[rescue] FW: WTT: 1.5G of PC2700 for 1G of PC100

[Carl R. Friend]

    On Thu, 1 May 2008, Skeezics Boondoggle wrote:

> Silence in a datacenter is always a little eerie, though...

    Silence in a big computer room is one of the most creepy
sensations I've ever had.  Even *scheduled silence* is creepy.

    The first place I worked at after escaping technical school
ran PDP-10s as their front-line systems, and the *machines* (and
their peripherals) were all UPS backed (with a locomotive-engine-
powered generator out in the parking-lot backing that); when the
power quit the lights in the computer rooms would go off, we'd
hear the A/C bits spin down, then the generator would spin up
(a frightful thing in and of itself; the first time I witnessed
that I was outside about 20 feet from it, and I damn near wet
myself), and finally the lights would come back up and the
A/C bits would come back.  The room with all the computers
running, with only the sound of their fans, and the look of
their lights (this was back in the lights-and-switches era) was
actually quite pleasant.

    The time we scheduled downtime to do work on the power
infrastructure was different, and we used the time as a test
some of the mechanisms to SCRAM the room.  We gracefully halted
the machines first, and then pegged *THE BUTTON*; the room went
dark (lit again by the battery-powered lamps mind you), the
A/C spun down, and the machines went dark.  One could literally
hear a pin drop in the room.  It was frightening.  (I get the
willies at home when there's no fan or disk noise, so I guess
the "need" is in-born.)

    Then there was the HALON test.  But that's a story for a
different day.

+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin)            | West Boylston       |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast            | Massachusetts, USA  |
| mailto:crfriend at rcn.com                        +---------------------+
| http://users.rcn.com/crfriend/museum           | ICBM: 42:22N 71:47W |
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