(no subject)

[torkell]

Well, that might be the end of the DVD player. Something inside went crack! and now my music has interesting interference (one track now has what's best described as a rhythmic panting noise, while another has footstep-like sounds that rise and fall with the music).

Most annoying.

Comments

[tau-iota-mu-c.livejournal.com]

Digital electronics have interesting failure modes. A modern lift at work (<10 years old) requires you to press the first floor button longer and longer before it will register. Lift floor buttons don't need debounce circuit on them - the buttons are neither toggles nor counters. So why would there be anything analogue like a faulty capacitor that can degrade over time? Another lift has a door close button that functions as an "stop as quickly as possible and open the door" button. The rest don't do that. Other lifts yet again have individual LEDs on the floor buttons that don't light except for the moment when you're pressing them. The light on the corresponding button on the other side of the lift lights up though.

[torkell]

To make things more fun, I've opened up the DVD player and can't see any sign of magic smoke escaping from something. So I put it back together and tried a handful of other CDs in it (both pressed and burnt) and everything works fine... except for the one I was playing when I first heard the interference, and another supposedly-known-working disc I tried after the first started misbehaving.

I'm now trying those two discs in my PC and the Plextor drives are not having any of it. The DVD writer actually claimed that disc 1 was an empty CD-R, while on disc 2 the CD writer has spun right down and is still throwing shedloads of errors.

I think I happened to start testing with the two most flaky CD-Rs in my collection.