bob@UCB-VAX.ARPA (07/28/85)
Had serious problems from a lightning strike last week. Now that most
everything is working again, though I'd pass on some details. Those
of you in some parts of the U.S. might not find this sort of thing so
unusual, but if you think it Couldn't Happen Here, read on ...
Thunderstorms occur only a few times a year out here in the Hawaiian
Islands, and lightning tends to strike in relatively harmless places.
Last Wednesday at about 1500 a small but intense little storm was
accompanied by a relatively intense lightning strike on the the
eastern end of the University of Hawaii campus. Eyewitness reports of
exactly where the lightning struck are numerous and contradictory,
observers up to five miles away were mightily impressed by the huge
bolt of lightning and very loud thunder.
There was no apparent effect on the power lines, outside of the
possible "jiggling" of a few cycles. The affect on data
communications lines was more impressive.
Briefly, all of the on-campus computer facilities with data
communications lines extending beyond their immediate buildings
(typically RS232 3-or-4-wire leased phone circuits or similar)
suffered burned out ports and burned out terminals, notably:
several VAX780s at the Center for Cultural Interchange between
East & West (an on-campus "think tank" type organization) lost
multiplexer (port) boards and distribution panels.
a VAX785 in the Information & Computing Sciences Dept. lost
multiplexer boards & distribution, and appears to have suffered
memory and/or cpu damage.
several VAX780s in the Management Systems Office (administrative
computing) lost multiplexer boards & distribution, and may have
more extensive damage.
the High Energy Physics group lost multiplexer boards & panels
and a tape drive on their VAX780.
a VAX750 in the Marine Sciences Building kept on operating,
oblivious to the fact that more than 8 of its ports had just burned
out.
an H800 at the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics lost virtually all of
its DMACP (port) daughter and mother boards.
All three of the larger port selectors on campus (1 large Gandalf
at the UH Computing Center, 1 smaller Gandalf at the East/West
Center, and 1 Micom 600/2 at the HIG) suffered a large number of
burned out line boards, along with some port boards.
None of the computers which crashed (all of the above, except the
VAX750), suffered disc crashes.
For the most part, most of the damage appears in obviously-burned-out
RS232 driver circuitry, and continues back into logic on the various
port interface (multiplex) boards.
An as-yet-uncounted number of terminals (minimum estimate: several
hundred) were damaged. Typically, the RS232 driver chips (most often
1488) were burned out. In about 30% of the terminals I've personally
checked so far, damage spreads further into the terminal logic board,
and sometimes all the way to the power supply.
Most of the affected terminals were on relatively long lines (more
than 200' or so), however many terminals with much shorter lines --
even some in the same room as their computer -- suffered damage.
Usually, these were attached to port/multiplexer cards along with one
or more long-line terminals.
Microcomputers (such as IBM PCs) chugged right along without noticing
the lightning strike -- unless they had an out-of-building asynch
connection, in which case they suffered damage like terminals.
In many cases (notably the IBM3081D, DEC20 and HP3000/64 at the UH
Computing Center), port selectors protected individual machines almost
completely.
I don't have an accurate monetary estimate of the damage, but it will
certainly run over $100,000.
Field engineering response from Digital was quite good, but
handicapped by the fact that DEC only carries one "kit" of spares in
the islands for each model of VAX. Assessing the damage took a day or
so (UH has almost entirely, basic service), some replacement boards
arrived quickly, others not until after the weekend. Response from
other vendors was similar; Harris pulled parts off its production line
in Florida and burned-in over the weekend for us. Micom responded
quickly to ERE requests, shipping within 24 hours via Federal Express.
I don't have details on Gandalf's response yet.
A wide variety of different maintenance agreements were in effect with
the various manufacturers. Many of the contracts turned out to have
"acts of god" exclusion clauses. Fortunately, all of the vendors
involved took the attitude that they'd fix now, and worry about who
would pay later.
-- Bob Cunningham
{dual|vortex|ihnp4}!islenet!bob
Honolulu, Hawaii