OT can dropping something destory just a bit of its memory?

OT can dropping something destory just a bit of its memory?

I guess I know the answer, but I want to hear anything you all know
about this. Six months ago, I dropped my smart phone on a ceramic
tile floor, and when I turned it on right after that, the start-up
images -- I forget what they had been on an AT&T phone -- had changed
to 3 rectangles, of different shapes and different colors, each a
solid color. It continues to work like that. But afaict,
everything else about the phone works as it used to.

Have you ever heard of something like this before? Comments?


I ask because of curiosity and, in part, because my brother is
absent-minded enough that he might have put his laptop in a suitcase
and checked it when he flew and the baggage-men might have thrown it
around. Maybe that is why the OS now can't find his profile.
Even though the profile is stored on the harddrive and the graphics
for my phone are -- afaik -- stored in ROM or RAM inside the phone.

Thanks.

From: "micky"

OT can dropping something destory just a bit of its memory?

I guess I know the answer, but I want to hear anything you all know
about this. Six months ago, I dropped my smart phone on a ceramic
tile floor, and when I turned it on right after that, the start-up
images -- I forget what they had been on an AT&T phone -- had changed
to 3 rectangles, of different shapes and different colors, each a
solid color. It continues to work like that. But afaict,
everything else about the phone works as it used to.

Have you ever heard of something like this before? Comments?


I ask because of curiosity and, in part, because my brother is
absent-minded enough that he might have put his laptop in a suitcase
and checked it when he flew and the baggage-men might have thrown it
around. Maybe that is why the OS now can't find his profile.
Even though the profile is stored on the harddrive and the graphics
for my phone are -- afaik -- stored in ROM or RAM inside the phone.

Thanks.


The g-force and shock wave can break components.

--
Dave
Multi-AV Scanning Tool - http://multi-av.thespykiller.co.uk
http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp

micky wrote:
OT can dropping something destory just a bit of its memory?

I guess I know the answer, but I want to hear anything you all know
about this. Six months ago, I dropped my smart phone on a ceramic
tile floor, and when I turned it on right after that, the start-up
images -- I forget what they had been on an AT&T phone -- had changed
to 3 rectangles, of different shapes and different colors, each a
solid color. It continues to work like that. But afaict,
everything else about the phone works as it used to.

Have you ever heard of something like this before? Comments?


I ask because of curiosity and, in part, because my brother is
absent-minded enough that he might have put his laptop in a suitcase
and checked it when he flew and the baggage-men might have thrown it
around. Maybe that is why the OS now can't find his profile.
Even though the profile is stored on the harddrive and the graphics
for my phone are -- afaik -- stored in ROM or RAM inside the phone.

Thanks.

Flash memory is quite resistant to reasonable levels of shock.
Maybe up to 1000G deceleration (striking a solid metal plate).
The plastic housing of a lot of modern electronic devices, has
enough spring force, to prevent such a high G deceleration force
to be achieved. The high G forces might crack the PCB and break
a connection to the chip, as an example of a failure mode.
Disconnection of a pin, could prevent the device from operating.

What could have happened to the phone, is a brief power interruption
that corrupted some portion of its file system. Rather than
"individual bits popping out and hitting the floor". That doesn't
happen. But maybe some file system writes were in progress, and
there was some damage to the file system. The springs on the
battery pack, could open and close electrical contact rapidly.

*******

To protect a computer in transit, you need the same kind of protection
ideas. No "solid to solid" contact, which could achieve a high G force.
It's not necessarily the amount of padding, as it is the
complete job you do. Like, protecting sharp corners on purely
rectangular objects. If an object pokes through the box, and then
that rectangle makes contact with a concrete floor in the shipping
area, that can be enough to exceed the G force limit for a parked
hard drive.

Some hard drives, the head assembly slides up a landing ramp. There
is a detent and a place for the heads to rest. That prevents the
heads from clattering against the platter. And is one of the reasons
amongst others, that a powered off hard drive has a better shock
rating, than when the platter is spinning and the heads are floating
over it. (On my current hard drive, the operating G limit is 30G,
and the parked G rating is 300G. On much older drives, the
operating G limit was only 2Gs, and you couldn't "jump on the
floors" with those running.)

