Given the topic of smoke, what do folks keep around for fire extinguishers for their gear? I've still got a few big Halon-charged units whose gauges say they're fine, but I know that Halon's a no-no because it eats a hole in the sky. So what's the current "safe" electronics fire extinguisher look like nowadays? Cheers, Chuck

Hello, Saturday, May 27, 2006, 12:41:53 PM, Joe wrote: thanks for the fire extinguishing spinoff in the thread. I never really did care too much about that topic but after 2-3 severe smell incidents I'm now off to purchase a CO2 extinguisher for use in worst case scenarios. It's probably going to be more of a safety blanket (rather then something to put to real action) to have a solution between continued fire hazard after the incident and killing the machine with water or other extinguishers (in all cases *so* *far* that would have been overreacting). -- Best regards, Gerhard mailto:mail at g-lenerz.de Old SGI Stuff http://sgistuff.g-lenerz.de/

Monday, May 29, 2006, 2:01:03 PM, Ethan wrote: At least there was a visible cause. My incident #1 was me being dumb for not finding the 115/230V jumper on 'boromir' [1] so I did blow the PSU as well as a fuse in the hosue it was booted in. It actually took ~5 seconds for the fuse to kick in... no further damage then a shortened and currently dead/unrepaired PSU. Ok, that was pretty easy to resolve too. Incident #2 was 'sauron' [2] starting to smell badly... and he was actually humming happily 3 rooms further away in the basement of my parents house. I was testing a new board and currently I assume that this one is bad. I totally stripped the machine and couldn't find a source for the smell. The board also doesn't have a distinctive smell to it, or marks of the incident. No real reason ever found. The recent one (#3) was the currently unnamed 3130 IRIS [3]. The PSU seems to be the source of the trouble but I need to do closer inspection if I can come up with a real reason. The worst thing aside from the apparent danger of fire is that all three happened in my parents house. I no longer live there but the majority of my collection is in their basement and they don't really feel well with it. I guess I've covered/hidden the latest incident pretty well. ;-) I'm always quite surprised what the computers itself survive. Sparks, smoke, overvoltage and still... with some replacement in the infrastructure many of them come up again without trouble. The result of terribly expensive quality hardware? Gerhard PS / PR0N: ----------- [1] http://sgistuff.g-lenerz.de/collection/1201.php [2] http://sgistuff.g-lenerz.de/collection/1200.php http://sgistuff.g-lenerz.de/pictures/powerseries.php#outside http://sgistuff.g-lenerz.de/pictures/powerseries.php#cardcage [3] http://sgistuff.g-lenerz.de/collection/1500.php

"Chuck Guzis" wrote: It's probably not pc (or even environmentally correct), but while racing cars I started collecting small hand-held halon fire extinguishers. Having used them a few times on engine fires (or grass fires caused by oil spilling over hot manifolds) I can tell you they work extremely well. The nice ting is they don't leave any residue to clean up. So I now keep them around old machines, just in case. I would think dry chemical bottle would make a huge mess. I'd like to know too. I'm not ready to give up my halon bottles because of the residue. -brad

On 5/27/2006 at 7:02 AM dwight elvey wrote: I don't think the chemical industry set out to make things "that would last forever", it just happened. CFC's for the most part are very stable and when they were originally made for use as refrigerants, it was a good thing. Very stable things tend also not to be toxic to life; before Freon was used as a refrigerant, the dominant agents in that application were sulfur dioxide and ammonia--both very dangerous if inhaled--and both potentially very reactive. That the same family of CFCs could be used as inert solvents and to displace oxygen in an electrical fire was a bonus. Things that break down rapidly also tend to be rather toxic to life; consider the predecessor to CFCs in fire extinguishers and industrial solvents, carbon tetrachloride. Much less stable than freon, it's a potent carcinogen, and can cause kidney and liver damage if inhaled. Yet I can remember that my bottle of volume control cleaner and my electrical fire extinguisher (not to mention household spot remover) were full of the stuff. But then, the history of the industrialized world is one of unintended consequences, be it asbestos, atrazine or MTBE. As my halon is safely contained in its extinguishers, I'm not about to abandon it anytime soon unless someone offers me a better alternative and a financial incentive to make the change. Cheers, Chuck

All I can say to that is that you should compare the environmental damage done by a couple of Halon fire extinguishers with the damage that would be done if you had to rebuild all your classic computers and other stuff -tony

Jules Richardson wrote: The hole in the ozone layer is drastically affected by the sun spot cycle and it is well documented by the radio communications types. The big scream about the freon refrigerants (halons) came at the peak of the most active sun spot cycle in many years. When the peak of the next cycle was approaching, approximately 11 years later there was a quick blurb on the local news about the hole was expanding again and then complete silence. The biggest problem with the freon refrigerants was that they will break down into phosgene with high heat and the EPA makes no mention of that in their lists of hazards associated with freon gases. Notice what the price is now (30 to 50 times what it used to be) and the replacements are just as expensive plus they are flammable. Don't have a front end accident with your new car. :-)

Hello, Sunday, May 28, 2006, 5:25:38 PM, Jules wrote: I can't tell much about IRIS powersupplies as I have first-hand experience with only one machine and that was even built during the days when the 4Ds were already hitting the market (1988 I think; boards are from around 1983-1986 though). The smaller IRIS4D (Personal Iris) do use something completely different as a PSU and they are rated at ~300W or something close to that. All other IRIS4D (Professional Iris, PowerSeries and Crimson in both Twin Tower as well as Single Tower enclosures) use sompletely sealed PSUs (like it's done in PCs today). They are all manufactured by two or three different companies and share the same size. They are all rated between 1000 and 1500W as far as I know. For closer inspection I need to dig out the PSU anyway so I might get the chance to compare part numbers against the one that is used in the other machines. Too bad that removing it is such a PITA... way to many screws and pieces of sheetmetal in the way on any of these machines. They are built like tanks... Good thing is, the IRIS3130 is in a rather lowend configuration. SGI in these days apparently shipped stripped down backplanes either to 3rd party vendors (CDC in this case) or for given applications (ICEM; labelling on backup tapes indicate some work was done in aircraft industry). I've been down the street one time with replacing a Personal Iris PSU with an AT-style PC supply. Works, but the PSU is crapping out when drives are installed. Well it's 200W and the machine likely draws too much on some voltage lines with full height 5.25" drives installed but runs fine without. You were making a sense... at least you told me exactly what I wanted to hear... ;-) -- Best regards, Gerhard mailto:mail at g-lenerz.de Old SGI Stuff http://sgistuff.g-lenerz.de/