[CentOS] HDD badblocks

Tue Jan 19 23:50:36 UTC 2016
Valeri Galtsev <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu>

On Tue, January 19, 2016 5:29 pm, J Martin Rushton wrote:
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> I suspect that the gold layer on edge connectors 30-odd years ago was
> a lot thicker than on modern cards.

I remember a long time ago - that actually was in the country "Far -Far
Away" ;-) We were not allowed to dispose of connectors with gold plated
contacts. These were collected, and gold was extracted from them and
re-used. I believe, there were dissolving base brass material with acid,
then just melted the thin gold shells left. Not useful with modern super
thin plating.

> We are talking contacts on 0.1"
> spacing not some modern 1/10 of a knat's whisker.  (Off topic) I also
> remember seeing engineers determine which memory chip was at fault and
> replacing the chip using a soldering iron.  Try that on a DIMM!
>
> On 19/01/16 00:39, Peter wrote:
>> On 19/01/16 12:34, J Martin Rushton wrote:
>>> Not new: I can remember seeing DEC engineers cleaning up the
>>> contacts on memory boards for a VAX 11/782 with a pencil eraser
>>> c.1985.  It's still a pretty standard first fix to reseat a card
>>> or connector.
>>
>> I used to do that as well.  The contacts would come out nice and
>> shiny when you clean them.  Then I found out that what I was
>> actually doing was removing the very thin layer of gold plating on
>> the contacts and revealing the copper underneath.  That's why you
>> should never clean contacts with a pencil eraser, just re-seat the
>> boards and they'll make contact again.
>>


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Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
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