A Register "Who, Me?" column recounts a reader's early-1990s mishap while working as a PC support technician for professors at his university's graduate school, one of whom later won a Nobel Prize. Sent to fix a faulty mouse on an IBM PC running an Intel 286 processor, he plugged the replacement into a physically identical but wrongly wired nine-pin port, causing the machine to emit smoke before he yanked the power cord free.

The confusion arose because IBM's proprietary mouse connector used a different pin for power than a standard RS-232 serial port, despite looking the same. After unplugging the cord and reassessing, the technician identified his mistake, corrected the connection, and found the PC and mouse both worked fine afterwards with no lasting damage, quietly airing out the office before the professor returned.