Orientation dependent systems

One of the guys who used to work here had been a field engineer for many years. (That means he used to repair computers.) One of the machines he used to work on was one of those large beasties, about 5 feet high and six or seven feet long. To get at the innards you opened up the hinged doors on the sides. The "memory unit" was also hinged and to work on it you had to open it out so it was at a 90 degree angle to its normal position. Anyway, there was this particular machine that was getting _lots_ of memory errors. But of course when they opened it up to test it, it worked fine. They tried various things like cleaning the vents, cleaning the connectors and replacing various parts, but to no avail. When the memory unit was folded out at a 90 degree angle it worked fine, when it was closed it got memory errors. Finally, in desperation, they closed it up and turned the whole processor so that it was at a ninety degree angle to its original position. Supposedly it never had a problem again. They explained to the customer that the machine had "East-West Memory".

Provided by Dave Lord.