Slashdot Mirror
Zinc Whiskers Cripple Colorado's Computers
Mr. Christmas Lights writes "While zinc whiskers, small metallic fibers which grow on surfaces that have been electroplated with zinc, aren't a problem for Christmas lights, they can cause serious problems for computers. The Denver Post reports how they caused computer outages for the last three weeks in the Colorado secretary of state's office. This basically halted business and elections document filings. Zinc whiskers are becoming more of a problem as computers electronics get smaller. NASA has a good reference site which includes a interesting PDF summary paper complete with pictures. /.'ers with computer rooms might want to check this out."
(rolls eyes)
Where I used to work, we had this issue - in our case they grew from the cheap computer floor panels in the room. The case was so bad, you could see them in direct sunlight, and the flowed in the breeze like grass.
We had no choice but to go through cleaning, as the underfloor was about to be used for blowing air to new systems, without it, the zinc whiskers would blow free and cause hell on all our systems. As it was, three systems failed in the week after the clean. We don't want to think what would have happened if we didn't clean it.
It's not bullshit. Get over it. Interestingly, there are very few people who know of this issue, but knowledge is spreading.
Robert Anton Wilson
We are in the final streach for replacing the entire datacenter floor where I work because of zinc Whiskers. We had the underfloor area cleaned for the new A/C that blows from the floor up. We promptly lost 11 power supplies and the total count is up over 20 now. We did verify the presents of zinc whiskers in the dead powersupplies thanks to the onsite electron microscope.
Thankfully the high temperature never got above 85 degrees so the old A/C was able to keep up.
I so agree with you.
back in college I paid my way as a maintaince guy at a foundry. we had rackmount Pc's that would have almost 1/4 inch of metal/sand dust on the motherboards and the computers were STILL working.
Cince then I have worked as a freelance consultant and specalist for many different companies that certianly do not have their computers in a "clean room" (machine shops for the best example) and they never EVER have these problems and they are exposed to nasty air + metal. The worst was a water filtration plant I worked at for 7 years where a workstation for monitoring the vats of hydro-flouro-sisicilic acid ( what they put in your water to add flouride) a product that is so corrosive that it eat's through the rubber lined fiberglass tanks within 3 years had, just by the amount released in the air during tank inspections, had eaten almost all the legs off the surface mount chips on the motherboard and it was STILL operating.
Maybe some really REALLY old mainfraime computers might see the problem in a 20-30 year lifespan that the article suggests, but even the PDP-11 I saw back in college that was retired in the basement but still maintained operating by students did not have any problems like this.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.