CEO's and such, taking visitors to their million-dollar computer installations, found
3" cables snaking down from the ceiling 'unsightly'; I can recall several
managements who would send a memo instructing that the computer room be made extra-tidy
(no boxes of paper, cards, all the tapes and disks in their racks) for a coming visit.
I really found the raised floor to be quite valuable. There were no holes (except later
when A/C was pushed through and small vents were put in), cables were accessible by
pulling up a section or two, and as I said, you didn't have to hassle with trucking
data and supplies over big cables.
Vern
--- On Fri, 12/12/08, Patrick Finnegan <pat at computer-refuge.org> wrote:
From: Patrick Finnegan <pat at
computer-refuge.org>
Subject: Re: Raised floors
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
Date: Friday, December 12, 2008, 11:12 AM
On Friday 12 December 2008, Jules Richardson wrote:
Anyway, all of this doesn't further the
raised
floor discussion much,
except to say that things could be done without
raised
floors (and
given the way that computing evolved in the UK,
if GPO
convention was
to wire overhead then doubtless this was carried
over
into a lot of
computer installations; the US and other
countries may
have taken a
much different route though, with raised floors
adopted much
earlier)
After having spend several years working in a datacenter
with a raised
floor, I have to say that I really hate raised-floors, and
prefer
overhead wiring. Keeping the wiring overhead makes it
visible, which
makes it more necessary to keep it neat and tidy (and
remove old wiring
which is no longer used).
Raised floors encourage people to make messes out of wiring
because it's
all hidden. (Also, not having a raised floor provides less
opportunity
for parts and tools to find the holes in the floor to fall
through when
you drop them.)
Besides, why hide the wiring? You should proudly display
all parts of
the computer system! :)
Pat
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