Re: Circuit and Ornament

On Mon, 01 Aug 2005 23:37:45 -0400, Spehro Pefhany wrote:

> On Mon, 01 Aug 2005 22:57:42 -0400, the renowned keith
> <krw@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 02 Aug 2005 00:37:38 +0000, Joerg wrote:
>>
>>> Hello Tim,
>>>
>>>> I once had a new manager drag me over to an instrument that he had
>>>> designed for a previous company. By pressing the right three buttons at
>>>> power up you got a picture of the product team. After 8 years I still
>>>> can't decide if it was really cool or a monumental waste of time.
>>>
>>> We had an ultrasound machine that could play an episode of "The Three
>>> Stooges" I believe. But that was only used to briefly check the sound
>>> card and other things. Other than that it was more like what Richard
>>> described, service mode. Press here three times, there twice, say
>>> whoop-dee-dou three times and the system displays its innards.
>>>
>>>> Oh, and check out http://www.clock.org/~fair/amusing.html. You'll
>>>> remember the picture, no doubt.
>>>
>>> ROFL! I wonder how much real graffity is on chips that has never been
>>> disclosed. I mean, even a third party would likely not want to come
>>> forth with such a discovery since that would bluntly announce "hey, we
>>> just tried to reverse-engineer your chip and look what we found".
>>
>>Some years back a couple of friends worked in the FA department of our
>>corporate purchasing group. They had a whole library of such "art". One
>>was tryng to reverse engineer a circuit once, and ran into a roadblock.
>>He simply couldn't figure out a shape, until he turned down the resolution
>>significantly. A Kilroy was staring back at him - he was just looking at
>>the nose and eyes.
>>
>>A couple of years ago a warning went out to our PD folks to not play
>>around with such things (condition of employment was the operative phrase).
>>PHBs have no sense of humor at all.
>
> I believe I've heard vague stories of electrical problems caused by
> the added graffito.

Certainly. One product I worked on had a VDD/VSS short caused by the
PD folks' signatures that weren't Verity checked.

--
Keith
.

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