Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!uunet!ukma!david From: david@ukma.UUCP Newsgroups: unix-pc.general Subject: Re: Power supplies & 3B1's Message-ID: <7752@g.ms.uky.edu> Date: Sun, 22-Nov-87 23:00:55 EST Article-I.D.: g.7752 Posted: Sun Nov 22 23:00:55 1987 Date-Received: Wed, 25-Nov-87 20:26:17 EST References: <942@woton.UUCP> <1805@ukecc.engr.uky.edu> Reply-To: david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- Resident E-mail Hack) Organization: U of Kentucky, Mathematical Sciences Lines: 72 In article <1805@ukecc.engr.uky.edu> edward@engr.uky.edu (Edward C. Bennett) writes: >In article <942@woton.UUCP> riddle@woton.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle ) writes: >>I live in an old house with a rather flaky power system. >For a start, I pulled out the ol' Radio Shack catalog. They've got two >units that seem reasonable. > > Under "AC Outlet Voltage Spike Protectors" there's a 6-outlet > power strip with noise filter and circuit breaker for $29.95. Well, I'll repeat my own horror story. I too live in an old house in a student ghetto. (And it was funny listening to the AT&T repairman tell me that the warranty includes on-site maintanence ... this old house being a "site" is real funny). Anyway ... the power outlets in the house aren't grounded. The outlets that were here when we moved in were all 2 prong outlets. When I started installing computers I got a 3 prong adapter and installed that between the computers and the wall. Unfortunately I forgot to connect the ground part up to the screw ... Back when I only had a TRS-80 Color Computer this didn't make any difference. But with the arrival of my Unix PC, things changed. By then I'd forgotten that I'd not grounded the adapter. Further I got a DAK Power controller and another spike supressor from R Shack. I felt I was safe with those two things. Well ... the computer burned up. Now, it was summertime when it burned up, and we of course don't have A/C in this place. (And the heating is free-standing gas heaters in each room ... but that's a different matter entirely). I don't know if it was heat that caused it to burn up or if it was lack of grounding. The AT&T repairman was nice to me and went ahead and replaced the machine because it was only a couple of weeks old and may have been a bad machine. He was under the opinion that the grounding caused the burnup for some reason. It may have been either, I dunno tho. Anyway, before installing the replacement I had to get ahold of the landlord and convince him that I needed grounding. (That was an interesting experience in itself). The grounding consists of a hefty wire running down the hall to the kitchen and attached securely to the cold water pipe. And he only grounded this one outlet in my room .. the 3 prong plugs in the kitchen STILL aren't grounded. Oh well. I can believe that grounding is important. I've also got a little fan blowing air over the top of the case above the P.S. And it's wintertime and the place is fairly cool all the time. This summer may be interesting again. I have a bunch of other stuff in the apartment. Stereo stuff, a refridgerator, microwave. And there was a space heater, but the landlord put a new gas heater in the bathroom and it's fine again. We've had two sorts of cases for power outages. One type is when power goes out in another apartment in the building, and they go to the power box and start flipping switches ... The other type is an overload and it's only happened once. That was when we had the space heater running, the microwave running, stereo and tv running, at least one of the computers on (the 3B1) and my roomate drying his hair with a blow dryer. Fine, the power went out. No problem otherwise. Note that I have my computers behind two spike supressers... I've seen 3b1's turned off, lose power from under them, and so forth. The disk head doesn't crash (thank goodness). You might lose files if the system was busy. Other than that, no problem. -- <---- David Herron -- Resident E-Mail Hack <---- or: {rutgers,uunet,cbosgd}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET <---- "The market doesn't drop hundreds of points on a normal day..." -- <---- Fidelity Investments Corporation