Outlook Taking Hours to Download Email

JIC it helps anyone else out there.  For no apparent reason, Outlook 2010 started taking hours to download emails that usually came down in minutes.  And when I say hours, I mean 3-5 hours!  The app would remain responsive for the most part, but would consume 100% of a CPU/core.  It would download a number of messages and then just pause for 45 minutes or more.

Turns out that the problem was my configured %TEMP% directory was filled up with almost 65,000(!) entries.  An automatic update of my Antivirus software failed, and started looping retry attempts.  This filled up the temp directory with little 1KB  files until it crashed.  It also filled up my event log.

Seems that Outlook gets really cranky when it has trouble with its temp directory.

So if you suddenly start having strange issues like this with Outlook, make sure your temp directory is not too full.

Dig Dug with Floating Pins

Going through my boards, I came across a second Dig Dug board.  This one boots to static garbage and no sound.    Watchdog is barking.

Removing one of the CPUs gets different garbage.  Tried replacing with a known good one, no change.

Checking the pins shows me that a couple of the data lines, from D3 to D6 (I cannot remember which ones right now) are completely floating!  Rarely see that.  On a hunch, I replace the CPU’s socket, but this changes nothing.

Board traces go two a few chips (a 7474 and some other multiplexers or demultiplexers), and the floating lines seem to follow them.  But following the traces is tricky, so I gotta dig up some schematics to see what the Hell is going on.