The 300G number, to put this in perspective, it's a matter of
how much intervening materials have a springy response to
compression, that helps determine the G level achieved. If
you drop a steel ball bearing onto a thick steel plate, that
can be over 1000G of deceleration when the steel objects hit.
(We measured that in Physics 100 class in university.)
Things that compress a bit (plastic housings), prevent
those kinds of levels from happening. So even the laptop housing
itself, might prevent getting to 300G level. You're as likely to
have the laptop frame deflect, the casing gets torqued, the
twisting action snaps the LCD screen, the twisting action
snaps the hard drive SATA connector, and so on. And laptop
designs do take twist and torque into account when they design
them, so they do try to prevent stuff snapping in normal usage.
The engineers know the framework is not a solid, and is flexible
enough to cause problems. But you can't make current LCD
screens completely bulletproof to that sort of thing,
so they can still crack. That's if the twisting is bad enough.

Paul

On Sunday, November 24, 2013 9:17:53 AM UTC-6, Paul wrote:
micky wrote:

OT can dropping something destory just a bit of its memory?



I guess I know the answer, but I want to hear anything you all know

about this. Six months ago, I dropped my smart phone on a ceramic

tile floor, and when I turned it on right after that, the start-up

images -- I forget what they had been on an AT&T phone -- had changed

to 3 rectangles, of different shapes and different colors, each a

solid color. It continues to work like that. But afaict,

everything else about the phone works as it used to.



Have you ever heard of something like this before? Comments?





I ask because of curiosity and, in part, because my brother is

absent-minded enough that he might have put his laptop in a suitcase

and checked it when he flew and the baggage-men might have thrown it

around. Maybe that is why the OS now can't find his profile.

Even though the profile is stored on the harddrive and the graphics

for my phone are -- afaik -- stored in ROM or RAM inside the phone.



Thanks.



Flash memory is quite resistant to reasonable levels of shock.

Maybe up to 1000G deceleration (striking a solid metal plate).

The plastic housing of a lot of modern electronic devices, has

enough spring force, to prevent such a high G deceleration force

to be achieved. The high G forces might crack the PCB and break

a connection to the chip, as an example of a failure mode.

Disconnection of a pin, could prevent the device from operating.



What could have happened to the phone, is a brief power interruption

that corrupted some portion of its file system. Rather than

"individual bits popping out and hitting the floor". That doesn't

happen. But maybe some file system writes were in progress, and

there was some damage to the file system. The springs on the

battery pack, could open and close electrical contact rapidly.



*******



To protect a computer in transit, you need the same kind of protection

ideas. No "solid to solid" contact, which could achieve a high G force.

It's not necessarily the amount of padding, as it is the

complete job you do. Like, protecting sharp corners on purely

rectangular objects. If an object pokes through the box, and then

that rectangle makes contact with a concrete floor in the shipping

area, that can be enough to exceed the G force limit for a parked

hard drive.



Some hard drives, the head assembly slides up a landing ramp. There

is a detent and a place for the heads to rest. That prevents the

heads from clattering against the platter. And is one of the reasons

amongst others, that a powered off hard drive has a better shock

rating, than when the platter is spinning and the heads are floating

over it. (On my current hard drive, the operating G limit is 30G,

and the parked G rating is 300G. On much older drives, the

operating G limit was only 2Gs, and you couldn't "jump on the

floors" with those running.)



The 300G number, to put this in perspective, it's a matter of

how much intervening materials have a springy response to

compression, that helps determine the G level achieved. If

you drop a steel ball bearing onto a thick steel plate, that

can be over 1000G of deceleration when the steel objects hit.

(We measured that in Physics 100 class in university.)

Things that compress a bit (plastic housings), prevent

those kinds of levels from happening. So even the laptop housing

itself, might prevent getting to 300G level. You're as likely to

have the laptop frame deflect, the casing gets torqued, the

twisting action snaps the LCD screen, the twisting action

snaps the hard drive SATA connector, and so on. And laptop

designs do take twist and torque into account when they design

them, so they do try to prevent stuff snapping in normal usage.

The engineers know the framework is not a solid, and is flexible

enough to cause problems. But you can't make current LCD

screens completely bulletproof to that sort of thing,

so they can still crack. That's if the twisting is bad enough.



Paul

I don't think Apple engineered much into protection of their cell phone screens from "low altitude drops."

A 2 foot drop results in a fer sure "crinkle screen."
:-)

Andy

On Sun, 24 Nov 2013 10:17:53 -0500, Paul wrote:

micky wrote:
OT can dropping something destory just a bit of its memory?

