CompuServe Messages

John's nuts and bolts being tight? No, I'm not going to comment on that one at all. Here's one for all: I recently had a real problem with my TV/stereo system. Seemed every once in awhile the system would take off and switch channels, raise and lower the volume, change from TV to CD to FM etc, etc, all on its own when one of us was simply watching a program. My daughter thought we had the "Ghost in the Machine" My wife was nagging me about needing a new set. Here's what happened. Several months ago I got a new VCR that had a very directional IR receiver making the hand remote very sensitive. I fixed the problem by going to Radio Shack and buying one of their remote repeaters. Now these repeaters work rather well but they use radio waves for the link rather than IR. At the same time I was doing some RAM testing and had the cover off of my computer. I have one of my network slaves in the same room as the TV. Well, I could be in another part of the house and everytime I'd access the hard drive of that slave the radiation from the 33 Mhz. signal would affect the repeater's receiver and execute some operational commands to change channels raise the volume etc. This drove our family nuts for several weeks. One evening during a long rendering I decided to watch a little TV. I was fighting with the Ghost in the Machine and happened to observe I had left the cover off the computer. I got up and bolted it down tight and the Ghost went away.