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First!!!! 1!!!!
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A good "Wish I had the security tapes when that happened" scenario.
Of course, I also accidentally shifted into Reverse while traveling at highways speeds, and I can say with confidence and experience: Do NOT do that.
Filed under: Survived, there were no crashes or accidents, but it was definitely a ... learning experience, for sure.
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Yes.
Also, damn, Mike got screwed. Bad.
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Seems they got that backwards too. Ah well.
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Here you go, @aliceif
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No he didn't, he didn't tell Barry to tell the electricians to do their jobs properly, which is clear they didn't know what they were doing when they weren't going to provide the required power.
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"Mike,” Reginald said, shaking his head. “I know you computer guys think you know everything, but you’re not an electrician. This is a factory, Mike, and you’ve got to learn a little about what it’s like to work for a living.”
TRWTF, of course, is Mike not resigning on the spot.
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TRWTF is the writer thinking that in an 85 lb disk drive, all 85 of those lbs are in the platters.
They might well have been something like a CDC SMD (Storage Module Device) drive, and I worked with such drives one summer, just over 30 years ago. The removable packs weren't light (five 14-inch diameter platters made of 3mm aluminium sheet plus the spindle, it all adds up) but they were in no way close to 85 lbs.
3000 rpm is correct, though, and the substantial angular momentum meant that there had to be a brake on the non-removable part of the spindle. I used to have one of these brakes at home - it was an electromagnetic doodad, and this one had failed "off". Left to itself, the drive would have taken weeks to stop, as there was almost no resistance with the brake off.
Also: the reason industrial system use three-phase is because that way, the load is shared across all three phases. In a normal residential setting, your house has only one phase (exception: American houses are usually on a dual-live system, where instead of having live and neutral of 110V, you have two lives of 220V, and you use the difference between them to power your 110V equipment. Your oven draws more power than almost anything else in your house, so to reduce the current flowing through it, it is normally powered using one of the 220V lives and the 220V neutral.), and your neighbours use different phases, so that once you average things across all the houses in a neighbourhood, the phases are, on average, balanced.
In the 70s and 80s, my uncle had all three phases in his house because he had a couple of electric pottery kilns that drew enough power that they counted as industrial equipment, and had to spread their loads across all three phases.
EDIT: memory may be playing tricks - 3mm seems awfully thick.
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:smile: Three phases can cut both ways.
I used to borrow a woodcutting machine from the neighbor every winter. It needs the "special cable" or it will make funny sounds and try to work backwards.
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I was under the impression that you guys had two 110V lives at 180° so that between them is 220V. Each one is never more than 110V from ground/earth. But power your oven from both of them and get 220V. Still effectively single phase but called two phase.
This is different from most of the rest of the world that has 230V to earth and the phase at 120° so it's about 400V between any two phases.
Admin
Not a computer related issue but still bang (yes, bang) on topic. Once upon a time upon a time my uncle was a factory manager and was supervising a complete rewiring job. The day came round when they were going to rebuild the main board where the power entered the building. The power company phone up saying the power was off at the substation (yes, you all know where this is going already). He had someone who was already wearing protective gear including some really thick rubber gloves to throw (literally) a 24" spanner at the contacts on the main breaker switch. There was a bright flash, the spanner stuck to the contacts and a distant boom - then the power was off.
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Sorry, but TRWTF here is Mike not telling Barry about his concerns around the power, including a specific example of what could happen if they were hooked up incorrectly. In this particular case not following the "chain of command" is exactly what caused the problem, since Barry apparently didn't realize the criticality of the situation and what the risks of a miswiring would be.
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Right, its not like Barry said, "Mike shut up about the wiring job the electricians no better than you, I don't want here it." He said, come to me with your concerns. Mike decided basically to just ignore the electricians completely and let a disaster happen. He deserved to be fired.
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I dont no if you can here yourself.
“From now on, if you have any concerns, bring them to me.”
