7 Dec
2011
7 Dec
'11
9:31 a.m.
I figure there are three classes of "cheap" for raised flooring systems:
- it's new and on sale
- it's used and removed/reclaimed from a decomissioned data center/machine room
- it's used and sitting in the existing machine room and you come pull
it out so they don't have to deal with it
Ideally I'd like to pick up something for free, because this is not a
high priority item for the museum. It's more in the "nice to have"
category. It would make it much easier to supply power to exhibits in
the middle of a large open area because I could run power and data
cabling under the floor.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 version available for download
<http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>
9:59 a.m.
On 12/7/2011 10:39 AM, Alexandre Souza - Listas wrote:
> I figure there are three classes of
"cheap" for raised flooring systems:
> - it's new and on sale
Is it CHEAP? :o)
umm cheap ... well two sticks of TNT will raise any floor.
Ben.
BTW I thought raised flooring was more for AC rather than cables.
10:16 a.m.
On Dec 7, 2011, at 12:59 PM, ben wrote:
BTW I thought raised flooring was more for AC rather
than cables.
It's for everything. Most labs I've worked in that have had raised flooring have
had lots and lots of cabling running under as well as the AC; it's very useful for
keeping cables out of everyone's hair.
Sometimes there are anti-static benefits as well; it's a lot easier to make raised
flooring conductive than regular concrete.
In the classes I took for Cisco certification (a certification which proved to be utterly
useless to me), they were constantly warning of the dangers of raised floors and dropped
ceilings in re: espionage. Apparently ninjas are a big problem in datacenters? That was
the impression they gave, anyway.
- Dave
1:24 p.m.
On 12/7/11 10:16 AM, "David Riley" <fraveydank at gmail.com> wrote:
On Dec 7, 2011, at 12:59 PM, ben wrote:
There's not a lot of clearance under there, at least not in our machine
room. Are those ninja turtles? (I couldn't resist.) -- Ian
BTW I thought raised flooring was more for AC
rather than cables.
It's for everything. Most labs I've worked in that have had raised
flooring have had lots and lots of cabling running under as well as the
AC; it's very useful for keeping cables out of everyone's hair.
Sometimes there are anti-static benefits as well; it's a lot easier to
make raised flooring conductive than regular concrete.
In the classes I took for Cisco certification (a certification which
proved to be utterly useless to me), they were constantly warning of the
dangers of raised floors and dropped ceilings in re: espionage.
Apparently ninjas are a big problem in datacenters? That was the
impression they gave, anyway.
1:39 p.m.
heres one from ebay you prob already saw but anyway
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Computer-Room-Woodcore-Floating-Raised-Flooring-Sys…
242 non vented/19vented tiles 24"x24"each tile 69 agle peces and all
floorstands/brackets
On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 1:24 PM, Ian King <IanK at vulcan.com> wrote:
On 12/7/11 10:16 AM, "David Riley"
<fraveydank at gmail.com> wrote:
On Dec 7, 2011, at 12:59 PM, ben wrote:
There's not a lot of clearance under there, at least not in our machine
room. Are those ninja turtles? (I couldn't resist.) -- Ian
BTW I thought raised flooring was more for AC
rather than cables.
It's for everything. Most labs I've worked in that have had raised
flooring have had lots and lots of cabling running under as well as the
AC; it's very useful for keeping cables out of everyone's hair.
Sometimes there are anti-static benefits as well; it's a lot easier to
make raised flooring conductive than regular concrete.
In the classes I took for Cisco certification (a certification which
proved to be utterly useless to me), they were constantly warning of the
dangers of raised floors and dropped ceilings in re: espionage.
Apparently ninjas are a big problem in datacenters? That was the
impression they gave, anyway.
2:08 p.m.
In article <CA+A6M=ib+6mP3zdb+sDuZ5kVw_Rd4wxOdAXxZwADY1_zuPO4Yg at mail.gmail.com>,
Chris Halarewich <halarewich at gmail.com> writes:
heres one from ebay you prob already saw but anyway
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Computer-Room-Woodcore-Floating-Raised-Flooring-Sys…
m-/300556829438?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item45fa9542fe
242 non vented/19vented tiles 24"x24"each tile 69 agle peces and all
floorstands/brackets
$5K? Is that cheap?
