Good Stuff [was] Re: shameful-cabling gallery of infamy - does anybody know

Thu Sep 13 01:27:14 UTC 2007

Article: Abandoned Cable Removal A Dogged Challenge For All
Cabling Installatin & Maintenance Magazine
By Patrick McLaughlin | July 2007 Issue

http://preview.tinyurl.com/32cfak
--
As an aside, legend has it that some of the larger skyscrapers in NY City would
crumble under the weight of the cables installed inside them --particularly
coaxial and proprietary mutli-pair cable runs that were used for market data
services and desktop video displays prior to the proliferation of Ethernet over
fiber backbones-- running up and down vertical riser shafts, were it not for the
bracing and additional structural supports installed after the fact to support them. 

Frank  
---

On Wed Sep 12 10:10 , Joe Greco  sent:

>
>> If you find any pictures of NY.NET; Terry Kennedy made the above
>> look sloppy. Many places ban cable ties due to the sharp ends;
>> some allow 'em if tensioned by a pistol-grip installer.
>
>The tie gun is a good solution, but quite frankly, you don't need one
>to do a good job with cable ties.  This is mainly a training issue,
>and the training is substantially easier than training folks to use
>lacing cord.  The rule doesn't need to be much more than "clean cut
>required, if you can't do a clean cut, then leave the tail on."  
>
>Xcelite makes some fantastic tools, as anyone in this business should
>know, and they have a wide selection of full flush cutters that will
>work fine.  There are some other manufacturers who make this sort of
>cutter, of course, but they're a bit tricky to find.  The key thing 
>is that people learn not to just use any old wire cutters to snip 
>these.
>
>If you're really good, and the situation allows, you can use a knife
>or box cutter to trim ends as well.
>
>> Terry
>> required lacing cord. You can guess his heritage.
>
>That's mostly a pain to do.  Looks nice, but hell to modify, and more
>time and effort to install initially.
>
>> As for horror stories, a certain ISP near here that started out in
>> a video store had piles of Sportsters. The wall warts were lined
>> up and glued dead-bug style to a number of long 1x3's; then #14
>> copper was run down each side, daisy-chain soldered to each plug
>> blade. There was no attempt to insulate any of upright plugs...
>
>ExecPC, here in Wisconsin, had a much more elegant solution.  ExecPC
>BBS was the largest operating BBS in the world, with a large LAN net
>and a PC per dial-in line.  They had built a room with a custom rack
>system built right in, where a motherboard, network, video, and modem
>card sat in a slot, making a vertical stack of maybe 8 nodes, and then
>a bunch of those horizontally,  and then several rows of those.  That
>was interesting all by itself, but then they got into the Internet biz
>early on.
>
>They had opted to go with USR Courier modems for the Internet stuff.
>Being relatively "cheap", they didn't want to go for any fancier rack
>mount stuff (== much more expensive).  So they went shopping.  They
>found an all metal literature rack at the local office supply store
>that had 120 slots (or maybe it was two 60 slot units).  They took a
>wood board and mounted it vertically above the unit.  This held a 
>large commercial 120-to-24vac step-down transformer and a variac 
>that was used to trim the AC voltage down to the 20VAC(?) needed by 
>the Couriers.
>
>Down the backside, they ran a run of wide finger duct vertically.
>Inside this, they ran two thick copper bars that had been drilled
>and tapped 120 times by a local machine shop.  When connected to
>the step-down transformer's output, this formed the power backbone.
>They had a guy snip the power cables off the Courier wall warts,
>and spade lug them, and screwed them in.  Instant power for 120
>modems.
>
>Slip a modem in each slot.  Run phone wire up to one of five
>AllenTel AT125-SM's hanging on the back of the plywood, and there 
>you have 5 25pr for inbound.  Run serial cables up to one of four
>Portmaster PM2E-30's sitting on top of the racks, then network to 
>a cheap Asante 10 megabit hub, and you're done.  5 x 25pr POTS in,
>power in, ethernet out, standalone 120 line dialin solution.
>
>Multiply solution by 10 and you get to the biggest collection of
>Courier modems I've ever seen.
>
>They continued to do this until the advent of X2, which required
>T1's to a Total Control chassis, at which point they started to
>migrate to rackmount gear (they had no space to go beyond 1200
>analog Couriers anyways).
>
>... JG
>-- 
>Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
>"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
>won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
>With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.