That's what Reginald said. Mike was specifically told not to talk to Barry. So he took his concerns to Reginald.
“Mike,” Reginald said, shaking his head. “I know you computer guys think you know everything, but you’re not an electrician. This is a factory, Mike, and you’ve got to learn a little about what it’s like to work for a living.”
That's what he was told to do, that's what he did.
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Yeah, unlike the electricians, he knows about wiring.
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So did I. And I heartily agree.
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But the "R" does stand for "Rallye"!
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RL02 disks were about 3mm thick, if I recall correctly. There's got to be something to stop them flapping around...
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Any reasonably modern automatic won't shift into R if you're going forwards. Now, you'd think you could with a stick-shift, but no; you just get loads of very expensive grinding. Of course I haven't tried; I don't want to spend £3,000 on a new transmission. I just watched Mythbusters, s'all :)
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I did that once. Does your car not lock out the transmission?
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Mike should've seen that coming and quit instead of helping with the DR.
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That. Or Mike should've seen that coming and pre-prepared for a full DR. (Or only powered up one drive)
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Manual transmissions have (or had, back in the early 80s) , while not a pure lockout, a strong resistance to downshifting to an excessively low gear when moving fast. My uneducated assumption is that the synchromesh just hates the thought of trying to spin up 2nd gear when going 80 mph. Anyway, I tried over and over to explain to a pal who had little experience w/ a stick that he should just let the shifter "glide" to, say, 4th from 3rd, rather than forcibly jamming it where he thought it should go (which of course was 2nd gear). The transmission survived but there were some pretty noisy moments.
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Yep, with manual transmission that's what happens as there is resistance in the lubrication in the gearbox which works against the synchromesh trying to spin things up, but with enough determination it is possible.....
I recall one story (don't know if it is true) where someone tried to down-shift from 5'th to 4'th, but somehow managed to get it in reverse instead (yes some manual gears had reverse opposite 5'th). As I recall the story, the engine actually went backwards for a while converting the intake to the exhaust (+ smoke) and some awful sounds as a bonus as well as some pretty effective braking of the car....
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So this person, upon hearing the diabolical screeching coming from the transmission, decided to force it in anyway?
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I'm assuming your vehicle's acceleration is also not controlled by a steel cable hooked into the engine. :P :fish_cake:
'96 Nissan Sentra. They tried to prevent this situation from happening by making the solenoid that blocks you from shifting it past neutral require the Brake pedal to be (minimally) depressed, but this actually did occur (Depressing the brake pedal) which allowed the shifter to go from Neutral to Reverse
Of course, I will readily admit that attempting to shift at all in an automatic is :wtf:, but I was (and still am) more used to a Manual transmission at that point.
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This is reminding me of the time when we used to run a distributed VMS cluster. Not a power problem but entertaining.
We arrived one morning to find the entire cluster locked as it often used to be in the early days of VMS clustering with a deadlocked distributed lock manager. As we wandered around the building bringing shutting down the systems so that we could bring everything back up, the root cause soon became apparent. Some student (university lab) had stolen the SCSI external system disk for one of the VaxStations. We wondered if the thief was going to try to attach this to his PC-AT :confounded:
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I remember learning to drive a stick.
"You're not going to be able to shift down to 2nd ye... oh.... ok."
When people ask me where I learned to drive, my favorite answer is "Tilt, at the mall." (Tilt used to be a video game arcade, in case anyone is not getting that joke)
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Over here you're officially instructed to skip gears instead of slide through them: decelerate until you reach your engine's lowest viable rpm, e.g. approx. 1000rpm on many consumer cars, then shift down to the appropriate gear for your then-current speed and then decelerate the rest of the way, repeating the proces until you hit your target gear. You should be able to go from 5th to 2nd in two hops, mostly.
