[rescue] fire v210 upgrade

[Sheldon T. Hall]

Ugg.  Thog of Cave People say ...

> Yeah, but by the same measure, multi-million-dollar SMP boxes should  
> be in a decently clean and environmentally controlled data center.   
> I'm sure you're not surprised when I say I've seen some real  
> horrorshows.  (And, for $DEITY's sake, don't put a water line 
> through  
> the ceiling of the data center, especially if you live in  
> geographically unstable areas....)

... or even geographically stable ones.

Back when I was managing big construction, in the late seventies, we were
doing a 24-story office building in Atlanta.  Pretty standard stuff for the
day: dinosaur pen for the water-cooled IBM iron down in the basement, with
4" water lines up to the chillers on the 15th floor.  The chillers
themselves had 6" or 8" lines up to the roof, etc.

The pumps to circulate the water from the basement up to the 15th floor were
in the basement, in a mech room next to the computer room.  Big mothers,
they were, too: centrifugal pumps about 3' in diameter.

So, test day comes.  They fill up the system, bleed the air, and hit the
switch for the pumps.  There's a hell of a bang, followed by a lot of water.
Biblical proportions of water, in fact, as the entire system drained itself
into the computer room in about 10 seconds.  Everything in the pipes, plus
bunchteen gallons from the chillers.

When the cursing and dodging stopped, we found a large chunk missing out of
one of the pumps.  We also discovered that the floor drain was up to the
task.  The water hadn't quite reached the top of the grid that supported the
wires under the raised flooring.  Both the wiring and the computer were OK,
but the IBM guys were still clutching their chests and clinching their
cheeks 20 minutes later.

-Shel