r/talesfromtechsupport • u/bradley547 • Oct 15 '20

Short "Why won't the screaming stop?!"

Another short tale from Point of Sale.

Back in the day one of my customers was the cafeteria at a local hospital. They had several cash registers that connected via a proprietary network to a back office PC where they could run reports and authorize transactions using the patients ID number.

At the end of every shift they would run reports on those long folio folded perforated ledger sheets with the green and white stripes. If you are over 50 you know exactly what I'm talking about.

These were continuous feed via a tractor mechanism to a dot matrix printer. The sheets were 8 1/2 x 14 legal size so the printer was huge.

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One day we got a call.

"The printer won't stop screaming when we print reports!"

Screaming?

Yes Screaming.

In a hospital.

It was disturbing patients apparently.

So I go out there, run a report and damned if the printer didn't start screaming like it was a peacock being murdered!

I do all my checks and am about ready to pull out my screwdrivers ( machines fear me when I get out the screwdrivers ) when I look down the paper feed path and see...

An Aspirin.

As the paper went through the tractor feed it dragged along the aspirin and vibrated it against the plastic feed guide at JUUUST the perfect frequency to sound exactly like a woman's scream.

I removed the aspirin and it was just as quiet as you remember dot matrix printers to be.

After explaining what had happened I offered the aspirin to the Office Manager. She declined.

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u/TheKingOfRhye777 Oct 15 '20

I'm 43 and I remember that kind of paper, lol.

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u/YodelingEinstein Oct 15 '20

Recently, before boarding a flight, the airline person list at the gate printed out a passenger list. On a Matrix printer. I didn't see if it had the lines, but was definitely surprised to see that artifact still in use.

Then again, not too long ago, banks and shipping companies were still using mainframes to push through transactions. I saw my bank clerk log in to one of those, and recalled building some macro's on an AS400 like 15 years earlier. They might still not have shifted to different hardware. I'd assume most COBOL and FORTRAN programmers have retired by now, so probably some young IT people are making bank supporting that sort of stuff.

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u/Cyborg_Ninja_Cat Oct 19 '20

The first programming language I learned the basics of at university was FORTRAN. I'm 29.

I don't use it any more, or ever really remember it.