Easter Eggs in Appliances? 24
nneul asks: "A few weeks ago I bought and installed a new Kenmore Elite dishwasher from Sears. A couple days ago, it stopped working, all the buttons on the panel would just blink when pushed, and pressing "start" would run this weird mini-wash cycle. Disconnecting the power to the unit had no effect. Turns out (after having Sears come out for a warrantee repair on it), through some sequence of keypresses on the panel, I had enabled "store demo mode", which required a completely undocumented set of keypresses to turn off. (Even the sears guy had to call to get the code). My question - has anyone else ever seen other appliance "easter eggs" like this? In this case, it was pretty annoying, but I wonder what other sort of interesting secret key sequences there are on ordinary home appliances/tvs/etc." Makes you wonder. If you start pushing random buttons on your microwave, don't be surprised if it suddenly starts up with a rousing rendition of Devo's "Whip It!"
Nothing new (Score:4, Interesting)
My Sony TV has a "service tunning mode" (it's amaizing how much you can mess with the unit) My TiVo has some hidden controlls, as well as a special combo that sends in close captioning names of the people who worked on it. My car stereo has a demo mode that comes the first time you power the unit up. Pretty much anything controlled by any sort of soft/firm-ware of any sort can have these "tunable" parameters and other hidden functions.
I used to own an old RCA TV. This particular model had no remote, but almost identical one with a few extra features did. Universal remotes did not work. So I opened it up. Sure enough it had IR recievers covered up in black tape. You never know.
-Em
Re:Nothing new (Score:2)
Easter egg site (Score:5, Informative)
Fur Elise (Score:1)
Re:Fur Elise (Score:1)
Though Fur Elise and It's a Small World are pretty friggin odd.
DVD players have a useful "hidden" feature (Score:1)
Unlike lots of PC DVD players, there's no limit for number of changes.
The sequences are not in the user's manual, of course, but any salesperson will have a notebook with all the codes, and will happily let you take note of he one you need - if you buy from him.
Is it the same everywhere? This makes the "region" system redundant...
Two more (Score:1)
My VCR has a store-demo mode that is actually documented in the manual in a page titled "for salespersons only" or something like that.
My VCR crashes (Score:3, Funny)
My Sony VCR from a few years ago will crash when playing back Farscape. It works fine with everything else I've tried to record, and it records Farscape fine, but when playing it back, at least once per episode (regardless of record speed), the VCR will crash. The power goes off and the clock is reset.
So in this case, there apparently is some special signal that the VCR is noting on the tape that is, for some reason, a part of Farscape.
Weird.
Re:My VCR crashes (Score:1)
Funny that it's just Farscape. Are you using the same tape? same section of tape? Recording other shows of equal time on comparable positions of other same-brand,length, and speed tapes w/o problem?
It could be a tape tension problem - maybe it's a rewind/play sequence that mucks things up.
Last but not least, try a shorter tape. These are usually thicker and less prone to stretching.
Re:My VCR crashes (Score:1)
Now it's not an issue, because we don't use a VCR for time-shifting now that we have ReplayTV.
Re:My VCR crashes (Score:2)
X-Ray Machines (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:X-Ray Machines (Score:2)
Re:X-Ray Machines (Score:2)
Industrial Laser Easter Egg (Score:4, Funny)
It had 32k of memory in its onboard computer for storing CNC programs. (did I mention it was an old industrial laser?) The same company sold a model that had 64k of memory, for more money. But the laser manufacturer apparently decided it would be cheaper to only have one assembly line building the lasers, so all of them were actually made with 64k and the 32k versions must have been "dumbed down" with a software patch.
I discoved a very complex set of secret codes that would "transform" my 32k industrial laser into the 64k version. Very handy. The codes were probably used to allow the 32k machines to be "upgraded" to 64k by a factory service rep; for a few thousand dollars. (and you thought memory for your PC was expensive)
Industrial-grade easter egg (Score:2, Funny)
machine with a LC-display had a special
"exhibition-mode".
Putting the machine in this mode would halt normal operations and you could play a "snake"-type
game on the display.
When the workers discovered this, the late-night-shifts tended to halt production for
some time just to play the game...;-)
And you thought, only crypto-backdoors were dangerous !
Re:Appliances (Score:1)
Service Mode for Zenith TVs (Score:1)
Again, I don't advise anyone to do this to good TV. It may be possible to damage your TV, and you can get it into some modes that are difficult to get out of.
British Telecom phone system. (Score:1)
The feature dissappeared from our exchange a good few years before the exchange was replaced with a digital one.
Re:British Telecom phone system. (Score:1)
Yeah... (Score:2)
Incidentally, I've been thinking about "hacking" out an easter egg on my Sanyo microwave - it has a very interesting display, with a ton of modes - I would be surprised if there _wasn't_ an easter egg hidden in it somewhere.
On my Cox Digital receiver (a Scientific Atlanta Explorer 2000 box), you can go into a special "diagnostic" mode on the box by pressing the diamond and target keys together after turning it on - basically, I believe you have to turn it on, then press and hold the target button (to the left of the arrow pad on the box), then hit the diamond button at the same time (in the middle of the arrow pad) - at least, I think that is the way - I don't have the box in front of me.
Gives a lot of info about the box...