Raised floors

[Vernon Wright]

CEO's and such, taking visitors to their million-dollar computer installations, found 3" cables snaking down from the ceiling 'unsightly'; I can recall several managements who would send a memo instructing that the computer room be made extra-tidy (no boxes of paper, cards, all the tapes and disks in their racks) for a coming visit.

I really found the raised floor to be quite valuable. There were no holes (except later when A/C was pushed through and small vents were put in), cables were accessible by pulling up a section or two, and as I said, you didn't have to hassle with trucking data and supplies over big cables.

Vern

--- On Fri, 12/12/08, Patrick Finnegan <pat at computer-refuge.org> wrote:

> From: Patrick Finnegan <pat at computer-refuge.org>
> Subject: Re: Raised floors
> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
> Date: Friday, December 12, 2008, 11:12 AM
> On Friday 12 December 2008, Jules Richardson wrote:
> > Anyway, all of this doesn't further the raised
> floor discussion much,
> > except to say that things could be done without raised
> floors (and
> > given the way that computing evolved in the UK, if GPO
> convention was
> > to wire overhead then doubtless this was carried over
> into a lot of
> > computer installations; the US and other countries may
> have taken a
> > much different route though, with  raised floors
> adopted much
> > earlier)
> 
> After having spend several years working in a datacenter
> with a raised 
> floor, I have to say that I really hate raised-floors, and
> prefer 
> overhead wiring.  Keeping the wiring overhead makes it
> visible, which 
> makes it more necessary to keep it neat and tidy (and
> remove old wiring 
> which is no longer used).  
> 
> Raised floors encourage people to make messes out of wiring
> because it's 
> all hidden.  (Also, not having a raised floor provides less
> opportunity 
> for parts and tools to find the holes in the floor to fall
> through when 
> you drop them.)
> 
> Besides, why hide the wiring?  You should proudly display
> all parts of 
> the computer system! :)
> 
> Pat
> -- 
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