At 00:22 29.08.98 -0500, Jeff wrote:
>A few times on machines with powerfail-autorestart (battery-backed RAM ala
>pre-9x8 and pre-9x9 systems), I have cycled power on an internal tape drive
>by power-failing the whole SPU for a moment.  I used a 20 to 30 second
>power fail.

I have even used such "forced powerfails" to add or remove SCSI devices
without going through the shutdown/restart "overhead" -- yes, I admit this
is a quick and dirty trick and I would never recommend this to others...
especially not in a public forum -- oops, where am I sending this??  ;-)

BUT...

Watch out if your system is running some of the newer fancy schmancy disc
drives that are no longer manufactured by HP (Seagate for example). These
devices do have a different powerfail behaviour and are thus required to
be protected by a UPS that tells MPE *before* the battery gets empty so
that MPE can stop the disc I/O before the the lights go off...

Don't "pull the plug" on such drives as there is a non-zero risk of getting
data corruption (it might be very small but non-zero). Better reboot those!

Lars (only speaking for myself as usual)