Engineer sabotaged hardware then complained when it didn't work

Summary

On Call Every week is special in its own way, and The Register celebrates that fact by using Friday mornings to deliver a fresh installment of On Call, our weekly reader-contributed column that shares your memories of managing IT messes someone else made. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Ewen" who told us that in the early 1990s he worked for a company that made fiber-optic devices that sound like serious pieces of kit. "Readings were taken continuously across 600-plus outputs by a sensor on a two-axis grid, driven by stepper motors," Ewen explained. "The motor controller was a full-length ISA board, as was the data acquisition board. We subjected them to a rigorous quality control process, including a long period of time in a climate chamber." All the stuff Ewen's company made, plus a network controller, ended up in a tower PC case. "I believe the CPU was a 486 DX2 66 MHz," he said. Ewen's company worked with what he called a "custom screwdriver shop" to make the resulting rigs neat, tidy, and tolerably cool. "It needed quite a bit of reconfiguring to get the layout right, due to the excessive heat generated," Ewen explained. "It ended up needing slots above the big boards with the slot covers left open and several small box fans blowing directly over them to keep it cool." Ewen and his screwdriver-wielding suppliers eventually got the thing built, which meant it was ready for testing. The engineer in charge of that effort worked in another office, some 200 miles (320 km) away. Ewen got the job of delivering it, then setting it up to make sure it was ready for final tests. "I got a call a few weeks later from the branch's senior management – people with serious engineering credentials – telling me the machine was producing garbage data, and insisting I appear to fix it." Ewen therefore again made the long drive, and within moments of arriving, he noticed the giant PC was very quiet. A quick look showed why: the fans weren't working. Ewen asked if anyone ...