
The Magical Excel 97 Far East Language Build Screwdriver - r4um
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20191119-00/?p=103115
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kstrauser
Last week, a PC in my wife's medical office wouldn't boot, with the dreaded
"no drive detected" error message. Figuring "what do we have to lose", I
turned it off cracked the case, started whacking the C: drive with a
screwdriver handle, and punched the power.

It booted.

The office manager who was watching me had to pick her jaw up off the floor.
We proceeded to copy everything possibly important off it onto a USB drive,
knowing that may well have been its last spin-up ever and it's next power off
may be the final one.

~~~
hermitdev
Could also have been a loose cable. Completely unplug (both ends) all the
cables, and then plug them back in. I've had cables come loose over the years,
especially back in the IDE days. It's easy to overlook, because the cables can
look like they're properly seated.

~~~
theandrewbailey
I've had it happen to me a few times with SATA cables that don't have a clip
(or the socket can't use it, like before SATA 300). IDE sticks in there so
well that I think I'm going to damage something when pulling a cable out.

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piinbinary
That reminds me of the story about the magic switch:
[http://catb.org/jargon/html/magic-
story.html](http://catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html)

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C1sc0cat
Great story though you could have just pulled out the switch and soldered the
wires together :-)

I look forward to the practical soldering test for developers at FANG's -
every one on here can solder right.

~~~
kop316
That was my reaction too. Maybe I just work much more in hardware, but if I
came across that issue, I would have just pulled out the wires for the switch
and soldered a new one on there.

Is there something I am missing?

~~~
meddlepal
Well the part you're missing is that if these folks were anything like me and
just pure software people they probably pronounce it "soul-der" and would look
at a soldering iron with deep concern and confusion.

Seriously, I have no idea how to solder so it wouldn't even come to mind.

~~~
umvi
This is why I think CS degrees should require at least EE 101 or Computer
Engineering 101. Soldering is such a basic skill that is super valuable. And
it's not hard:

1\. Plug in soldering iron

2\. Wait

3\. Touch tip of iron to metal you want to fuse with 1 hand

4\. Touch solder to tip of iron with other hand

5\. Remove iron once desired amount of solder has melted into place

It only takes an hour or two to go from solder noob to pro.

~~~
meddlepal
It wouldn't help me very much lol, I have a philosophy degree.

~~~
kop316
I agree with the other comment! The best time to learn is now. You're never
too old.to learn about how all of this works.

~~~
meddlepal
Oh I agree, but I've never really been a hardware tinkerer though... that's
not what I get enjoyment from so I don't really think about that stuff too
much.

I'll probably pick it up eventually... maybe.

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chungy
Office 97 actually gives me a little bit of nostalgia. It's the last version
for me that actually felt pleasant to use (assuming you turn off Clippy, which
isn't much of a barrier).

~~~
frabert
When I was a little kid and started using computers for the first time, Office
97 was one of the only programs installed on my family's PC. I swear the only
reason I ever opened Office was for Clippy and its fellow animated characters
:)

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rootsudo
The fun part is that there is def a disconnect between the dev team and
hardware itself (or help desk). To resolve the issue, you only needed to short
two jumpers on the motherboard to get it to turn on.

If it was a NON-ACPI hardware, then the hardware switch was wired into the
power supply itself, which, then again you could've undone the cable and
connect the circuit to boot the computer.

~~~
hawkesnest
I would imagine that a build machine for Office 97 would be of the pre-ATX
days and have the switch wired directly to the power supply. Like a clicker-
style pen, those power buttons were often push-on-push-off, and occasionally
the mechanism would break. Jamming something, like a screwdriver, into the
power switch hole would be a completely acceptable thing to do for a one-off.

