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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!ihnp4!ihuxx!ignatz
From: ignatz@ihuxx.UUCP (Dave Ihnat, Chicago, IL)
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Re: Airplanes gain weight
Message-ID: <705@ihuxx.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 28-Mar-84 13:50:05 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxx.705
Posted: Wed Mar 28 13:50:05 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 30-Mar-84 00:16:14 EST
References: <202@heurikon.UUCP> <560@pyuxa.UUCP> <908@ihuxl.UUCP> <7165@mgweed.UUCP> <1730@rlgvax.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 29

In relation to smoke and disks (My, how net conversations branch):

In 1977, a Large Company for which I worked (name withheld at request
of my lawyer--why take chances?) purchase a Pr1me 300 and turned two
of its employees loose, designing an on-line order entry and
monitoring system.  After the thing was 90% up, and after months of
trouble-free operation, we started having regular and severe disk
crashes.  Now, the CDC storage modules we were using were supposed to
be pretty solid, and had been...what was going on?  After a LOT of
lost platters and expensive service calls, Tom and I happened to come
in *very* early one day to work on the problem--and saw an amazing
sight through the glass door of the computer room.

The third-shift operator, leaning back in his chair with about two
inches of thick, green cigar...blowing smoke into the base of the disk
drive cabinet.  ARRRGGGGHHHH!

It seems this person was an in-company trainee who'd known nothing about
computers before.  He'd assumed he couldn't smoke in the computer room
because the smoke would hurt the computer, and figured that he'd solved
his problem by blowing it where it was obviously getting sucked away,
where it couldn't hurt anything.  Do I need to describe what the drive
filters were like?

It's a lot funnier to me 7 years later than it was then, for some
reason...

			Dave Ihnat
			ihuxx!ignatz