mithomas@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Michael Thomas Niehaus) (11/16/89)
First there was the smoldering LaserWriter, now there is the MacVac...
Last Tuesday I received a phone call from the person in charge of one of the
AppleShare networks on campus. One of their file servers had just crashed.
I was going to go take a look at it, but I had classes so I had to put it off
for a couple of hours.
They thought that there was some kind of bug in the software that caused
the server to crash. But by the time I got there, they had figured out what
caused the problem.
The file server was placed on a desk with the left side of the CPU near the
wall. An energetic lab assistant decided that the room needed a good dusting.
She found that there was over 3/4" of dust next to the file server, so she
proceeded to sweep it away. She didn't realize that she was just stirring it
up so that the Mac could suck the dust into the side vents.
Within minutes, enough dust had infiltrated the machine that the hard drive
became stuck, and soon after the file server crashed.
This isn't as bad as it sounds, though. They removed the hard drive, and by
using a mini-vac and lots of compressed air they were able to clean most of
the dust off.
The put all the pieces back together (with no major problems) and started the
server up again. It was up and running again with no problems.
So, to prevent the problem from happening again, they decided to cover the
vents on the sides of the machine...
They finally listened to my reasoning that the ventillation slots were put
there for a reason, and everything is back to normal...
-Michael
--
Michael Niehaus UUCP: <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!mithomas
Apple Student Rep ARPA: mithomas@bsu-cs.bsu.edu
Ball State University AppleLink: ST0374 (from UUCP: st0374@applelink.apple.com)