News Microsoft used a 'USB Cart of Death' to debug early Windows PCs

[Admin]

A veteran developer recalls stabilizing and toughening Windows USB support using a repurposed mail trolley nicknamed the USB Cart of Death.

Microsoft used a 'USB Cart of Death' to debug early Windows PCs : Read more

 

[TechLurker]

This is the neat kind of technical jank I like reading about. The "behind the scenes" that go into some of the extremes makers would go to stress-test their systems. I also really liked GN's "behind the scenes" at AMD, where we also saw a few test stations and special test equipment purpose-made for similar (like the really tall PCIe Card tower).

 

[Evildead_666]

I did something like this back in the early 2000's.
I worked for a company that used Octo-media USB card readers, (8 cards read by one USB device) and had plugged a lot of them into my machine, probably about 8 or more to think of it.
My PC worked fine, but was very unstable.
i was testing the devices out, to be able to see if they were fixed (bent pins in the SD card slot).
My PC would often reboot, and I got the BlueScreen code, and checked it, and it was due to overloading the USB power supply.
A powered USB hub solved the problem, but i used a dedicated PC from then on, rather than my work PC... 😉

 

[evdjj3j]

I seem to recall Toms doing an article back in the day, when they did such things, where they tried to connect as many USB devices together as they could to see what happened. I tried searching for the article but couldn't find it. The article was probably 20 years ago.