Bug In The Hardware -- Ghost In The Machine

[elysse]

so this specific sl-5500 didnt work quite right, ever.

very recently i flashed to the latest sharp rom, unsuccessfully. i dont even know what happened but now it's a brick. no power, yadda yadda. i'm not interested in fixing it now because of this one interesting thing:

once bricked i decided it was time (being way out of warranty) to open the Z up and examine it's guts. what i was really looking for was a blown capacitor or bubbly chip on the board which would have explained it's forever erratic behavior. when i opened it i found this wedged in between the floating board and motherboard practically attached to a capacitor:

elysse.net/bug/DSCF1557.jpg
elysse.net/bug/DSCF1560.jpg in cm.

what the heck was that? not exactly what i expected, for sure.

after sending the afore pictures to a bio friend of mine, it was identified as a carcass of a long dead Asian Silverfish:

alive ones look like this

so, entirely stunned (because if any of y'all have ever taken a 5500 apart you'd know that something that size would not be able to get in to the case, and nevermind that here in kentucky we dont have silverfish like that), i cleaned out all the hair on the chips as i could, cleaned it up as best as i could, put it together not expecting it to work. it didnt  and now it's a nice looking brick.

i contacted sharp, not expecting any kind of anything of course, and i dont think they believe me

i figure i'd let y'all know, because this was highly amusing. we all know about the Mark series machines and the moth...i had a real bug in my hardware  

e.
--
elysse.net

[Greg2]

i figure i'd let y'all know, because this was highly amusing. we all know about the Mark series machines and the moth...i had a real bug in my hardware

Your not the first one to report 'real' bugs... but you have broken the bug size record:
https://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=409
 

[xamindar]

aww, so it still doesn't work?  Maybe it wasn't the bugs fault then.

[elysse]

aww, so it still doesn't work?  Maybe it wasn't the bugs fault then.
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to be honest, the way it had positioned itself in the machine i imagine it's faulty behavior to begin with (lockups, the occasional no power, strangely intermittent filesystem errors), which had been happening since the unit was new, had a lot to do with the silverfish being roasted and decomposing in the machine. there were bits of him so stuck on the board there was no way i could get them off.

of course, tis bricked now because of some comination of the 3.10 rom (or was it 3.12?) flash and the intermittent FS issues conspiring against me

and for the record, it's craptastic that this is not an uncommon problem. i was under the impression that manufactuing floors were clean rooms...but you have to enter the human factor, if there's a human, it's no longer really a clean room

[elysse]

but you have broken the bug size record:
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most excellent. if you cant be successful in endeavors, at least be extravagant in your failures

[Cresho]

how funny!!!  

[Miami_Bob]

Looks a lot like some of the critters down here in the edges of the 'Glades. Did your machine ever visit S FL?

[elysse]

Looks a lot like some of the critters down here in the edges of the 'Glades. Did your machine ever visit S FL?
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not that i'm aware of, and even if it had i'm not entirely convinced that something that size could have gotten in after factory considering how snug everything fists into place, there's not an opening that size that isnt protected from the innards in some way or another.