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Date: Wed,10 Apr 85 21:25:31 EST From: Jonathan D. Taft <TAFT@MIT-MC> To: INFO-EXPLORER@MIT-MC Message-ID: <[MIT-MC].449968.850410.TAFT> This is a note of warning to all users of computer equipment located on the 9th floor of Tech. Square. Dave Moon's ghost is loose. On Tuesday April 9th, 1984 Dave Moon's old office, room 926, was torn down to make additional space on the ninth floor. The following morning on April 10th MIT-MC, a computer maintained by Moon while he was here, and which has since then been kept running only by tremendous good fortune, experienced serious failure. The failure was traced by DEC service personnel to a set of boards installed by MIT and in particular by Moon in the distant past. Upon further diagnosis it appeared almost certain that the failure was due to one particular board, a disk controller, board serial number 926. A group of moderately competent people attempted to pin down the failure during the afternoon with no luck. The group went to dinner and while returning to the lab encountered Dave Moon who agreed to have a look at the situation. Moon queryed the PDP-11 in which the board resided using a ribbonless ASR-33 teletype that no one thought to be functional but that was still wired into the back of the eleven. After poking around at the eleven and examining and handling of the board he proclaimed that he saw no problems with either. The MC computer was closed up, booted, and operated with no further problems. It appeared that all that was really needed was for Moon to exorcise his ghost, which having been forced from room 926 had taken refuge in the machine most hospitable to it, in MC's disk control, serial number 926.