VOLUME 11, NO. 1     MAY 1997

Another student sleuth solves the case of the fraudulent chip

Just before Christmas, the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News reported that WPI sophomore Steve Faulkner, a computer science major from Boxford, Mass., uncovered computer fraud when he took apart his computer after it kept overheating. Faulkner thought the problem with his two-year-old Comtrade computer was his fault, so he took the cover off and examined each part.

He reported his problems to the computer company and discovered that others were reporting similar problems with the same model. After failing to get an answer from the company, he took the machine apart and spent an hour peeling back a printed serial number that had been glued onto the Intel microprocessor. He then called up the Intel site on the World Wide Web and posted a question to the technical staff. The answer he received was that the 90-megahertz chip he thought he had was in reality a 75-megahertz chip being pushed to a higher speed. While rare in the U.S., "overclocked" Pentium chips are an increasing problem abroad according to security experts.

What did Faulkner get for his trouble? Comtrade offered to refund his father the $20,000 for the systems he had bought. The company now runs standard tests and visually inspects each CPU; it is also considering legal action against its former supplier.

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