Rookie says yes, an overheated character generator board could do that. A failed cooling fan, theorizes Rookie. Dantley and Rookie trot down to the basement to have a look at the PVD that Henry Drake had been using when the collision occurred. The character generator and all the rest of the guts of the PVD are covered with dust, and the power cord to the cooling fan has traces of soot left by arcing. But the cooling fan itself is suspiciously spotless, suggesting that it had been replaced very recently.
Rookie writes down the serial number of the fan.
Dantley also checks on Henry Drake's prior UCRs, and finds that the FAA has no record of the two UCRs Drake claims to have submitted on that PVD in the last two months. Analysis of the maintenance log under ultraviolet light reveals that two of the PVD maintenance entries have been altered. Dantley is now convinced that Drake was telling the truth, that his PVD failed, and that there's a giant conspiracy to pin the blame on Drake rather than on the equipment. Dantley confronts Wyatt, says he has proof that it was equipment failure that caused the collision, not an operational error, accuses Wyatt of covering up known deficiencies in the equipment at Midwest Center, and asks him why he did it. But, difficult as this may be to believe, the worst is yet to come.