I guess I know the answer, but I want to hear anything you all know
about this. Six months ago, I dropped my smart phone on a ceramic
tile floor, and when I turned it on right after that, the start-up
images -- I forget what they had been on an AT&T phone -- had changed
to 3 rectangles, of different shapes and different colors, each a
solid color. It continues to work like that. But afaict,
everything else about the phone works as it used to.

Have you ever heard of something like this before? Comments?


I ask because of curiosity and, in part, because my brother is
absent-minded enough that he might have put his laptop in a suitcase
and checked it when he flew and the baggage-men might have thrown it
around. Maybe that is why the OS now can't find his profile.
Even though the profile is stored on the harddrive and the graphics
for my phone are -- afaik -- stored in ROM or RAM inside the phone.

Thanks.

Flash memory is quite resistant to reasonable levels of shock.
Maybe up to 1000G deceleration (striking a solid metal plate).
The plastic housing of a lot of modern electronic devices, has
enough spring force, to prevent such a high G deceleration force
to be achieved. The high G forces might crack the PCB and break
a connection to the chip, as an example of a failure mode.
Disconnection of a pin, could prevent the device from operating.

What could have happened to the phone, is a brief power interruption
that corrupted some portion of its file system. Rather than
"individual bits popping out and hitting the floor". That doesn't
happen. But maybe some file system writes were in progress, and

I should have said this to begin with. Sorry. The phone was off.
My only excuse for not saying that in the first place is that my phone
is rarely on and its normal status is off.

I don't know what level of parking is used in a Huawei phone. I
forget the model number.

I guess even the AT&T logo might be on the harddrive.

David, I'm not surprised it was damaged, just that the damage was so
evident but yet so unimportant.


there was some damage to the file system. The springs on the
battery pack, could open and close electrical contact rapidly.

*******

To protect a computer in transit, you need the same kind of protection
ideas. No "solid to solid" contact, which could achieve a high G force.
It's not necessarily the amount of padding, as it is the
complete job you do. Like, protecting sharp corners on purely
rectangular objects. If an object pokes through the box, and then
that rectangle makes contact with a concrete floor in the shipping
area, that can be enough to exceed the G force limit for a parked
hard drive.

Some hard drives, the head assembly slides up a landing ramp. There
is a detent and a place for the heads to rest. That prevents the
heads from clattering against the platter. And is one of the reasons
amongst others, that a powered off hard drive has a better shock
rating, than when the platter is spinning and the heads are floating
over it. (On my current hard drive, the operating G limit is 30G,
and the parked G rating is 300G. On much older drives, the
operating G limit was only 2Gs, and you couldn't "jump on the
floors" with those running.)

The 300G number, to put this in perspective, it's a matter of
how much intervening materials have a springy response to
compression, that helps determine the G level achieved. If
you drop a steel ball bearing onto a thick steel plate, that
can be over 1000G of deceleration when the steel objects hit.
(We measured that in Physics 100 class in university.)
Things that compress a bit (plastic housings), prevent
those kinds of levels from happening. So even the laptop housing
itself, might prevent getting to 300G level. You're as likely to
have the laptop frame deflect, the casing gets torqued, the
twisting action snaps the LCD screen, the twisting action
snaps the hard drive SATA connector, and so on. And laptop
designs do take twist and torque into account when they design
them, so they do try to prevent stuff snapping in normal usage.
The engineers know the framework is not a solid, and is flexible
enough to cause problems. But you can't make current LCD
screens completely bulletproof to that sort of thing,
so they can still crack. That's if the twisting is bad enough.

Paul

On Sun, 24 Nov 2013 07:21:04 -0500, David H. Lipman wrote:

The g-force and shock wave can break components.

i.e.:
It can break the atom formations that compose part of the components.
If it's big enough, it can destroy the universe. I think... -_-,?

On 11/24/2013 9:17 AM, Paul wrote:
micky wrote:
OT can dropping something destory just a bit of its memory?

I guess I know the answer, but I want to hear anything you all know
about this. Six months ago, I dropped my smart phone on a ceramic
tile floor, and when I turned it on right after that, the start-up
images -- I forget what they had been on an AT&T phone -- had changed
to 3 rectangles, of different shapes and different colors, each a
solid color. It continues to work like that. But afaict,
everything else about the phone works as it used to.
Have you ever heard of something like this before? Comments?


