Story time! In 1994, I was a 3C0X2 in the USAF (Air Force), 'Computer Programmer', at the 81st Medical Support Group, in Biloxi Mississippi. Curiously, I had

Story time! In 1994, I was a 3C0X2 in the USAF (Air Force), 'Computer Programmer', at the 81st Medical Support Group, in Biloxi Mississippi. Curiously, I had more experience with general UNIX administration than anyone else in my unit, so I was in charge of the UNIX servers in the basement of the hospital where I worked. There were at least 10 different UNIX variants there, including the (even at that time) venerable 3B2. We had a couple of them handling some 'lightly' classified ('SECRET') data. They weren't quite enough, so we put the word out that we needed more. My OIC (Officer In Charge) took care of 'putting the word out'; I didn't really know what that meant. A few months later, a crate arrived on our loading dock, and inside were probably a dozen 3B2s! They had come from Homestead AFB, Florida. You might recall that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Andrew https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Andrew had blown through there two years earlier, and destroyed the base. All of the servers had clear signs of submersion. As in, there were old algae stains on the cases. Two of them had been partly submerged, since there was a straight line across the center, apparently a high water mark. Being young, crazy, enlisted and bold, we decided to give them a try. So we found a long, heavy extension cord and ran it out to the parking lot next to the loading dock, and plugged them in, along with a required external serial terminal. Much to our surprise, most of them booted up just fine! One of them started smoking, so we unplugged it. In the end, after a lot of outside 'burn in' time, we were able to mount four in our datacenter and begin using them for classified data processing.