Re: Running AS/400 with cover off and care of Drives

As I understood the original design of the rear cover, it had nothing to do
with air circulation, but was actually designed as a cable guide (to the
floor) and as a (get this) muffler for the fans.  The idea was that these
machines were finally going to be visible parts of the worker's environment
and needed to be quiet. So, running with the back cover off *should* have no
real impact on cooling.

Anyone that has worked on engines knows that mufflers restrict airflow...
<vbg>

Dragster 400's anyone?

===========================================================
R. Bruce Hoffman, Jr.
 -- IBM Certified AS/400 Professional System Administrator
 -- IBM Certified AS/400 Professional Network Administrator

"The sum of all human knowledge is a fixed constant.
    It's the population that keeps growing!"

-----Original Message-----
From: DAVID BULOG <d2ba@xtra.co.nz>
To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com <MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com>
Date: Monday, June 05, 2000 7:20 AM
Subject: Running AS/400 with cover off and care of Drives


>Hi list,
>I was wondering if you can advise me as to whether I should
>be running my Model500 with the rounded rear cover on or off.
>I could find no specific IBM reference as to what is the correct way but am
>I correct in assuming that I should run with the rear cover attached as
this
>acts as a shield to circulate the air back towards
>the cards etc.
>
>Another question is Harddrive care--my model 500 has 18gig total
>2 x 6606, 2 x6607, 1x 6713.Are any of these models prone to sticking after
>long powerdwn periods.
>Since I have the machine at home for the purpose of playing with the
project
>lightening toolkit I only powerup one day a week for aboubt 4 hours at a
>time--How much of a risk Im I taking--I know
>Quantem SCSIdrives on PCs are really bad,but IBM drives are
>much more reliable(I only use SCSI Ultrastars on my PCs and have
>never had a failure--they get a real thrashing to!
>What I dont know is how good the AS/400 drives are compared
>to the IBM ultrastar PC drives,I have heard a rumor that the AS/400s are
top
>end Ultrastars with a special logic board??
>
>My friend Andree says you should never
>powerdown because spinning the drives does not cause the wear and tear its
>the cold starts--in fact he almost guarentied in theory that if you left a
>brand new or near new IBM drive in its box for years
>it would be useless as the bearings would be stuck--stranglely
>enough he has recovered data for clients by carefuly taking apart and
>spinning by hand to give a quick start and then transfering the data on to
>another drive and throwing the damaged one away
>
>Dave
>
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