There are SO many more important things I could do with $5K on the
museum. If that isn't a crazy price, then I'll just put this in the
"get it if it's free" category of search.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 version available for download
<http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>
3:13 p.m.
On 12/07/2011 11:08 PM, Richard wrote:
In
article<CA+A6M=ib+6mP3zdb+sDuZ5kVw_Rd4wxOdAXxZwADY1_zuPO4Yg at mail.gmail.com>,
Chris Halarewich<halarewich at gmail.com> writes:
Looks to be in great condition. I wonder what they cost new. (I'm also
in the market)
/P
heres one from ebay you prob already saw but
anyway
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Computer-Room-Woodcore-Floating-Raised-Flooring-Sys…
m-/300556829438?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item45fa9542fe
242 non vented/19vented tiles
24"x24"each tile 69 agle peces and all
floorstands/brackets
$5K? Is that cheap?
There are SO many more important things I could do with $5K on the
museum. If that isn't a crazy price, then I'll just put this in the
"get it if it's free" category of search. 
4:34 p.m.
On 12/7/2011 5:13 PM, Pontus wrote:
Looks to be in great condition. I wonder what they
cost new. (I'm also
in the market)
Several years back, my employer at the time was moving out of a leased
building, which was slated for gutting. However, the lease agreement
was to replace any cut/damaged data center raised floor tiles, which
amounted to about 150-200 floor tiles to be replaced. I don't know the
exact cost per tile was, but the estimate is somewhere around the
$250-350 each for a total cost of $50,000+. A year after the company
moved out, the floor was ripped out by the building owners to make room
for new tenants who wanted the space for offices and from what I can
tell, most of the flooring was disposed of in aluminum/metal scrap
dumpsters.
So my estimated new per tile cost of good quality data center raised
flooring is somewhere around $250-350 without any of the additional
mounting hardware.
10:10 a.m.
On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 12:31 PM, Richard <legalize at xmission.com> wrote:
Ideally I'd like to pick up something for free, because this is not a
high priority item for the museum. It's more in the "nice to have"
category. It would make it much easier to supply power to exhibits in
the middle of a large open area because I could run power and data
cabling under the floor.
My friend went to a design school that had a high-end 3d workstation room
(in fact, I think they were Octanes) It was simply desks spaced out with
power and network drops coming down from the unfinished ceiling. The room
was completely dark except for low power spotlights shining down on each
station (the monitors had hoods). The whole effect was really cool.
The IT guy said that dealing with overhead wiring is easier than running
everything underneath the workstations, especially if you have to shuffle
things around later on (and he had the option of doing a raised floor) If
you need to add drops, just punch into an existing junction box and tap in
- assuming everything is wired properly.
11:47 a.m.
On 7 Dec 2011 at 13:10, Jason McBrien wrote:
The IT guy said that dealing with overhead wiring is
easier than
running everything underneath the workstations, especially if you have
to shuffle things around later on (and he had the option of doing a
raised floor) If you need to add drops, just punch into an existing
junction box and tap in - assuming everything is wired properly.
Brings a shudder to me after many years.
Raised flooring = rats, mice and roaches and all manner of
unspeakable stuff gunking things up, particularly spilled soft drinks
and coffee.
Dropped ceiling = spiders, incredible amounts of dust, and the
fiberglass insulation that filters down from the roof insulation.
Itchy, itchy, itchy.
--Chuck
11:58 a.m.
That's interesting. I read stuff like that but didn't hear it first hand. We had
an operator at one place I worked who had a gourmet streak, he would keep a bottle of wine
and some expensive cheese under a panel near his seat. At another place the ops manager
used to keep a couple of six packs handy. The places I saw were all spotlessly clean. I
guess that helped with the pest issues!
-----Original Message-----
From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com>
Sender: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org
Date: Wed, 07 Dec 2011 11:47:28
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Reply-To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Subject: Re: wanted: raised flooring for cheap
On 7 Dec 2011 at 13:10, Jason McBrien wrote:
The IT guy said that dealing with overhead wiring is
easier than
running everything underneath the workstations, especially if you have
to shuffle things around later on (and he had the option of doing a
raised floor) If you need to add drops, just punch into an existing
junction box and tap in - assuming everything is wired properly.
Brings a shudder to me after many years.
