[1223] in Hotline Meeting
Delta Upsilon gateway
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ron M. Hoffmann)
Sat Jul 21 17:39:32 1990
From: hoffmann@MIT.EDU (Ron M. Hoffmann)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 90 17:39:12 -0400
To: hotline@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Cc: ops@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, larugsi@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, jis@MIT.EDU
I made it over there this morning.
I once again found that the gateway had been tampered with: the boot
switch was in the wrong position.
What I also found was a machine with more dust and dirt in it than I
have ever seen. Literally balls of black dust in the bottom of the
case, around the disk drives, inside the system cabinet. Also there
was evidence of liquid of some sort having been spilled on the top of
the unit.
There was so much dust in the floppy unit that the machine was
convinced a disk was there (the sensor must have been blocked). Even
when I tried to boot it from the front panel, it wouldn't come up
because it tried the floppy drive first and never found boot tracks
here (no disk...). Booting manually from a terminal did work if I
specified the hard disk explicitly.
I spent 2-1/2 hours: dis-assembled the entire machine, vacuumed it
out, took apart the floppy drive and cleaned it too.
Now it works.
I suggest you consider doing a PM cleaning of the other vaxstations
in the room 'cause they're likely as caked up as the gateway was.
Someone should speak to the DU folks about housekeeping practices in
the room; more vacuuming (there is carpeting in the room), and
periodic cleaning of the AC unit's filters (I think it was done for
the first time when I pointed out the clogged filters on the unit).
At least it's cool in there.
That's all for now; I'll send you my cleaning bill :-).
-Ron Hoffmann
Network Services
