Mid 1980's. We had added on to the raised floor. Halon vendor had finished adding the new room into the system and turned over to the building engineers. They had disabled the Halon system because the telco vendor was installing another phone rack. I came on shift early to give a troop of Boy Scou ts the 3 dollar tour on a Saturday. Everything looked fine with the Halon panel - disabled.
I was in the tape library with the Boy Scouts when the Halon warning horn went off. There should have been a bell first, but not. That sea of young men parted quickly, me racing for the master abort. Reaching for the abort, only inches away, the Halon started to dump. I have never seen young men run so fast, but in a flash down the ramp and out the computer room door they went. The Halon panel lights still showed disabled status. The tripped zone was where the telco vendor was working. That zone dumped and the Halon system was in full auto - no way to stop it then . The scouts didn't close the door while running for their lives, so that zone dumped. Then the next adjacent zone. The power didn't drop, so the electric door from the main room to the Command Center 'saw' the Halon cloud and opened r ight up. One of the building engineers, runing toward the Halon panel in the Command Center, opened the door between the print room and the Command Center, so the print room Halon dumped. Then the electric door between the print room and the new raised floor saw the cloud and opened, so that zone dumped too. When the building engineer reached the Halon panel, he couldn't get control of the panel. He thought it might be because power hadn't dropped at the beginning of the festivities, so - yep the big red button. I heard the screams of the DASD as they crashed. 12 hours later, the panel was truly disabled (and partly dismantled), the rooms vented, and power stable. The screams were from three thoroughly crashed DASD, and IBM came in to join the party. In another 4 hours, we were up again. Linda ----- Original Message ----- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