Raised flooring = rats, mice and roaches and all manner of
unspeakable stuff gunking things up, particularly spilled soft drinks
and coffee.
Dropped ceiling = spiders, incredible amounts of dust, and the
fiberglass insulation that filters down from the roof insulation.
Itchy, itchy, itchy.
--Chuck
12:02 p.m.
On Dec 7, 2011, at 2:47 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
Brings a shudder to me after many years.
Raised flooring = rats, mice and roaches and all manner of
unspeakable stuff gunking things up, particularly spilled soft drinks
and coffee.
Dropped ceiling = spiders, incredible amounts of dust, and the
fiberglass insulation that filters down from the roof insulation.
Itchy, itchy, itchy.
That's why all my cables are safely strung between eye and neck height straight across
the work area. I've found it's also a strong deterrent for people who want to
mess with my stuff. :-)
- Dave
12:08 p.m.
On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 2:47 PM, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
Brings a shudder to me after many years.
Raised flooring = rats, mice and roaches and all manner of
unspeakable stuff gunking things up, particularly spilled soft drinks
and coffee.
Dropped ceiling = spiders, incredible amounts of dust, and the
fiberglass insulation that filters down from the roof insulation.
Itchy, itchy, itchy.
You must have worked in special places.
My first personal experience crawling around a raised floor
installation was in a 500 sq ft mixed DEC and IBM machine room - a
couple of VAX-11/750s, a few PDP-11s, and an IBM 4331. There was lots
of dust under the floor, but no goo and no vermin. I know how dirty
it was because I (and the company owner) moved 100% of the equipment
when we changed buildings ten years later. We built the new machine
room in the open in air-conditioned space in a 3000 sq ft warehouse -
I set the posts and built the skirt myself. I even recovered all the
floor parts when the company closed some years later - they are
stacked in my quonset hut waiting for me to build the new building
next door.
Even the massive data centers I worked in at Lucent weren't nasty
under the floor - just dusty.
As for overhead wiring - I've only had that at places that were built
to an open plan - so lots of overhead wire management, but no dust or
spiders or insulation raining down on us, just cascades of cables.
So where have you worked that was so dirty and infested?
-ethan
12:29 p.m.
A dozen messgaes so far and NONE of them answer the question of where
I can get me some.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 version available for download
<http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>
12:57 p.m.
On 12/07/2011 09:29 PM, Richard wrote:
A dozen messgaes so far and NONE of them answer the
question of where
I can get me some.
I have found it once or twice on the Swedish version of craigslist. The
trick is to know what they call it. Some use the term "installation
floor" or "double floor" (perhaps that is just Sweden though)
And I have a story about dirty floors as well: In the computer club
server room we had a grey water sewage pipe brake and fill the area
under the floor. After cleaning a big load of cables and after some pros
cleaned up the smelly mess we could use the room again. I'm glad we had
the raised floor, imagine the damage to the Vax and PDP's.
/P
3 p.m.
Richard wrote:
A dozen messgaes so far and NONE of them answer the
question of where
I can get me some.
That's because there *isn't* a cheap source of it.
The people that deal in it get paid to remove it from one site, and then
they get paid to install it in another.
A company I worked for a decade ago signed a lease on a new building.
When us employees got our first tour, another company was there tearing
out the raised floor. Our company paid a lot of money to tear it out.
I asked whether I could get any of it, and the answer was that I could
buy it if I had a large amount of money to spend.
I was very disappointed because the management at the company I worked
for knew that I was into old computers, and had they asked me, I would
have removed it at no charge.
3:10 p.m.
On 7 Dec 2011 at 15:08, Ethan Dicks wrote:
So where have you worked that was so dirty and
infested?
In facility that was very close to a large body of water, drainage
ditches and located in the middle of an onion field. In the autumn
crickets would invade by the thousands--they would be everywhere, not
just under the raising flooring; or in hallways; in desk drawers; in
that cup of coffee you left on your desk.
Of course, nothing compared to the sumps in a steel mill, but still
not the prisitine environment one thinks of in connection with
computers.
I wonder if installations along the Gulf Coast suffer the same
problem. I remember when the company put me up in some very fancy
digs in the middle of San Antonio. As the bellman was carting my
luggage to my room, strolling beside us in the hallway was a very
large palmetto bug. The guy showing me to my room just shrugged and
said "we get them everywhere".
