Another dead power supply

[Christopher Charles]

Hi:

Ota was right.  Your PC should be plugged into a power
bar with surge suppression circuits.  Plugging a PC
directly to the AC outlet is asking for trouble.

Chris

--- Alex Beamish <talexb-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> On 12/3/05, phiscock-g851W1bGYuGnS0EtXVNi6w at public.gmane.org
> <phiscock-g851W1bGYuGnS0EtXVNi6w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> >
> >
> > For the second time in as many years, a power
> supply in one of my
> > computers has died.
> >
> > The previous power supply death took out every
> item in the box with it.
> >
> > This time, there was some sort of over-protection
> device that prevented
> > the power supply from damaging anything.
> Apparently some power supplies
> > have a zener diode across the output that clamps
> the output voltage to
> > about 5.1 volts. When the output voltage attempts
> to rise, the zener
> > conducts and gets hot. This is sensed by some sort
> of temperature sensor,
> > which then shuts down the supply.
> >
> > Both these power supply failures were white box
> units from OTA on College
> > Street. The first one they eventually gave me
> something of a deal to
> > replace the contents of the box, but only after
> some serious arguing. (The
> > OTA manager argued that the failure occurred
> because I didn't have a surge
> > protector on that circuit, which is nonsense. I've
> designed switching
> > power supplies, so I'm aware of the importance of
> output protection, and
> > that supply obviously didn't have it.)
> 
> 
> I bought my first PC, a 486/66, from OTA.
> 
> Since then I've bought used computers from Canada
> Direct, also on College
> (stereos and computers upstairs, computer books
> downstairs -- do I have the
> name right?) who were great, and an iMac from CPUsed
> on Dupont, who were
> also great.
> 
> I bought a new PC (in kit form) from Sonnam that my
> wife and I put together
> for her -- and that power supply blew. I took the
> unit in (they were a bit
> shocked that I'd managed to remove the unit from the
> PC), but with the right
> paper work gave me a new unit without any haggling,
> which since then
> (perhaps two years now) has worked fine.
> 
> I haven't bought anything in OTA in years -- not
> since I bought an
> additional 4M memory for my 486/66 so it could run
> OS/2 decently.
> 
> Alex
> 
> The moral: buy a good power supply, and make sure it
> has some sort of
> > protection circuit on the output.
> >
> > Peter
> > --
> > Peter Hiscocks
> > Professor Emeritus,
> > Electrical and Computer Engineering,
> > Ryerson University
> > 416-465-3007
> > www.ee.ryerson.ca/~phiscock
> >
> > --
> > The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings:
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> 
> 
> 
> --
> ----------
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> 


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cccharlee-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org


		
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