19 Jul
2006
19 Jul
'06
7:30 p.m.
Billy Pettit wrote:
Reminds me of one of my worst memories on the big iron
systems. Had a
computer that was on the top floor. The building maintenance people were
running the grounding cable on the lightning rod down to the earth rod..
And discovered this wonderful cable channel that carried the power from the
basement MGs up to the main frame power supplies. The inevitable happened
and a lightning bolt took out all the supplies on the entire system. The
overvoltage crowbars saved most of the logic. But the lightning literally
vaporized the power cables, and the MG was a big piece of toast.
Nobody was punished - the union said that there were no guidelines stating
this was a bad thing. And common sense seems to be a rare commodity.
People tend to think "wires are wires (are wires...)"
Note how often CAT5 is run in the same channels as telco
wiring :-(