[GTALUG] a quick question about power supplies?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Jul 18, 2024 at 11:01:20PM -0400, Karen Lewellen via talk wrote:
> Hi,
> Trying for context.
 
Yay, worked great.

> While I cannot be certain, I feel sure the boxed one I have is 300, perhaps
> higher.

300 watt is definitely a very common size of power supply.

> Its odd what you say about memory, the machine I had to replace had a great
> deal more memory, then I believe is in this one, but this machine is far
> louder than any unit I have ever  owned.
> At one point the computer was so warm that the time and date was changing
> every  2 minutes or so, jumping ahead.

Well if the power supply fan is failed, that means all the other fans have
to try harder to cool their part of the system, so it will get louder.

> Thanks for that  extra wisdom as well.  Any serious danger with my cutting
> power as I have to due to the power button  factor?
> It worries me slightly, at their best, those switches only kick in  with a
> power failure of some kind.

Well most OSs don't like it, but you are running DOS, so shouldn't be
a problem.  Cutting power sure beats having it overheat enough to break
something or catch fire.  I suspect it would probably blow a fuse or
some other component before catching fire though.

> Its  internal, in fact the lose cables are floating around inside the case
> as well.
> I do have a USB DVD / cd burner that would be a gift to have in place just
> now.  all of my statements, bank for example, come in an alternative format
> sent  on cd..and I cannot read them.

So probably either the data cable wasn't connected or the power wasn't
(not enough power connectors on the power supply perhaps and needed a
Y adapter to split it?)

> Yet another reason why I wish the driver was  properly installed. Panasonic
> created the DOS driver for  some of their own  equipment, with an engineer a
> few years back  finding it for me.
> Some of the documentation is actually in Japanese.
> Granted freedos has a couple of DOS USB drivers, I have a second one as
> well.
> I am actually typing on a USB keyboard with that function turned on in the
> bios, no driver required.
> of! now that I think of it, are there USB to whatever keyboard adapters?

There are USB keyboard to PS/2 adapters since the USB keyboard protocol
was purposely made to be very simple compared to other USB devices.

And yes the BIOS will often emulate older keyboards from USB so boot
loaders and DOS can access it without a driver.

-- 
Len Sorensen