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Reply to "Changing out CMC Speedster Gauges"

The CPU (in the photo above) was on one floor and the liquid Freon refrigeration system was on the floor below, with all the cooling juice running through custom-made (for each installation) stainless steel piping ( Stan would have loved it).  

I actually used to work on Liebert units cooling the server rooms for telecom, and more critically in a nearby nuclear plant. We also had some computer chillers we serviced.

I was a cub about the time you were in the prime of your career, Gordon. By the time I got my card, the "computer room" units discharging air through perforated tile in the floor of a sealed room were on their way out. But while they were in their heyday, there was no amount of O/T that was too much. Those were the days of round-the-clock service projects, because every minute the machine was down was costing tens of thousands of dollars. That was a lot of pressure for a 26 y/o guy making $12/hr, but we all went through the grinder doing it.

The equipment we used to work on was huge. 100+ ton chillers and million+ btu/hr boilers were the norm. A typical supermarket would have several 125+ h/p racks running 1000 lbs of gas each. Nobody ever cared what anything cost.

Not so any more. Most "server rooms" are a single rack of a couple of servers making so little heat that a ductless mini-split will handle it.

From a service standpoint, there's less separation between hairy-chested super-techs and Bob's Heating, Cooling, and Coin-Laundry Repair than there ever has been. The work gets lighter every year. The guys doing it 50 years from now (scratch that, 10 years from now) will be replacing tiny little <1 hp throw-away modules with inverters and logic boards that will change every 6 months, making a two year old unit completely obsolete. Every location will have dozens, if not hundreds of them.

Nobody will "fix" anything.

Last edited by Stan Galat
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