--Chuck
2:22 p.m.
I've worked in both environments with raised floors vs ceiling ventilation/cabling.
Either are fine it just depends what your real purpose is. From what I recall most of the
raised floor environments I've been in were specifically for cooling mainframes and
other server equipment, cabling happened to end up going there but that wasn't the
purpose behind it. Plus you have to have to then be wary of your weight and distribution
of systems with a raised floor which sorta kills the fun after a while. New systems need
new bolts and mounts under them etc.
The biggest pain was long power drops which were zigzagging between posts under the floor
here from various previous moves that were "just enough" to get it where they
needed next. Finally it took a long time pulling those out and rerunning them properly,
let alone finding some with frayed wire exposed. Not a comforting experience after
roughly handling them prior to that.
Ceiling runs you end up with the same stuff after years of poor management. Cables thrown
over and under certain other devices (lights, vents, mounts) that after a while are
difficult to track what is where or work around it properly. The worst story I have is at
a leased office we had which had a very large scorpion problem (they warned us every time
we came there). You couldn't imagine the number of doughnut boxes and coffee cans
they had full of their bodies in the break room (I guess they kept them out of boredom and
as a complaint). Working anywhere in that building was unnerving but a coworker and I had
to do a cable drop to the reception area. We're slowly pulling ceiling panels away,
checking around a bit (my thinking was picturing some hive of the stupid things just
waiting to be pissed off and found). We ran the cable but as my coworker was getting off
the ladder he thought he felt something on his back (of course we spent most of our
time there feeling like that). Either way, he threw his shirt off on the ground and was
freaking out a bit when I found him but I didn't see anything. Mostly was just
something we laughed about afterwards.
So anyway, the discussion might be seemingly off topic but I think the point was debating
if one was a better design than the other. Especially when cost is a concern.
As far as finding the materials all I can think of are freecycle, craigslist free section,
or habitat for humanity type stores if you're really set on doing all that work.
1:44 p.m.
From: Richard
Sent: Wednesday, December 07, 2011 9:31 AM
I figure there are three classes of "cheap"
for raised flooring systems:
OK, I know one is "non-existent". What are the other two?
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org
http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/
1:50 p.m.
On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 4:44 PM, Rich Alderson <RichA at vulcan.com> wrote:
From: Richard
Sent: Wednesday, December 07, 2011 9:31 AM
Collapsed and Non-load-bearing?
-ethan
I figure there are three classes of
"cheap" for raised flooring systems:
OK, I know one is "non-existent". ?What are the other two? 
4:32 p.m.
Richard wrote:
I figure there are three classes of "cheap"
for raised flooring systems:
- it's new and on sale
- it's used and removed/reclaimed from a decomissioned data center/machine room
- it's used and sitting in the existing machine room and you come pull
it out so they don't have to deal with it
I tried this a few years back when I was involved with NMoC; the conclusion
was that it's really expensive to buy the parts new, decommissioned floors
just sitting conveniently in storage free for the taking don't exist, and
folk wanting someone to come and pull out their existing floor don't exist,
either :-(
(I suspect it's a rare event for such a floor to be torn up, and if/when it
does happen it's part of other refurbishment work or demolishing of a
building by a single contractor, so it's all just ripped to pieces - with
any metal parts potentially sent for scrap value)
Ideally I'd like to pick up something for free,
because this is not a
high priority item for the museum. It's more in the "nice to have"
category. It would make it much easier to supply power to exhibits in
the middle of a large open area because I could run power and data
cabling under the floor.
Are you in rented space? Do you foresee the larger/heavier exhibits moving
around much, or will they pretty much always occupy the same spot?
cheers
Jules
11:37 p.m.
In article <4EE00590.5060809 at gmail.com>,
Jules Richardson <jules.richardson99 at gmail.com> writes:
Are you in rented space? Do you foresee the
larger/heavier exhibits moving
around much, or will they pretty much always occupy the same spot?
Yes and the larger heavier stuff is mostly on wheels, except for the
CDC console. I've got the Aesthedes on furniture dollies, although
that's a temporary thing.
Will stuff move? Most likely.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 version available for download
<http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>
19 Dec
19 Dec
8:16 a.m.
Found some raised flooring on craigslist, hope this helps:
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/bfs/2750119704.html
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