(I know, old thread.) While a UPS saves lives as regularly as seat belts do, there are occasional cautionary tales of contrary outcomes in both arenas. One of the more spectacular power-induced catastrophes occurred in the early 80s at the late great Security Pacific Bank in Glendale-by-LA. On a Thanksgiving morning not long before I hired in there, something went horribly wrong with the power circuit that supplied all the mainframe processors then in operation. In the blink of an eye, a massive surge fried *every* mainframe power supply into oblivion. They all went dead as doornails.
IBM soon realized that the scope of the problem went beyond the standard bounds of diagnosis and repair. There were not enough replacement components on the entire West Coast to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. So they began flying in parts and technicians from all over the country in a massive triage operation. Meanwhile the Feds were getting increasingly antsy about the total lack of bank processing. In those days--maybe still--a bank that could not manage accounts properly within a given window could no longer operate as a bank. They threatened to shut Security Pacific down. The clock was ticking. Meanwhile a team of ingenious sysprogs realized that one mainframe had actually survived. An old 370 had been recently replaced by one of the now smoking hulks. It was disconnected from all devices--and from power--and was awaiting shipment to a better place. The sysprog team found a copy of the last working sysgen and began connecting the processor to disk drives with bus-and-tag cables drooped over the tops of cabinets across the room. They hooked it up to the now restored power and mashed load. The system actually IPLed. The ending chapter is rather mundane. (Would need reworking in a movie version.) About the time the 370 was resurrected back to the world of the living, IBM managed to finish repairs to the point where production systems could be IPLed. Account reconciliation completed in time to satisfy the Feds, and no closure took place. Litigation over the lethal UPS went on for years. We had a great story to tell. And in all of this adventure, IBM came through as a genuine hero. . . JO.Skip Robinson Southern California Edison Company SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager 626-302-7535 Office 323-715-0595 Mobile [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Joel C. Ewing" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent by: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> 05/13/2006 04:30 PM Please respond to IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> To [email protected] cc Subject Re: An unexpected lights out operation Your experience is completely counter to ours. Your utility power must very stable, or you have experienced some UPS installations with bad engineering designs. <snip> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
