Computer flooring/flooding/water in computer rooms

From: Rob O'Donnell <classiccmp.org_at_irrelevant.fsnet.co.uk>
Date: Fri Jun 4 02:30:27 2004

I was at a customers some years back.. Old building, but it had been
totally gutted and all new insides.

There was a small cupboard to the side of the computer room (actually more
of an office, where the MVME based Motorola unix box and one of the patch
panels lived) inside of which was the main fusebox for the floor. 415V
three phase splitting off to (our normal) separate 240V circuits..

Anyway, I was sat at a desk with my back to the cupboard, server in front
and to my left, and suddenly heard running water... turned around, and the
wall behind me was swimming... opened the cupboard and it was pouring down
the cables and across the fusebox..

The power went off shortly afterwards.. luckily it missed the server, which
was on a UPS, and we did an orderly shutdown.

It was Air Conditioning again .... For some reason known only to
themselves, the AirCon plant for the floor was situated in the loft (Attic)
directly above the computer room. It had a drip tray under it, which
wasn't secured, nor drained properly. When it got full, it tilted, and
dispensed it's entire load of water onto the floor, and hence us below!

It did it again a few weeks later, too....


Not as much fun as the time we got a phonecall from a customer saying "My
computer just blew up". We chuckled and said we'd come have a look,
expecting a fuse blown or something. Arrived and found a PC clone with all
the blanking plates, buttons, and the front of the floppy drive on the
floor in front of it, the blanking plates on the expansion slots all bowed
outwards, and a nasty smell in the air.

We decided the remove the machine from site before opening it ...

When we did, found it was a 486 machine where the battery backed CMOS ram
was (had been) baked up by an external battery plugged into the
board. This had been stuck to the back panel of the box. It had
exploded! Possibly connected to the board backwards? The force of the
explosion had been enough to fling bits of battery and the plastic box it
was encased in /through/ the ribbon cables in the machine, as well as the
aforementioned ejection of all loose fittings on the case. Battery acid
everywhere, too, eating through tracks on everything. The hard disc
survived long enough to get the data off it, but the rest of the machine
was pretty much destroyed.

And this poor girl had had it under her desk by her feet when it had gone
bang! Poor thing must have had the shock of her life!

Rob.
   
Received on Fri Jun 04 2004 - 02:30:27 BST

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