Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 13:08:13 -0500 (EST) From: BCPL.NET SysAdmin To: BCPL.NET News Subject: BCPL.NET NEWS: Planned Service Outage February 12th & 13th ------------------------------------------- PLANNED SERVICE OUTAGE FEBRUARY 12th & 13th ------------------------------------------- In BCPL.NET News on January 29 I mentioned that our computer room and all the equipment in it will undergo zinc whisker decontamination on February 12th and 13th. See http://www.bcpl.net/news/news.2003012900.down if you missed that message. This will affect BCPL.NET customers as follows: Dialup access to BCPL.NET will not be available from about 11:00 PM on Wednesday February 12th through about 3:00 AM on Thursday February 13th. If you already have a modem connection when the service goes down, you will lose your connection. If you try to make a new modem connection during that time period, the attempt will fail. Telnet, FTP and Web access to BCPL.NET from outside BCPL.NET will also be unavailable during that time period. Online access to the Baltimore County Public Library online catalog, Community Information database, and your BCPL library card information will be unavailable from about 7:00 PM on Wednesday February 12th through the start of the business day on Thursday February 13th. Zinc whisker contamination is a phenomenon that can affect old computer rooms with raised floors. Until recently most panels used in raised computer room floors were made of composition board encapsulated with sheet steel. The sheet steel is electro-plated with zinc for rust protection. Over a long period of time the zinc oxidizes, forming whiskers of zinc oxide on the exposed bottom surfaces of the floor panels. The zinc whiskers are relatively harmless as long as they stay on the bottoms of the floor panels. However if they break loose and get into electronic equipment, they can cause short circuits. This is especially a problem with equipment that uses ultra-miniaturized circuit boards components. The closer together the connections are on the board, the easier it is for the zinc whiskers to short circuit them. Our computer room floor dates from the mid 1980s, so zinc whiskers have had plenty of time to develop. Starting this past Fall we had sporadic power supply failures in equipment in the computer room, but began having serious problems beginning on November 6th when the Halon fire retardant system in the computer room discharged for no apparent reason (see http://www.bcpl.net/news/news.20021106a.halon). From that date on we experienced frequent equipment failures in the computer room. It wasn't until shortly after the Halon discharge that we learned about zinc whiskers. The Halon discharge apparently blew them out from under the raised floor and into the equipment. The decontamination process requires that all equipment be removed from the computer room, disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled. The Computer room floor and ceiling will be removed, the room will be cleaned thoroughly, and a new raised floor will be installed. Then all the equipment will be reinstalled and brought back on line. Unfortunately there is no way to keep BCPL.NET up and running while all this is going on. However the cleaning schedule has been arranged such that BCPL.NET will be down only from 11:00 PM through 3:00 AM, a time period when relatively few customers normally use the service. If you'd like more detailed information about zinc whiskers go to the Google search engine Web site (www.google.com) and enter "zinc whiskers" as your search term. -- BCPL.NET INTERNET SERVICES 320 York Road Towson, MD 21204-5179 U.S.A. CONTACTS: -------- Web Site: http://www.bcpl.net Administration & Policy: ispadmin@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 Sales, Renewals, Account Status: accounts@bcpl.net 410-887-4172 Technical Support (Help Desk): help@bcpl.net 410-887-3297 Usenet News Newsgroup Requests news-admin@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 E-Mail & Newsgroup Abuse Reports: abuse@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 Domain Name Service Issues: dnsadmin@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 FAX: 410-887-2091