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From: wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: leaving the Amiga on
Message-ID: <401@neoucom.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 18-Mar-87 01:42:45 EST
Article-I.D.: neoucom.401
Posted: Wed Mar 18 01:42:45 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Mar-87 06:45:31 EST
References: <3340@rsch.WISC.EDU>
Distribution: comp
Organization: Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine
Lines: 34
Summary: It's probably alright


The amigas that we have here, and the one I've got at home are
about a year old.  At that time, C-A was using Japanese power
supplies that are VERY well built.  The ventilation fan keeps the
temperatures will down inside the power pack, thus the switching
transistor and especially the filter caps should be able to expect
a long life under continuous operating circumstances.

Our Apple IIs practically eat power packs for lunch, as the dang
case of the power pack has no holes for any air flow what so ever,
and even with a muffin fan blowing right on it, the inside still
gets hotter'n a pistol.  This usually destroys the filter caps
after about three months of non-stop operation.

The Amiga power pack seems to have been designed to provide about
300 mS of ride-though with one external disk drive attached without
any extras beyond the front-mounted 256K pack.  So far, we haven't
experienced any brown-out induced reboots.

If you cycle the AC power on the Amiga, you should wait about 10
sec before re-applying the mains AC.  This delay allows the voltage
on the input capacitors to drop sufficiently to that the soft
turn-on circuit is activated correctly.  This assures that the
capacitors, etc will not be damaged by an unrestrained current
inrush.  Not waiting long enough can cuase the power pack to be
partially still active, and try to quickly bring the caps back up
to nominal voltage, rusulting in potentially damaging currents.

If I remember right, the Amiga manual actually alludes to the
proper way to treat the power supply.  Very commendible, as most
makers don't bother to discuss that.

  --Bill
  (wtm@neoucom.UUCP   ...!cbatt!neoucell a na