Anyway, some doofus managed to string fiber through the cabinet (one
of the 9309 style cabinets, common with older big AS/400s and
RS/6000s). For some reason, the decommissioned machine had to be
removed during the day, but we were forbidden to touch the FDDI
outside a 3 AM maintenance window. Several blades later...
I'll tell you - IBM uses good steel.
Where did the dust end up?
On one memorable occasion, when we requested cable access between two of our
adjacent cabs, the data centre tech (without telling anyone) took an angle
grinder to the cab walls and showered our running equipment with fine steel
dust. Any mystery failures after that were blamed on dust getting sucked in
by fans and deposited on pcbs.
Regards,
Peter Coghlan.