alan.b.pearce@stfc.ac.uk wrote:
> Ya' know, I reckon life must have been a bundle of laughs with Olin
> around at university. Between this, the lark at the radio station (I
> still have that archived Olin), and goodness knows what else, there
> was obviously a lot of fun to be had.

Yeah we did a lot of stuff, every once in a while even going to class and
studying too.  There were many more things than just the laundry tickets an=
d
the radio-synchronized toilet flushing, like resonating the hallway with lo=
w
frequency sound, making master keys to most of campus and a variety of fun
things that allowed, the spark gap transmitter which confused a security
guard (Crash was the main mover behind that one), taking over control of th=
e
elevators in the engineering building, our own "enhancement" to a stupid
sculpture, dead potatoes skidding accross the ice scaring the crap out of
another security guard and a few bystandards, the laser dot that followed
you around, re-keying the engineering building front doors, steam tunnel
spelunking, and I'm sure I could remember more with more time.

> I am always amazed at the 'high tech' solutions that prove to be very
> low tech (a bit like DVD region code locking etc). Did the machine
> swallow the card, or did it damage it in some way that you couldn't
> re-use it?

It melted it just enough to not be usable again.  The point was that there
was no incentive to break into the machine to get at the coins.  The ticket
dispensing could be done over a counter or with a single more heavily
fortified machine for a whole laundromat.  At a school though, the system
was just extra hassle, and of course just asking to be hacked.


********************************************************************
Embed Inc, Littleton Massachusetts, http://www.embedinc.com/products
(978) 742-9014.  Gold level PIC consultants since 2000.
--=20
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist
.