Lift Surge
Talking to Young Eddie the other day – he seems to have forgotten he hates me, ha! – I learnt something a little bit interesting. Cosmodemonic’s lift system is apparently derived from an old Soviet model, which itself was designed at a time when the Soviet bloc was starting to show signs of financial strain. Apparently the engineers needed to cut as many corners as they could, and so they made the elevators as stupid as they could, so they wouldn’t have to pay for smartness, which I think sometimes is referred to as memory or something like that. You know, ask someone else who also does IT for a living, they might be able to help you. I’m hungover.
Anyhow, the engineers designed it with so litle memory, that sometimes if there were a few jobs on the go at once, the thing would forget a floor altogether. So if it had to go up to 16, then down to 13 then down to ground, starting off at ground, it would freak out a bit, and, for instance, forget that levels seven and eight existed. Which was no big deal, except that it woulod freak out a whole lot more on the way up when it got to floor six, and then not immediately to floor nine. Since the elevator had forgotten about floors seven and eight, it would try extra hard to get to nine, since it thought it was late or losing its mind. This would result in sudden bursts of acceleration up to floor nine, and possibly in this example, on its way down again t would accelerate crazily between floor nine and floor six.
This tendency was not corrected when the elevator system was bought at a bargain basement price by Cosmodemonic from some guy from some guy in a Lada somewhere outside Kiev.
Young Eddie’s explanation actually consoled me for a while, since I had always thought the sudden surges were caused by a worn out rope, which would only be fixed once it broke. Until I realised that the effects there might not be too different to the elevator forgetting about the ground floor. Best not to think about it too much, I decided.
Anyhow, the engineers designed it with so litle memory, that sometimes if there were a few jobs on the go at once, the thing would forget a floor altogether. So if it had to go up to 16, then down to 13 then down to ground, starting off at ground, it would freak out a bit, and, for instance, forget that levels seven and eight existed. Which was no big deal, except that it woulod freak out a whole lot more on the way up when it got to floor six, and then not immediately to floor nine. Since the elevator had forgotten about floors seven and eight, it would try extra hard to get to nine, since it thought it was late or losing its mind. This would result in sudden bursts of acceleration up to floor nine, and possibly in this example, on its way down again t would accelerate crazily between floor nine and floor six.
This tendency was not corrected when the elevator system was bought at a bargain basement price by Cosmodemonic from some guy from some guy in a Lada somewhere outside Kiev.
Young Eddie’s explanation actually consoled me for a while, since I had always thought the sudden surges were caused by a worn out rope, which would only be fixed once it broke. Until I realised that the effects there might not be too different to the elevator forgetting about the ground floor. Best not to think about it too much, I decided.
posted by Lackey | 7:13 pm
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