Re: Hardware Courses for iSeries

Sometimes rules are put in place for one reason and cause problems in other places. This was one, because some geos didn't allow connection or disconnection of ANY cable while the power was applied. This cover interlock solved that...... and caused others. It DID allow me to get then IBM AS/400 chief Tom Jarosh to say "OH SHIT" in front of all of COMMON in New Orleans! :-)

Other rules like Chicago's 6 ft power cord limit caused IBM to make those the default and far FAR too often that's what customer got. This resulted in many cases they were too short to lay on the floor thus causing trip or disconnect hazards.

As Jim mentioned too there are lots of good reasons for serious techies to keep old hardware around, I know Jim does, Pete has a room full of them and I can't even get two cars into a three stall garage! All that stuff enables testing, trying things, and sometimes helping out customers too! Making the yellow light come on or the server go quiet in your own lab is not so embarrassing as in the customer's DC!


- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com
www.iInTheCloud.com

On 10/3/2013 1:40 PM, Roberto José Etcheverry Romero wrote:

Jim,

May i ask what the good reason was? maybe dangerous voltages on some
comm equipment or one country's weird electrical code?
The 720 i serviced had no reason (i could fathom) to have that switch
(1 ethernet card, 1 twinax card, ecs card?) and it was the only of all
the 720's i've worked with that had said switch...
It also was the first SAP on AS400 machine in Argentina...

On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 2:32 PM, Jim Oberholtzer
<midrangel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Roberto,

That was a switch on the communications ports cover. Required outside
of the US, but in the US they removed the power check switch.

There's a story about Larry Bolhuis, Tom Jarosh, then General Manager of
AS/400 division at an IBM Soundoff session at COMMON. It seems Mr.
Bolhuis was describing the procedures to check a communications
failure. One of the instructions was to open that door and put a wrap
plug on the port and then run diagnostics. Note: at the time if you
opened the communications access cover door, it dropped power to the
entire chassis. Oopsy (as Larry would put it) Mr. Jarosh's reaction
was legendary and had IBMrs diving for the floor under chairs/tables
whatever they could find to get away. Finally Frank Soltis stepped up
and explained why that switch was there (for good reason outside the
US) and why they thought it was important. The next day and
engineering change went out for all US based machines to remove that
switch. Mr. Jarosh did not mess around, and he was a very good General
Manager for the brand. The world lost him in October 2008.

Jim Oberholtzer
Chief Technical Architect
Agile Technology Architects


On 10/3/2013 12:08 PM, Roberto José Etcheverry Romero wrote:

but i do remember
an old 720 or similar that had switched that turned off the power if
you attempted to remove the BACK cover!

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