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Exploding TV, Degausing Coil, and Command.com
1. Way back when I was a bench technician for Montgomery Wards, we had a fairly new technician who was very afraid of electricity. This was back before computers, when the TV's were hybrid with both tubes and solid state parts. The HV tube that drives the HV transformer had a plate cap. I told the manager of my intent for the next day he was all on board.
I looked at the tech's schedule of work and pulled his first repair from the shelf, repaired it and replaced it back on the "To Do" shelf.
I placed the wire of a little gag thing called an "Auto Fouler" under the plate cap of the HV tube. This thing was meant to go under the spark plug wire inside of a car. When you start the car, it starts to whistle very loud, explodes like a fire cracker and then emits tons of smoke. I figured the 1200 volts on the plate cap would be enough to set it off.
We all stood back the next morning and watched the tech got his coffee, pull the TV from the shelf, proceeded to go into his very small booth and closed the door.
After about 30 seconds, we all heard the audio from the TV because that part was solid state, then when the tube warmed up, the device went off with a very loud whistle, explosion and plenty of smoke.
We could hear him screaming through the door.
He came running out of the booth with his eyes wide open, arms flailing, face white as a ghost and saw everyone laughing their heads off.
He immediately pointed to me and said, "You, You did this!"
Later, he did join the laughter with the rest of us and told us that when the whistling started, he pulled the power cord but the sound kept on and when the smoke started, he just freaked out.
The TV suffered no harm whatsoever in this prank.
Edit: The device used was a "Auto Fooler" and you can still buy them today.
http://www.fakecrap.com/auto-fooler-p/1002.htm
Only $1.50 - May buy a few of these!
2. I taped a large 18inch Degausing Coil under a very long repair bench in the center of our repair center. I ran the cord down one of the legs and into my booth. One of the new techs came in and put a color TV on the bench directly over the spot where the coil was. When he got the TV working, I would switch the degausing coil on and off several times. This would distort the screen many times more than a single magnet would and also really messed up the color even after the coil was off. He would get other techs to help him and while they were looking at the screen, I simply hit the switch again and he would say "You see that? What could be causing that" The other techs would say, "Wow man. I have never seen that problem"
I had to tell him after about an hour of troubleshooting and he got a good laugh as well.
3. Then there was a fellow worker that was complete jerk back in the Dos days whom everyone disliked. I proceeded to modify his command.com file with a hex editor and changed his startup screen to display "name-name is a total as--h---" several times when it first booted up.
He was very upset to say the least and proceeded to look closely at his Autoexec.bat and config.sys files for the text. After a while, he decided to reformat his hard drive and reinstall Dos.
What he didn't know was I changed his command.com file on his Dos installation disks with the same line of text.
Every time he reformated and reinstalled his dos, the startup text was still there.
After a few hours, the boss told me to fix his computer because he was tired of hearing his whining. I did and actually later we became very good friends and are still friends today.
I looked at the tech's schedule of work and pulled his first repair from the shelf, repaired it and replaced it back on the "To Do" shelf.
I placed the wire of a little gag thing called an "Auto Fouler" under the plate cap of the HV tube. This thing was meant to go under the spark plug wire inside of a car. When you start the car, it starts to whistle very loud, explodes like a fire cracker and then emits tons of smoke. I figured the 1200 volts on the plate cap would be enough to set it off.
We all stood back the next morning and watched the tech got his coffee, pull the TV from the shelf, proceeded to go into his very small booth and closed the door.
After about 30 seconds, we all heard the audio from the TV because that part was solid state, then when the tube warmed up, the device went off with a very loud whistle, explosion and plenty of smoke.
We could hear him screaming through the door.
He came running out of the booth with his eyes wide open, arms flailing, face white as a ghost and saw everyone laughing their heads off.
He immediately pointed to me and said, "You, You did this!"
Later, he did join the laughter with the rest of us and told us that when the whistling started, he pulled the power cord but the sound kept on and when the smoke started, he just freaked out.
The TV suffered no harm whatsoever in this prank.
Edit: The device used was a "Auto Fooler" and you can still buy them today.
http://www.fakecrap.com/auto-fooler-p/1002.htm
Only $1.50 - May buy a few of these!
2. I taped a large 18inch Degausing Coil under a very long repair bench in the center of our repair center. I ran the cord down one of the legs and into my booth. One of the new techs came in and put a color TV on the bench directly over the spot where the coil was. When he got the TV working, I would switch the degausing coil on and off several times. This would distort the screen many times more than a single magnet would and also really messed up the color even after the coil was off. He would get other techs to help him and while they were looking at the screen, I simply hit the switch again and he would say "You see that? What could be causing that" The other techs would say, "Wow man. I have never seen that problem"
I had to tell him after about an hour of troubleshooting and he got a good laugh as well.
3. Then there was a fellow worker that was complete jerk back in the Dos days whom everyone disliked. I proceeded to modify his command.com file with a hex editor and changed his startup screen to display "name-name is a total as--h---" several times when it first booted up.
He was very upset to say the least and proceeded to look closely at his Autoexec.bat and config.sys files for the text. After a while, he decided to reformat his hard drive and reinstall Dos.
What he didn't know was I changed his command.com file on his Dos installation disks with the same line of text.
Every time he reformated and reinstalled his dos, the startup text was still there.
After a few hours, the boss told me to fix his computer because he was tired of hearing his whining. I did and actually later we became very good friends and are still friends today.
Posted by barry.brown2006@...
Updated - 1st May 2012