It probably took a little time for the initial panic to wear off and allow the
folks doing the build to realize it was a simple matter. The thought "we may
not be able to" is a bit of a reach. At worst they could swap power supplies
or whatnot.

~~~
mrguyorama
Doesn't that mean the switch was working with mains electricity though? In
general, I'd recommend against sticking a screwdriver into anything 120v AC

~~~
Kirby64
Extremely unlikely. It was probably 12V. Just like the switches today are 12V
and you can 'power on' an ATX power supply by jumpering 2 wires on the main
20/24-pin ATX cable.

~~~
cesarb
No, pre-ATX power supplies did have their main and only power switch on the
120V AC side. And when the power switch was on the front of the case, the
wires going to that switch carried the full 120V AC voltage and current.

Turning on the power supply by shorting a pin to the ground (it's not 12V,
it's 5V, pulled up to the always-on 5V stand-by rail by the power supply) is
an ATX novelty.

~~~
T-hawk
Can confirm. I shocked myself a few times by bumping into the terminal of the
120V AC wire at the power switch on the front of a case. As long as it's
plugged in to the wall, one side of that switch is hot even when the PC is
off.

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klyrs
In high school, circa '97, I was working in a computer lab. As I entered the
room, I was rapidly admonished " _don 't touch the table!_" So naturally, I
reached out, tenderly as possible, brushed the table with my fingertip. Sure
enough, the computer immediately reboots. He cusses a blue streak, as he's
been trying to install Windows but folks kept touching the table! I regret not
talking him through the issue, because obviously nobody would use such a flaky
machine... but I'd (quite reasonbly) lost his goodwill in my initial
mischeviousness. To this day I don't know how the machine was so sensitive to,
presumably, a miniscule change in capacitance. There's a possibly that it
wasn't grounded and I was carrying a nontrivial electrostatic charge, but the
table surface was insulating!

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Theodores
Turning off the computer or putting it in suspend mode is somewhat expected
nowadays unless it is a server in a rack that runs untold virtual machines
that get 'spun up' as needed.

Back in 1997 the idea of turning of an specialist idle PC that consumed
company electricity was not the done thing to do. If you were a lowly office
worker using Office 97 or its ancestors then you would turn off your machine
at the end of the day and start the day with a ten minute boot time. It took a
long time to get these efficiencies right and a silly amount of time was
wasted. CRT monitors ruled the roost back then too, after 6 you would see lots
of silly Microsoft OpenGL screensavers running.

I wonder what the actual power consumption is these days compared to then? It
could be a factor of ten.

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beering
I'm surprised there weren't backups they could've restored? If the difficulty
was setting up the build environment correctly, then even a duplicate hard
drive for each build server would've saved them from a pinch.

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michaelhoffman
Office 97 is older than my undergraduate students. That's so weird.

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bdamm
The amusing but strange sub-story here is the build engineer claiming that the
product may never be built. That is a type of endemic first class whining the
type of which I am sick, sick, sick of.

~~~
PhaseLockk
To me, that appeared to simply be effective communication. Raising a
potentially serious issue early rather than waiting until all options have
been exhausted and giving the security lead no time to react. Had they not
been able to succeed, the advance notice could help in getting other resources
moving in advance of the internal or external deadline.

~~~
bdamm
Inability to power on a build machine is not a serious issue. It is a
temporary problem with many solutions. To suggest that the build may never
happen would imply a much more serious problem. That does not seem like
effective communication, it seems like reckless panic to me. Perhaps they
thought the motherboard was fried. Even then it would be irresponsible to
suggest that the build could not happen. Certainly communicating that there is
a problem is a good thing, but offering up the possibility of no resolution
when the diagnostic is only just beginning is not.

~~~
DuskStar
And if the issue was that the machine ate a power surge at some point and the
hard drive (+other components) was fried? It may have no longer been practical
to recreate and QA that build machine...

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IronWolve
Amazed nobody thought of virtualizing the old hardware.

~~~
ohazi
In 1997?

~~~
bdcravens
This wasn't in 1997. Article is talking about patching Excel 97 years after it
came out, which is why all the build machines were dormant and turned off.
Based on when the team moved (follow link in story), this would have been
after 2007.

~~~
regularfry
That predates Hyper-V, and I suspect qemu or virtualbox would have been a
challenge.

VMWare, though...

~~~
TomMarius
I used VirtualBox heavily in 2007, worked flawlessly

