In 1989 I had a job as computer operator at a Metlife office. We had a Honeywell-Bull mainframe in a computer room. For obvious reasons, there was redundant cooling built into the room. This consisted of 4 air conditioners mounted in the ceiling. If the house air went out, these units would continue to move heat from the room into the crawl space between the 6th and 7th floors.
For some reason, we began to have heat problems. So Honeywell came out and installed a stripchart temperature recorder. For some reason, the building also decided to turn off house air during the weekend. Finally, my manager decided not to have 24 hour operations. I happened to be the first person on duty at 6AM the next Monday. The thermostats were adjusted so that everything would be a nice temperature by 8AM. So the A/C was on already by 6AM but the building was not unexpectedly still a little warm.
I entered our hallway, and the temperature was warmer than the rest of the building. I walked down the hallway and unlocked the door to the computer room. Then I grabbed the door handle to open the door. It was so hot I had to let go.
Once I realized how hot it was, I managed to open the door somehow and propped it open. On the table was a fax with a dendrite pattern from static electric discharge that happened in the presence of the hot room. The overall color of the fax was greyish.
I walked over to the stripshart recorder. The scale went up to 120 degrees F. The pen had shot right past the top of the scale and was embedded in a crack in the housing. The distance from the crack to the 120 degree line was about the same as from the 100 degree line to the 120 degree line, so I'm sure the temperature was at least 140 degrees in the room.
Most of the disk drives on the mainframe had automatically powered themselves down for safety reasons because of the heat, but the mainframe itself was still pumping heat into the room.
All our daily backup tapes were in that room. All were ruined. Full weekly backup tapes were offsite, fortunately. The boot tape, which was in the lowest density format the tape drive could handle, fortunately, was still readable. So, after about a day of cooling, disk maintenance, etc., it was possible to boot the computer.
The point, though, is that the tapes were ruined by the heat. I suspect DVDs may not suffer the same problem at similar temperatures.
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http://www.pbase.com/victorengel/
P.S. Why did the redundant A/Cs fail? Because they vented into the crawl space. WHen the house air was turned off, so were the crawl space fans. The ceiling mounted A/C units were still operating. However, a fire safety feature had them cutting off whenever the head pressure reached a certain threshold.
For some reason, we began to have heat problems. So Honeywell came out and installed a stripchart temperature recorder. For some reason, the building also decided to turn off house air during the weekend. Finally, my manager decided not to have 24 hour operations. I happened to be the first person on duty at 6AM the next Monday. The thermostats were adjusted so that everything would be a nice temperature by 8AM. So the A/C was on already by 6AM but the building was not unexpectedly still a little warm.
I entered our hallway, and the temperature was warmer than the rest of the building. I walked down the hallway and unlocked the door to the computer room. Then I grabbed the door handle to open the door. It was so hot I had to let go.
Once I realized how hot it was, I managed to open the door somehow and propped it open. On the table was a fax with a dendrite pattern from static electric discharge that happened in the presence of the hot room. The overall color of the fax was greyish.
I walked over to the stripshart recorder. The scale went up to 120 degrees F. The pen had shot right past the top of the scale and was embedded in a crack in the housing. The distance from the crack to the 120 degree line was about the same as from the 100 degree line to the 120 degree line, so I'm sure the temperature was at least 140 degrees in the room.
Most of the disk drives on the mainframe had automatically powered themselves down for safety reasons because of the heat, but the mainframe itself was still pumping heat into the room.
All our daily backup tapes were in that room. All were ruined. Full weekly backup tapes were offsite, fortunately. The boot tape, which was in the lowest density format the tape drive could handle, fortunately, was still readable. So, after about a day of cooling, disk maintenance, etc., it was possible to boot the computer.
The point, though, is that the tapes were ruined by the heat. I suspect DVDs may not suffer the same problem at similar temperatures.
--
http://www.pbase.com/victorengel/
P.S. Why did the redundant A/Cs fail? Because they vented into the crawl space. WHen the house air was turned off, so were the crawl space fans. The ceiling mounted A/C units were still operating. However, a fire safety feature had them cutting off whenever the head pressure reached a certain threshold.
. . .