13 Nov
1998
13 Nov
'98
3:38 p.m.
Reading this reminds me of a "notesfile" we used to have within DEC
called "warstory" which was a "compilation" of misadventures dealing
with computers. I wonder if the new or next incarnation of the list
could have something similar as a subset.. I'll bet there's _loads_
of humorous stories of misadventures involving classic equipment..
At DEC, we had loads of them.. Hey Allison, I bet you've got a few!
Will
Hans Franke wrote:
About the middle of the row of racks a red fault
light flickered, then came
on brightly. The drawer of the middle disk moved out by itself and when the
top opened a greyish black cloud came out, paused for a moment over the
drive, and then was whisked away by the air conditioning.
Wooha - it opend automaticly ? Dangerous. The first thing I
learned on head crash was:
Stop the unit
Unplug power
Unplug Interface
Roll the unit out of the computer room
At best out of the house
Now have fun with the damaged parts :)
At all this steps (but the last), especialy when
a delay ocures, guard the top with your life.
We once had a 144 MB unit crashing on saturday
morning and running (the check logic was damaged)
until monday morning (no operators). The heads have
been scraped completly, and the crashed disk was just
pure alu - no magnetic surface left ... The fun thing
was that parts of the disk stack had been readable until
sunday night ... We couldn't belive the transaction
protocolls :)
"I believe that pack has crossed over to the
other side." said the SP in a
complete dead pan protestant minister delivery.
:)))))
Gruss
hans
--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK