OT Fahrenheit

[krw]

I remember the S/36's and the RS/6000's. Never got to deal with either
of the above, but I did like the RS/6000's.

Those were all designed for office environments. Mainframes most
certainly were not, and it had nothing to do with paper (I/O was
seldom in the same room).

 

[[email protected]]

THat's exactly how they were used. BTW the replacement for the
3138-3158 class was the 3031.

I was region support for the 4300 and the 138, 148. I don't know of
ONE 370 138/148 customer who went for the 3031
It basically WAS a 158 (as were the service directors) so there would
be no advantage to go 158 to 3031
I was also trained on both the 158 and 3031.

Is an xSeries a "mainframe"? Is it a "rack of RISC cards"?

After my time but I bet it is.

You were a CE? Hardware development is still interesting.

CE, Support Specialist then later IPR and Contract Services.

 

[[email protected]]

I do not have statistics on "wet" paper - perhaps
one of you can discuss that in more detail.

If you bring a pallet of paper in from outside in Florida (80-90 RH)
and put it in a 3800 it will wad up so bad you can't stack more than
about 200 pages without taking it out. Forget trying to run it through
the burster.
They usually tried to keep it in the A/C for several days before using
it.

 

[[email protected]]

I remember the S/36's and the RS/6000's. Never got to deal with either
of the above, but I did like the RS/6000's.

We had a bunch of them but I tried to stay away from them. When they
merged GSD and FE it got harder to do. I ended up working on the 3x
and was trained on the RS6000 and AS/400. I was the 7800 (TP support)
guy so mostly I did the communication end.
All of those boxes were basically solid except the DASD and that was
just a software nightmare, not a hardware problem. Once they started
using RAID5 they were a no brainer.
My boss had a real sense of humor and sent me to Series 1 school the
week after I got back from 3090 support school. It was the only school
I walked out of.

 

[[email protected]]

Those were all designed for office environments. Mainframes most
certainly were not, and it had nothing to do with paper (I/O was
seldom in the same room).

Any of the air cooled machines could run damn near anywhere. When I
got to Florida (From the glass house data centers of DC) I saw it
happening. A "computer room" was a bay in a strip mall or industrial
center. That was also the first time I ran into red leg delta power
and the first time I saw "no raised floor" since the 1401 and mod 30
days.

 

[krw]

I was region support for the 4300 and the 138, 148. I don't know of
ONE 370 138/148 customer who went for the 3031
It basically WAS a 158 (as were the service directors) so there would ^^^^^^^ channel
be no advantage to go 158 to 3031
I was also trained on both the 158 and 3031.

The channel directors off loaded all the I/O microcode. The 3031
was significantly faster than a 3158 because of the director. IIRC
they were pretty cheap too.

After my time but I bet it is.

It's not after mine. ;-) Nope. /360 is hardly RISC. THe
processor complex is an MCM.

 

[Doug Miller]

I'll give you five examples:
1) Peat Marwick Mitchell datacenter, early 70's
An airconditioner failure caused DASD (2314) data
errors at exactly 94 degrees on their wall thermometer.
Ran fine at 93.[/QUOTE]

Reminds me of an incident that occurred in the late 80s/early 90s when I
worked for the Navy. I managed a Tandem TXP system that shared a computer room
with a Honeywell 66. One holiday weekend, the air conditioning system failed
in the wee hours of Saturday morning after the second shift operators had gone
home. (There was no third shift.) Monday being a holiday, the problem wasn't
discovered until the first shift operators arrived at about 6am Tuesday to
find the data center at about 110 degrees. The Honeywell had gone down only
about three hours after the air conditioning did... but the Tandem was still
up. The DASD cabinets were painfully hot to the touch, and one of the drives
had gone down -- but since Tandem uses mirrored drives, and the mirror was
still ok, it did no harm. I measured the exhaust air at the back of the
processor cabinet at 134 degrees... but the Tandem was still up.

 

[T]

Those were all designed for office environments. Mainframes most
certainly were not, and it had nothing to do with paper (I/O was
seldom in the same room).

Actually we had lots of big iron at the Retro Computing Society of Rhode
Island. The KL10 was a big beast. Interestingly the collection seriously
lacked IBM big iron.

 

[T]

Any of the air cooled machines could run damn near anywhere. When I
got to Florida (From the glass house data centers of DC) I saw it
happening. A "computer room" was a bay in a strip mall or industrial
center. That was also the first time I ran into red leg delta power
and the first time I saw "no raised floor" since the 1401 and mod 30
days.

We stipulated a raised floor because we could. And it has come in handy,
from snaking a power whip over to the telephone switch (An Avaya
Prologix) or running network cabling to server racks, etc.

http://blip.tv/file/67664

 

[T]

I'll give you five examples:
1) Peat Marwick Mitchell datacenter, early 70's
An airconditioner failure caused DASD (2314) data
errors at exactly 94 degrees on their wall thermometer.
Ran fine at 93.

Reminds me of an incident that occurred in the late 80s/early 90s when I
worked for the Navy. I managed a Tandem TXP system that shared a computer room
with a Honeywell 66. One holiday weekend, the air conditioning system failed
in the wee hours of Saturday morning after the second shift operators had gone
home. (There was no third shift.) Monday being a holiday, the problem wasn't
discovered until the first shift operators arrived at about 6am Tuesday to
find the data center at about 110 degrees. The Honeywell had gone down only
about three hours after the air conditioning did... but the Tandem was still
up. The DASD cabinets were painfully hot to the touch, and one of the drives
had gone down -- but since Tandem uses mirrored drives, and the mirror was
still ok, it did no harm. I measured the exhaust air at the back of the
processor cabinet at 134 degrees... but the Tandem was still up.
[/QUOTE]

Back in 1993 I was responsible for managing a Data General MV9600U
running AOS/VS II. Loved that machine, and still remember alot about it.

In any case, these were machines that could take abuse. We knew of one
located in a non-ventilated closet that just continued to run until
decommissioning day.

 

[[email protected]]

We stipulated a raised floor because we could. And it has come in handy,
from snaking a power whip over to the telephone switch (An Avaya
Prologix) or running network cabling to server racks, etc.

You can recomend anything you like but the salesman is not going to
leave the money on the table if the customer says no, particularly
when it says it is not required in the sales manual.