose connection inside?)

But even when it doens’t work, doesn’t it feel good?!! :wink:

3

I’ve always assumed that it’s because some soldered connection has broken, one of the components has moved out of place, and if you hit it the two pieces of solder reconnect. Not permanantly, but for the time being. That’s why hitting stuff has always (in my experience) been only a temporary solution. Eventually, that stops working.

–Cliffy

4

loose connections that you knocked back into place. buttons that were stuck. moving parts that had stopped moving.

remember that your computer is a machine. it’s made up of physical parts and physical contact has an effect.

also remember that it won’t always be a pleasant effect.

5

Back in 1980, I worked at a computer store where we sold Apple II’s. One of the Apple-approved techniques for fixing a set of intermittent problems was called the “drop technique:” we picked the front of the computer up about three inches and dropped it. When it hit the table, the loose chips got reseated in their sockets and the connection was restored.

Also, whacking things can knock dust loose from clogged connections.

And it demonstrates your manly superiority over the inanimate object.

[Minsc]
Squeaky wheel gets da kick!
[/Minsc]

6

Issue 1: It’s likely the remote batteries were not seated perfectly and were slightly out of alignment witht he contacts. Simply Removing them and reinserting them would have worked as well and caused less incipient damage to the remote.

Issue 2: There are 1000 things going on at once inside a PC that can freeze it temporarily. Background timed backups of large files (like the Excel spreadsheet) are just one thing that can make it seems like the PC is temporarily “frozen” It’s likely the process that had frozen the PC had just terminated when you beat on the monitor.

As a side note beating on electonics (especially PC related stuff) is generally A VERY BAD IDEA. There are some situations (mostly older monitor related) where jarring the chassis may cause a component to re-align temporarily. Usually, however, it will quickly go back out of spec and all you doing is damaging other internal components to the point it cannot be properly and reliably fixed. It may look cute and it may please your co-workers but smacking electronics is usually an extremely ignorant thing to to do akin to beating on a car engine with a hammer and “fixing” it.

7

This is a time honored technique called "percussive maintenance ".

8

I have a Zenith TV I bought in 1979. For over 5 years now, until it warms up, the channel will change from “3” (where it has to be on the TV for cable access) to “2” or go out completely. When it goes from 3 to 2, I get the next channel down that I have on the cable. (If I had cable 10, cable 9 comes on.) I merely slam my fist on the top of the TV and that fixes it. Sometimes, esp. more recently, I have to slam it several times. It used to be one slam would fix it. Now it takes several.

I called the repair shop about this when it first began to happen and the guy said it was the tuner and I should bring it in. It’s a portable, but heavy, so I just haven’t botheed to bring it in so long as I can get it to work eventually. (Very annoying tho, having to get up and slam the TV and then switch on to channel 3. I have a remote, but that’s only for the cable. The TV was set up to handle cable only on channel 3.)

Recently I had trouble with my door lock, with the short projection not extending all the way. A locksmith on this board told me to hit the latch with a hammer. I did and that fixed it.

Sometimes things need a good kick.

9

For remotes and mice and stuff with moving parts, a lot of times it is just the normal grunge that has built up around the moving part over time.

You said you were having problems making it change channels. Those buttons are the ones most used - perhaps some grunge was clogging it from moving. Then it finally clogged completely and no contact could be made. Dropping it shifted the grunge around. My guess is that in a short time, it will clog again.

This happens on my optical track ball every three months or so. The optics become blocked with the normal finger oils and dust. It starts working poorly and gets worse until you finally have to take it apart and clean it.

10

I remember the second moon landing, Apollo 12 in Nov 1969. A few minutes into their moon walk, the tv camera went out, and we couldn’t see what they were doing. The astronauts tried all sorts of things to fix it, but no dice. When they got the official ok to give up on it, they took a hammer and gave it hit, and it broadcast fine for the next 45 minutes or so. Further rescuscitation attempts failed, though.

11

[Pauly Walnuts]
What it needs is a brogan adjustment. You know what that is, kid?
[/Pauly Walnuts]

12

We had a Zenith console when I was a kid that used to require a thump with your fist every so often to get rid of a high-pitched noise that would sneak in. We called it “Giving it a Fonzie.” (After the way he’d turn Arnold’s jukebox on and off.)

13

I’ve heard a rumor that old apple harddrives that were not shut down properly (power failure) didn’t park and sometimes got stuck. The solution was to remove the harddrive and turn it upside down while starting it (or the whole computer)

Any truth to this rumor?

14

I know that when we got an asymmetric CD (business card one) stuck in my ex-boss’s slot-loading imac, the advice on Apple’s website included turning the computer upside down to try and dislodge it. And forcing another CD into the slot to try and straighten out the stuck one.

In fact, we never did get it out. For all I know it’s still there.

15

The correct term, according to myself (and other folks who design stuff, I didn’t make this one up) is the “engineer’s nudge.”

I’ve also heard it referred to as “the fine art of whamming.”

I do recall the Apple tech doc. From my memory, it was to reseat chips that had come loose in shipping, and the official drop height was 4 inches.

I’ve never heard of the apple hard drive turnover fix. Typically, if an old hard drive wouldn’t spin up, the solution was to take it out and give it a good twist by hand, then replace it and start again normally. Older drives often weren’t meant to run upside down, and the drive could actually be damaged.

We did have one hard drive at work in a Vax 3100 that developed “stiction” (meaning the drive would stop spinning, because for some reason it got stuck, and the motors were no longer powerful enough to unstick it). We needed to get some files off of it, so what we ended up doing was putting it into another computer, and running only the data cable from the other Vax to it. When it stuck, we would power down the computer it was in, and power it back up, which was often enough for it to start spinning again. If it didn’t, we’d power it down, take it out, spin it, and start it back up again. VMS was actually able to cope with the drive errors, and three days later, we had all the files we needed off of it.

I am aware of older drives having a problem with not parking the heads, but what would happen is that the heads would do a “write” operation (sort of) as the drive powered up, which could easily trash data on whatever track the head was over at the time.

As for the OP, I agree with astro, it was most likely the batteries in the remote, and the PC was likely just busy and happened to complete just as you whacked the monitor.

Also, I would like to add that “whamming” a hard drive is likely to cause the hard drive heads to bounce up and down against the platter, which is not a good thing. You could easily create a bad spot on the drive, or worst case, cause the whole drive to fail.

16

Seems most unlikely that a blow to the monitor would fix a system freeze unless your PC is one of those integrated single unit boxes.

In the olden days (well not that long ago really) we had a huge TV that was all valve electronics; it would sometimes respond positively to kinetic therapy, but this is easily understandable as valves are quite susceptible to vibration etc.