On Mon, Apr 15, 2024 at 10:19 AM Rick Bensene via cctalk <
[email protected]> wrote:

> Bill wrote:
>
> The guy that took me on the tour said that the wall behind the drum had to
> be specially reinforced as if the drum exited the reinforced cabinet due to
> some kind of failure while at speed, it would have gone through any
> conventional wall like it was made of paper, and another wall which was the
> side of the building, and would have fallen 6 floors to the ground below,
> which obviously would have been disastrous.
>
> Apparently if there was a failure, due to the direction the drum rotated
> it'd come out the  back of the cabinet rather than the front.  I was also
> told that the drum cabinet had special mounting that was a large structure
> of steel beams in the mezzanine level beneath the datacenter that connected
> the mounts to the main support beams for the building, because the
> gyroscopic effects of the drum would have torn out anything else.
>
> The mounts had to be inspected every six months to look for cracks or any
> other sign of stress-induced problems.
>
> -Rick
>

A computer that literally required a specifically steel-reinforced building
in order to operate.  Now that's what you call Old Iron.

Sellam

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