Who, Me? Techie Sent to Fix Nobel Prize Winner's PC Almost Set It on Fire
The Register, Monday, September 7th, 2026
A reader recalls plugging a mouse into the wrong nine-pin port on a future Nobel laureate's IBM PC and making it smoke.
In The Register's weekly Who, Me? column, a reader dubbed "Marc" recalls his early-1990s job supporting PCs for professors at a graduate school, some of whom later won Nobel Prizes.
Sent to replace a faulty mouse on an Intel 286-based IBM PC, he plugged it into a physically identical but differently pinned nine-pin port.
The machine immediately began emitting foul electrical smoke, so he kicked out the power cord. After moving the mouse to the correct port, the PC booted fine and the mouse worked, and the professor later won his Nobel Prize unaware of the incident.