I ask because of curiosity and, in part, because my brother is
absent-minded enough that he might have put his laptop in a suitcase
and checked it when he flew and the baggage-men might have thrown it
around. Maybe that is why the OS now can't find his profile.
Even though the profile is stored on the harddrive and the graphics
for my phone are -- afaik -- stored in ROM or RAM inside the phone.
Thanks.

Flash memory is quite resistant to reasonable levels of shock.
Maybe up to 1000G deceleration (striking a solid metal plate).
The plastic housing of a lot of modern electronic devices, has
enough spring force, to prevent such a high G deceleration force
to be achieved. The high G forces might crack the PCB and break
a connection to the chip, as an example of a failure mode.
Disconnection of a pin, could prevent the device from operating.

What could have happened to the phone, is a brief power interruption
that corrupted some portion of its file system. Rather than
"individual bits popping out and hitting the floor". That doesn't
happen. But maybe some file system writes were in progress, and
there was some damage to the file system. The springs on the
battery pack, could open and close electrical contact rapidly.

*******

To protect a computer in transit, you need the same kind of protection
ideas. No "solid to solid" contact, which could achieve a high G force.
It's not necessarily the amount of padding, as it is the
complete job you do. Like, protecting sharp corners on purely
rectangular objects. If an object pokes through the box, and then
that rectangle makes contact with a concrete floor in the shipping
area, that can be enough to exceed the G force limit for a parked
hard drive.

Some hard drives, the head assembly slides up a landing ramp. There
is a detent and a place for the heads to rest. That prevents the
heads from clattering against the platter. And is one of the reasons
amongst others, that a powered off hard drive has a better shock
rating, than when the platter is spinning and the heads are floating
over it. (On my current hard drive, the operating G limit is 30G,
and the parked G rating is 300G. On much older drives, the
operating G limit was only 2Gs, and you couldn't "jump on the
floors" with those running.)

The 300G number, to put this in perspective, it's a matter of
how much intervening materials have a springy response to
compression, that helps determine the G level achieved. If
you drop a steel ball bearing onto a thick steel plate, that
can be over 1000G of deceleration when the steel objects hit.
(We measured that in Physics 100 class in university.)
Things that compress a bit (plastic housings), prevent
those kinds of levels from happening. So even the laptop housing
itself, might prevent getting to 300G level. You're as likely to
have the laptop frame deflect, the casing gets torqued, the
twisting action snaps the LCD screen, the twisting action
snaps the hard drive SATA connector, and so on. And laptop
designs do take twist and torque into account when they design
them, so they do try to prevent stuff snapping in normal usage.
The engineers know the framework is not a solid, and is flexible
enough to cause problems. But you can't make current LCD
screens completely bulletproof to that sort of thing,
so they can still crack. That's if the twisting is bad enough.

Ah... NASA learned long ago to power off all hard drives before firing
up the rockets. As almost all running hard drives never survived the
trip to orbit (even the high G ones too). They still could use hard
drives, as they work fine floating in space. But for computers they need
to have running at launch, the computers switch over to solid state
drives. These hold up well during the bumpy ride to orbit.

And the deal about cracking screens might be a thing of the past soon.
As those roll up and put in your pocket screens are developing along
nicely. Then someday all screens will be obsolete and we will have just
hologram projections.

Say does anybody remember those hologram like keyboards? I wonder what
happened to them? A laser projected a keyboard on a surface like a table
for example. And I guess something like an inferred camera could tell
when you were typing on the projected keyboard. I almost bought one of
them myself. ;-)

I had one of those Avatar computers that looked more like a DVR machine
than a PC about 14 years ago. They were designed to be used with your
TV, but would work with a computer monitor if you wanted too. And it had
some really nifty software that worked with the webcam too. For example
you could toss a beach ball on the screen to others in the room. You
could even play basketball or something. It was really nifty back then.
I hear tell that some game machines still use this technology today.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Thunderbird v12.0.1
Centrino Core2 Duo T5600 1.83GHz - 4GB - Windows XP SP2

On Saturday, November 30, 2013 10:14:17 AM UTC-6, BillW50 wrote:
On 11/24/2013 9:17 AM, Paul wrote:

micky wrote:

OT can dropping something destory just a bit of its memory?



I guess I know the answer, but I want to hear anything you all know

about this. Six months ago, I dropped my smart phone on a ceramic

tile floor, and when I turned it on right after that, the start-up

images -- I forget what they had been on an AT&T phone -- had changed

to 3 rectangles, of different shapes and different colors, each a

solid color. It continues to work like that. But afaict,

everything else about the phone works as it used to.

