VCF East Video?

From: Vintage Computer Festival <vcf_at_siconic.com>
Date: Mon Jul 26 12:51:30 2004

On Mon, 26 Jul 2004, Lyle Bickley wrote:

> On Monday 26 July 2004 09:01, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
> ---snip---
> >
> > Speaking of bandwidth issues, how much data can an ant carry? The little
> > fuckers were streaming out of the data and phone port in my kitchen this
> > morning.
>
> A LOT. I've seen them carry large quantities of bits. I've noticed from time
> to time chatting with you on the phone that your voice breaks up - now we
> know the source - the nasty li'l ant bit stealers.

They can also carry quite a bit of current I've just found out.

Earlier I sprayed some insect death into the ports without first disabling
the ports on my hub and phone system. I didn't think there would be an
arcing issue, and there wasn't.

Well, I just went to clean out the carcasses with the tip of a pencil
(duh) and it arced something fierce (ok, in relative terms, but enough to
light up when the ants started to combust) when I was trying to brush the
dead ant remains across the pins. The ant bodies were definitely
conducting through the pins. The second jack was an analog phone port
and it started smoking when an ant's body made contact between the tip
and ring!

Stupid critters.

Fortunately there was no permanent damage. I just had to re-seat the
digital line card in my PBX and all is well again :)

-- 
Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
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Received on Mon Jul 26 2004 - 12:51:30 BST

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