power supply

I remember cringing then, too.

So, if you're fighting against lightening, you need a heavy-duty Lightening Darkener. They're very expensive, but you can make your own. Just buy a gallon and spray India ink all over everything. There ya go: Darkening achieved!

What, guys? Oh, he meant to say "lightning"? Well why didn't he say so? That's different.

I don't recall what you did last year, but first would be to set up a lightning arrestor, followed by a high-joule whole-house surge suppressor, tailed by a nice UPS. You know how electronics are. The combo units all do lesser jobs than the discrete components, so I try to go discrete when I can. Just like the stereo, way back when. (I miss my good ears.)

Power supply: ATX or other format? I like to have 30-50% more power available to prevent the power supply from straining its whole lifetime, and I've never had a p/s die on me. What wattage is the package drawing now? Figure it out from there. All of my ATX style power supplies have been the cheap Chiwanese junk from the local stores, but, as I said, I've never had to replace one due to failure. And when I started DIVERSIFY!, I was doing mostly computer building and repair. I think I only replaced one bad p/s in those 3 years, too.

Hope that helps.

Larry Jaques fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

yeah... My nice high-joule surge suppressor supplied by the Power Monopoly a) isn't covered for direct strikes, and b) went up in smoke when my shop had a direct strike to the power pole/pig just outside.

It took out everything electrical including some infrastructure wiring... All my CNCs, every computer, every EVERYTHING electronic that was plugged in. We do stay very well backed-up, and Ajax CNC special-shipped all the parts in just a day to rebuild what we had to.

We now have a protocol in the shop that on my command OR at the first audible sign of thunder, every single piece of anything we want to protect gets unplugged from EVERYTHING it's connected to... wall, ethernet lines, phone lines... everything.

That is the only sure way to protect it... and it wouldn't help in a lightning-induced fire... sigh.

The only good thing was that we ended up with better machines than we had before, since even the servos and encoders got fried. The baddest of all was that 'insurance' paid about 1/3 of the cost. ("Depreciation, you know!")

LLoyd

These, and disconnect them during storms.

I run them from inexpensive older laptops with USB3 ExpressCards and powered hubs.

I notched the plastic for the tab on the stabilizer and taped then together.

XP may have (solvable) issues with drives over 2TB.

-jsw

Two Part suggestion

(1) biggest power supply that will fit the computer with reasonable cost

(2) UPS which will also work as a super surge protector.

Some suggestions

I have bought several items from Tiger and have been satisfied with their service. I have had the UPS shown for several years and it has worked with no problems.

Tiger also has some good deals on large capacity HD. I have had good luck with Western Digital, although the back-up software they supply with their drives sucks.

Political commentary: NSA? installed "back door" pre-installed on all hard drives.

My [rhetorical] question is: With all this capability, and the billions "we the people" spend on snooping, how were the banks and other financial institutions able to run the LIBOR, FX, commodities, etc. scams for so long, and why is it so hard to track the tax evaders and money launderers? Are our snooper troopers getting a "piece of the action," getting paid to look the other way, been ordered to look the other way, or are they just stupid? The "terrorists" are half a world away, and have no way to get here ==>unless we help them,

Hey, it must be fancy to have insurance against not only vandalism, liability, accident and theft, but acts of nature.

If 'A' puts $1000 dollars a day in the cash register of 'B', how can you tr ack that? If you have a tractor trailer full of cash, guns and ammo, how c an that be tracked? Good question. Or imagine if you paid your rent in ca sh and got all of it back? Is that tax evasion?

Imagine if 'B' was a politician. And you just stuffed the cash under the s ofa?

It wouldn't be smart to do the transactions at the moment. Its a lot like "you do this now in government" and then we'll take care of you with overse as speaking fees in about five years from now. Or is it even worse?

And if you had all those millions, wouldn't you eventually figure out how t o join-in, too ??

A few snuff videos have the entire United States Air Force and Navy hitting out at some more people in tents, etc...

Crazy.

walter snipped-for-privacy@post.com fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:

I don't know where you live, but around here, insurance for lightning damage is pretty 'standard'. They just won't cover replacement costs for anything a normal human could afford.

Lloyd

I'm in complete agreement on that method. I've been doing the same for years and haven't lost much. Missed an RS232 cable many years ago and that cost me an external modem. Still had some ground loops in between stuff even though everything else was pretty much unplugged. Working at a two-way radio shop with two ~160ft towers by the building didn't help...

We took a lightning hit once during work around noon time. I has standing in the garage bay where some of the towers radio equipment was in the corner. BIG KERZIT! Then a huge BOOM! I saw the arc flash in the corner by the radio equipment in numerous places. Didn't have to drive far for that service call ;-)

I saw a lot of different protection schemes back then and NONE of them were 100 percent. I use to have a collection of lightning damaged parts that was kind of cool. Sorry I left it behind now when I retired. Would have made some interesting images to post...

How about just throwing a second power supply on it? Have to hang it from the outside, but with 10 drives in it its already got be be kind of Frankenstein.

I grouped the devices that most need isolation into one coax panel for outdoor antennas and cameras and two accessible outlet strips, one for the stereo rack and the other for the computer bench, so I can react quickly to thunder.

-jsw

The PS is a poor place to deal with that issue.Just make sure to get a high efficiency supply since it's a 24/7/365 drain, and the less it's acting as a heater, the better.

Scatter a bunch of Delta LA302R and/or LA603s at the main power feed and the power feed to each building if it feeds from building to building.

Where you care more, toss on a CA302R or CA603 as well.

Eek! So the suppressor handles all the ugly noises the Monopoly makes but doesn't cover lightning?

Total suckage. Kudos to Ajax.

That should help.

Nope.

In which case you ask your insurance agent for "replacement cost insurance". It costs only a bit (15%?) more but it pays actual costs.

I still think 2 extra layers (lightning rod + WH suppressor) would be required.

Privacy? What's that?

Truly excellent questions, Unka. Every time I look at a larger picture, I get even more pairs of noids. The ultimate question: _Which_ violent sociopath is actually in charge of said 'big picture'?

I surfed the net and found the best plug in style surge supperssor. I'll put that in front of the above UPS.

Newegg lists a 1000 watt power supply for $200 - ouch. Before I decide between this and the Tiger offer. I'll see if i can make a SATA hard drive card work correctly. I just orderred my third card, trying to get this to work.

Larry Jaques fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Exactly correct. And it costs the subscriber to obtain (and rent) a device from them to remove the trash THEY put on the line.

Lloyd

There oughta be a law...

================ Tiger also has higher power supplies. See

1000W/90$ 1200W/90$

Also see their drive card 4 internal and 2 external

35$

you might also find this useful

In the day... I used an heavy on/off switch in a handy box mounted underneath my workbench. Normally I would just turn off the switch and that would kill power to everything at my workbench. That box had a cord that was simply plugged into the wall. If I had even a hint of bad weather coming I would pull the wall plug too, along with all the RJ-11 plugs to the phone lines.

Even during good times it was handy. If there was a power hiccup I could quickly kill everything at my bench until I knew for sure it was backup and stabilized again.

I remember reading an article in a trade magazine once. About a company that made a power disconnect controlled by an AM radio tuned to detect the static created by lightning activity. It would disconnect all power connections at said location and shunt them to ground until the detector registered that the storm had passed. I really liked that idea but never saw anything advertised/produced for it...

I bought a single-pole relay rated for "only" 75KV once. It was the size of a desk lamp and opened the contacts several inches.

-jsw