How did internal combustion developers manage?

[laserblazer]

I've just provided new machines in the office and FMS wouldn't print to the colour laser. The County SIMS team took over remotely and when I got in this morning nothing would print! A quick search on Edugeek, installed the printer locally and it's fine.

So how did they manage 90 years ago? They couldn't post "I've set TDC to 4° and I'm still getting backfiring"

Perserverance I guess. I wonder if they had people saying I need that engine running by 10am or I can't deliver my lesson!

[leco]

The County SIMS team took over remotely and when I got in this morning nothing would print! A quick search on Edugeek, installed the printer locally and it's fine.

Had the same trouble a while back - the printer had been set to WebEx - they forgot to put it back.

[srochford]

So how did they manage 90 years ago? They couldn't post "I've set TDC to 4° and I'm still getting backfiring"

I can't quite remember 90 years ago (but sometimes it feels like that :-)) but they basically had books and manuals.

If you think about it, even a complete car engine is way less complex than a computer system - it doesn't really have many parts and it doesn't do many things. If it doesn't work then it will be for a very limited number of reasons and you just have a list of things to check and fix.

IT is much more difficult because there are so many other things that interact with each other and it becomes massively more difficult to document every possible thing to try.

Going back not quite 90 years but well before the internet we did have bulletin boards, Compuserve, Cix and other conferencing systems.

[leco]

Wasn't the interweb thing invented/made to be a collaborative tool to help scientists or some-such to share ideas?

[michael2k6]

I had a similar issue the other day when i turned the dizzie 180 to set better access to the bracket, and the haynes said as you look at the engine with the timing mark on the right the rotar arm goes clockwise. So i set it to 5 degrees and still got backfire. Turns out it goes anticlockwise. I've burnt the haynes.

[powdarrmonkey]

Wasn't the interweb thing invented/made to be a collaborative tool to help scientists or some-such to share ideas?

You mean the original ARPA internetwork? It was an American military research project to see how well they could link together several disparate networks run by separate departments (hence, inter-net). The web bit was born when Berners-Lee couldn't be bothered to type any more and wanted what he termed hyperlinks.

Once ARPA opened the idea up a bit and the academic networks began to be built, the floodgates were open.