Have you ever heard of something like this before? Comments?





I ask because of curiosity and, in part, because my brother is

absent-minded enough that he might have put his laptop in a suitcase

and checked it when he flew and the baggage-men might have thrown it

around. Maybe that is why the OS now can't find his profile.

Even though the profile is stored on the harddrive and the graphics

for my phone are -- afaik -- stored in ROM or RAM inside the phone.

Thanks.



Flash memory is quite resistant to reasonable levels of shock.

Maybe up to 1000G deceleration (striking a solid metal plate).

The plastic housing of a lot of modern electronic devices, has

enough spring force, to prevent such a high G deceleration force

to be achieved. The high G forces might crack the PCB and break

a connection to the chip, as an example of a failure mode.

Disconnection of a pin, could prevent the device from operating.



What could have happened to the phone, is a brief power interruption

that corrupted some portion of its file system. Rather than

"individual bits popping out and hitting the floor". That doesn't

happen. But maybe some file system writes were in progress, and

there was some damage to the file system. The springs on the

battery pack, could open and close electrical contact rapidly.



*******



To protect a computer in transit, you need the same kind of protection

ideas. No "solid to solid" contact, which could achieve a high G force.

It's not necessarily the amount of padding, as it is the

complete job you do. Like, protecting sharp corners on purely

rectangular objects. If an object pokes through the box, and then

that rectangle makes contact with a concrete floor in the shipping

area, that can be enough to exceed the G force limit for a parked

hard drive.



Some hard drives, the head assembly slides up a landing ramp. There

is a detent and a place for the heads to rest. That prevents the

heads from clattering against the platter. And is one of the reasons

amongst others, that a powered off hard drive has a better shock

rating, than when the platter is spinning and the heads are floating

over it. (On my current hard drive, the operating G limit is 30G,

and the parked G rating is 300G. On much older drives, the

operating G limit was only 2Gs, and you couldn't "jump on the

floors" with those running.)



The 300G number, to put this in perspective, it's a matter of

how much intervening materials have a springy response to

compression, that helps determine the G level achieved. If

you drop a steel ball bearing onto a thick steel plate, that

can be over 1000G of deceleration when the steel objects hit.

(We measured that in Physics 100 class in university.)

Things that compress a bit (plastic housings), prevent

those kinds of levels from happening. So even the laptop housing

itself, might prevent getting to 300G level. You're as likely to

have the laptop frame deflect, the casing gets torqued, the

twisting action snaps the LCD screen, the twisting action

snaps the hard drive SATA connector, and so on. And laptop

designs do take twist and torque into account when they design

them, so they do try to prevent stuff snapping in normal usage.

The engineers know the framework is not a solid, and is flexible

enough to cause problems. But you can't make current LCD

screens completely bulletproof to that sort of thing,

so they can still crack. That's if the twisting is bad enough.



Ah... NASA learned long ago to power off all hard drives before firing

up the rockets. As almost all running hard drives never survived the

trip to orbit (even the high G ones too). They still could use hard

drives, as they work fine floating in space. But for computers they need

to have running at launch, the computers switch over to solid state

drives. These hold up well during the bumpy ride to orbit.



And the deal about cracking screens might be a thing of the past soon.

As those roll up and put in your pocket screens are developing along

nicely. Then someday all screens will be obsolete and we will have just

hologram projections.



Say does anybody remember those hologram like keyboards? I wonder what

happened to them? A laser projected a keyboard on a surface like a table

for example. And I guess something like an inferred camera could tell

when you were typing on the projected keyboard. I almost bought one of

them myself. ;-)



I had one of those Avatar computers that looked more like a DVR machine

than a PC about 14 years ago. They were designed to be used with your

TV, but would work with a computer monitor if you wanted too. And it had

some really nifty software that worked with the webcam too. For example

you could toss a beach ball on the screen to others in the room. You

could even play basketball or something. It was really nifty back then.

I hear tell that some game machines still use this technology today.



--

Bill

Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Thunderbird v12.0.1

Centrino Core2 Duo T5600 1.83GHz - 4GB - Windows XP SP2

I doubt cracked screens will go away.

There is a lot of money to be made, by the companies. :-(

In the year 5555
Your arms are hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got not nothing to do.
Some machine is doing that for you.
Zager Evans

No thanks.

Andy