Also there are idiots aplenty that will gladly regale their own 'expert driver' experiences and advise you to hold the clutch disengaged while you brake and decelerate to your target speed, so that you can easily re-engage into your target gear in one go. VERY - BAD - IDEA. You lose most of the control over the car that way.
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WTH? Why would someone suggest that? The engine's holding momentum is rarely large enough to justify disengaging the clutch for normal braking procedures, so I wonder the rationale? At the very least, leaving the vehicle in gear would allow it to maintain better traction due to the engine wanting to slow down anyways...
People these days. What's next, flipping it into reverse because that might cause it to slow down even faster? :trollface:
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Reverse, and I think typically first, do not have any synchromesh so it's difficult to get it into those gears when the car is moving. In the case of reverse I would think it would be impossible, because you're grinding a gear moving one direction against a gear moving the other direction, with the momentum of the car powering one of those gears. The Mythbusters tested this and Tory couldn't get the manual transmission into reverse while moving forward.
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I've driven five manual cars (plus a bunch more like friends' once or twice) and from memory all but one had reverse bottom-right (against my left leg). Not all of them had a 5th. All of them had some protection to moving into reverse, mostly simpler lock-out mechanisms or sometimes you had to push down on the stick.
There is also a column manual, but I've only been a passenger in that style vehicle.
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Flipped me upside down for a minute until I realized you must therefore sit on the right side the the vehicle during operation.
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Synchromesh is a marvelous thing. I remember once a clutch failure which left the transmission engaged. I was able to put the shift in neutral. start the car shift into first (gently) drive to the repair shop shifting into second third and even fourth thanks to the wonders of synchromesh and a very gentle touch on the stick.
That was a Chevy Nova back when it was a rebadged Toyota Corolla.
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We're also talking about a situation where the electricians say "everything's good". Is there any reason to not believe them? This company was lucky Mike knew enough to question the electricians the first time, and squandered the opportunity. 90% chance anyone else in that position would just take the electricians at their word.
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This is where I would have said "Fuck You" and walked away from the project, if not the job, altogether.
Also, I'm assuming that when it comes to the operation of a mainframe system like this one, Mike probably does know more about it's electrical requirements than an electrician.
Admin
He obviously knew more as he was the only one thinking about ordering 3 phases to start with. All the others, including the one managing that power generator operation were clue less.
His only mistake was to fail to explain what the consequences could be in case of a wrong cabling, so he would have had the documents to fight his case with HR.
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Not at all. It's often the easiest and safest way to prevent the speed creeping up past the posted limit on a downward grade.
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I met one such idiot and convinced him that what he was doing was wrong. So he proceeded to hold the clutch disengaged through the entire process of moving the stick down from 5th through 4th, 3rd and 2nd, braking to a stop, and shifting into 1st. He then left his foot on the clutch pedal for the entire two minutes it took the lights to change.
At that point I stopped trying to save his wallet from himself.
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Actually, the electricians were assumming/told that there would only be light and heating to run. They don't know there is something else the power needs to support at all. So it's incorrect to call them clueless for this.
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That was before they got the three phase wiring in, then they should know how to connect a to a, b to b, and c to c! Or at least have a test plan in place. Obviously they haven't worked with three phase before, at least in a motor scenario (heating elements won't care).
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Unless you're actually being paid by this driver to instruct him in the craft of driving a vehicle, his reaction would (and by gosh goldarn damnation should) be "Mind your own fornicating business."
Oh, and "convinced" him means "he learned the 'error' of his ways". I rather think you meant to say "tried to convince him", or "failed to convince him".
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Well no, not really, not as I interpret the story. He was quite right to be concerned -- you see, we are told that no testing had been done on this new wiring configuration. That is, first and foremost, the reason for the suboptimal experiences of the participants.
It would of course have been a good idea for Mike to prepare for a full DR in advance of this event, of course, as has been pointed out (like doing a full system backup, but without support from management, it's possible that the hardware (and whatever necessary else in the infrastructure) is not in place for that to happen.
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