Magic Banana's 'puter is putzing along in low gear ...
Thinking inside the box: A few of years ago I was working on a project
involving the storage
of grapes in a produce warehouse, wherein the grapes were in small crates
protected against
mold by sulfur dioxide generated from packets of a sulfate that release the
gas by reacting
with moisture in the air.
Sulfur dioxide dissolves in water to form sulfurous acid, which is rather
corrosive of copper
alloys.
I was given one of those packets to find out how they work ... whereupon the
USB ports on my
laptop started to misbehave.
Oxides of transition metals are semiconductors; and the diode drops across
the transition
metal contacts were causing the contacts to introduce electrical noise that
greatly slowed
the USB transmissions.
It might be that your 'puter's internal connections are being affected by
sulfur dioxide in
urban air pollution, and so re-making the 'puter's internal connections might
just work a
cure, at least for a while.
Sulfur dioxide is also formed by the combustion of fossil fuels containing
sulfur compounds;
the oderant in methane-containing gas is also a sulfur compound.
