I've never been near an actual Halon dump, but I do remember those computer shows in the 1970s, with vendors showing off their various infrastructure, tape racks, document storage, even an outfit with a mockup of a 360/30 used for operator training.
The Halon people always had a demo - a clear plastic box the size of a phone booth (I assume we're all old enough here to remember what a phone booth was), rigged up with a small Halon cylinder. Every half hour or so, after a lot of sales talk (it dices, it slices...) the demo guy would get into the box, light up a cigarette, smile, and the sales guy would pull the handle. The box filled with Halon mist, and when it cleared a bit, the cigarette was out, the guy was still smiling (non-toxic, you see), he'd show that his Bic would not light inside the box, and then he'd stick his hand out through a little hole and show that it would light just fine in the outside air. The Halon demonstration disappeared from the shows after a few years, and of course the shows themselves were consolidated and then gone by the 1990s. Halons, like their close relatives once called Freons (now generically CFCs) vary widely in their properties, including toxicity and price, with the Halon 1301 used in data centre systems conveniently being the least toxic and most expensive. I've often wondered whether the travelling demo guy is enjoying a long and healthy retirement now... Tony H. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
