I've ruined one of the cables on the back," said the reference
　　　　  librarian. Turning the power off and on got no response. Then I
　　　　  checked the power cable on the back and found that the plug was not
　　　　  fully seated. Seating the plug produced a cursor, but no menu screen
　　　　  appeared. I went to another terminal to restart the port the
　　　　  malfunctioning terminal was assigned to. When I got back, I saw the
　　　　  welcome sight of the menu. However, the machine still would not
　　　　  accept commands. At that point, I accepted my colleague's notion
　　　　  that she had broken the cable.
　　　　  The terminal sat unused until the Zen side of my nature dreamed up
　　　　  one more thing to check. Sure enough, the phone plug that connected
　　　　  the keyboard to the CRT had not clicked into place. Now the terminal
　　　　  works just fine.
　　　　  Wading into the unknown
　　　　  Sometimes the problem does not have any easy solution. Returning to
　　　　  the example of the error message "!![at]Memory device hung ......
　　　　  suppose that rebooting the machine brings up the same message. At
　　　　  that point it is time to look at the documentation of the
　　　　  malfunctioning equipment. Most documentation has a deservedly bad
　　　　  reputation, but chances are that there will be a short chapter on
　　　　  troubleshooting. With any luck, the problem will be described and a
　　　　  simple solution offered.
　　　　  If the documentation doesn't help, there is little to lose by taking
　　　　  a risk or two; it's time to wade methodically into the pool of the
　　　　  unknown. This usually means altering the configuration settings on
　　　　  the malfunctioning terminal or printer. There are thousands of
　　　　  permutations and combinations, so it is important that I resist the
　　　　  temptation to change more than one thing at a time. This is the same
　　　　  principle that cave explorers follow when they mark their passage.
　　　　  Some changes will almost certainly make the machine act worse than
　　　　  it did before, so I need to know how to put things back. Some
　　　　  intuitively talented troubleshooters break this rule and get away
　　　　  with it, but they aren't sure what action ultimately solved the
　　　　  problem.
　　　　  Another example from my personal Hall of Pain concerns the transfer
　　　　  of records in our cataloging department. I had set up our OCLC
　　　　  terminals with function keys that automatically send a two-screen
　　　　  record to our local system. Sometimes a record would hang up after
　　　　  the first screen was accepted.
　　　　  I couldn't solve the problem, so I put it out of my mind. Months