On call Every IT professional has a story about the time they were asked to provide technical support under unusual circumstances. That’s why every Friday The Register brings you one such story in a new edition of On Call—the reader-written column that celebrates strange circumstances.

This week, meet a reader we’ll get to know as “Emmett,” who taught us something new by sending us a story about the time in the early 1980s when he worked on a machine called the “Trivector” made by a British company.

Despite The Register Because we love British retro tech, we seem to have never mentioned Trivector in our long and storied history. However, we managed to dig up this advert for it in the Financial Times from 1982.

Emmett told us that he acquired the Trivector he was working on thanks to a British government program called IT82, which encouraged small businesses to adopt computers.

IT82 was a smash hit and was named after 1982, a big year for the British tech scene. It saw the debut of Sinclair’s legendary ZX Spectrum.

Emmett’s employer developed practice management software that was used to print the first prescriptions. One of Emmett’s clients used this software on a Trivector purchased through the IT82 program.

Emmett described the computer as “a magnificent beast…about the size of a rolling suitcase, a little too big to take on an airplane and far too heavy to lift into an overhead bin. It had a single terminal and a printer and was backed up and updated via old-fashioned floppy disks.”

The machine also had a hard drive – and one of Emmett’s customers had this component constantly breaking.

“Trivector sent a technician three times to replace the hard drive and the customer was becoming increasingly agitated,” he told On Call. “So I was sent from our office in London to investigate.”

This was not an easy journey. The client was in the city of Belfast, which was then ravaged by the “Troubles” – the term used to describe years of sectarian violence.

“It was not a place to visit as a tourist,” Emmett wrote, and Englishmen like him did not always feel welcome. When his rental car was checked for explosives on the way to a hotel parking lot, his nervousness increased.

He eventually found the client’s practice in a tastefully converted Edwardian townhouse with dark-stained, bare floorboards.

There Emmett found the trivector – on the floor, under a desk that was against a wall.

“It didn’t take long to realize the problem,” he told On Call. “Across the room was a bank of filing cabinets that housed patient records that were accessed at each patient appointment.”

As Emmett surveyed the situation, he noticed that every time he pulled a file out of a filing cabinet, the drawer slammed shut and the floorboard it was sitting on jumped into the air.

The trivector was at the other end of the room – on the same floor.

“Back then, hard drives were very sensitive – movement and vibration had to be avoided at all costs,” Emmett stressed. It was therefore not surprising that the Trivector was causing problems.

“The solution was simple: I had them move the computer to a solid floor area,” Emmett told On Call. The customer complied, the problem was resolved, and Emmett returned home safely.

What was the strangest cause of computer errors you’ve encountered and how did you fix it? Click here to submit your story to On Call so we can publish it on a future Friday. ®