Reminds me of a similar tale told to me by a Datapoint computer tech...

Big installation, climate controlled computer room, raised floor so all the cables were hidden out of the way. New hard drive installed in a mini-computer, everything worked fine, the tech leaves.

By the time he's back to his office, he has message the new hard drive has failed. He goes back into the computer room with the system boss, and the hard drive works fine.

They repeat this little dance two or three times before they figure out that there is a loose data cable to the hard drive (this was back in the days when a 10 MB hard drive was the size of a two drawer file cabinet and weighed 200 pounds!) and that when there were two people standing on the raised computer room floor it depressed the floor just enough to tighten the cable and make the connection.

Who'd have thunk it?

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"