Water Cooling and Hot Climates was RE: IBM 1620; was: Early Programming Books

[dave.g4ugm at gmail.com]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> On Behalf Of Van Snyder via
> cctalk
> Sent: 22 June 2021 00:00
> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
> Subject: Re: IBM 1620; was: Early Programming Books
> 
> On Mon, 2021-06-21 at 17:26 -0400, William Donzelli via cctalk wrote:
> > > Of course, nowadays, the old R22 systems are being refilled with
> > > purified propane, called R290.  Cheap, with better thermal
> > > properties than R22, but probably not legal when LCM picked up the
> 6500.
> >
> > When cleaning out a 3rd party CDC dealer quite a few years back, he
> > remarked that the CDC machines going way back all the way to the 800s
> > were fantastically unpicky about how they were cooled. He just used a
> > garden hose connected to the building potable water, and if the
> > machine under test needed more coolant because it was running warm, it
> > just pumped more supply. Heated waste water went down the drain.
> >
> > This unlike the IBM water machines.
> 
> I was once told that the most valuable guy in a Honeywell 6080 Multics shop
> was the plumber.
> 

I don't ever remember the 6080 being water cooled? I Thought Honeywell/GEC was all air cooled. All the L66s (which were from what the Multics machine was developed) were air cooled.

I was told the following tale by one of my Honeywell contacts....

... Apparently the last Shah of Iran owned a Level 66 for the use of his secret police. Apart from the fact that the OS had been modified by Honeywell Italy, and the documentation for this was in Italian which no one on the job understood, and when the OS crashed it was usually in a section of the code with Italian comments,  there was also a problem with the power. As the temperature rose the power invariable failed. This was because it was run from a diesel generator that was out in the sun, it over heated and cut out.....

... any way after many complaints the military man in charge came to the Honeywell staff and told them the problem was solved. They of course asked how and were taken to the generator and shown the latest modification. They had fitted a new cap to the radiator with a thermometer in it, as often found on vintage cars. They had painted a read line on the gauge and assigned a soldier to watch it. When the needle got to the line, he blew his whistle and several other soldiers appeared and threw buckets of water over the engine until it cooled down....
 
I just wonder what they did while waiting for it to overheat......

> >
> > --
> > Will

Dave
G4UGM