At 5:59 PM -0500 2/6/08, Roy J. Tellason wrote: Other than a couple monitors in one shot, it looks like the only racks with anything in them are the network patch panels. What a mess. Guess it doesn't pay to have an empty building in California. Zaen -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |

Reminds me of what I see happening in my home town of Schaumburg, IL. There is an old IBM/AT&T building which was vacated and they have started remodeling or demolishing this week. I wouldn't be surprised if people on the list hadn't touched something from that building in one way or another. There was a lot of "firsts" and history in the building. Interesting stories, can't share too much unfortunately, but what I can is the public knowledge. The building had IBM, AT&T and Advantis. These were mainly network services divisions which Advantis was a co-op between Sears and IBM. At some point the group has changed hands several times back and forth, most recently in the news for transferring back to AT&T. There are some telecomm and e-commerce books which detail all that, but some rumors include stories of the starts of the "Prodigy" and development testing of Roadrunner cable modems in the building. Along with a lot of this recent history happening during the mid-90s to 2005ish... we'll just say IBM "e-business," AKA webhosting, outsourced services has quite a bit of history there and it's customers. Alas now the building has been stripped out, and the data center floors/ACs seem to be removed and exposed to the outside where they cut away at a face of the building. All I know is the recent history, who knows what other secrets and stories from decades past there are out there. I always wanted to know more about the water/liquid cooling pipes under the raised floor and closets and what they must have been connected to at one time. But to get back to my point, wonder what other stories there are of behind the various abandoned tech buildings throughout. Roy J. Tellason wrote:

All, On 06/02/2008, Roy J. Tellason <rtellason at verizon.net> wrote: As others have said, I think the rows are just communications patch panels. The transformers look like the kind of transformers used to drop a three phase and ground (no neutral) supply down to a phase to neutral supply (ie drop phase to phase voltage to the equivalent phase to neutral voltage.) I suspect it is some part of the climate control system of the machine room. Although this is only a guess based on other similar transformers I have seen. Also look at the pictures it would appear that there are a number of under floor air chillers/humidifiers/dehumidifies for the raised floor. The one photo of the stainless tray looks like it is the office canteen. The photo with the ethernet tranciever (I think) is the most interesting. The magazine just to the lower right of the picture has 1995 on it. So it gives some sort of time line to go by. The photos of the two tanks have me interested. I initially thought that they were compressed air tanks but the more I look at the photo I think it more part of the heating system... Although could be fuel oil for either the heating system or backup generator. I am not sure what card cage is that the guy appears to be removing the card from. Could be comms gear or a computer. I am not sure. It was. Thank you. Simon -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Well, an engineer is not concerned with the truth; that is left to philosophers and theologians: the prime concern of an engineer is the utility of the final product." Lectures on the Electrical Properties of Materials, L.Solymar, D.Walsh