Power surge

[Stonegiant]

Had one about 1:30 PM today. One of my machines didn't come back up. I was less than pleased as I have a protector WITH a guarentee. Fortunately it was only the power supply. Unfortunately, I can't afford a multimeter and a soldering iron or I'd have tried to fix it myeslf. The fuse in the P/S wasn't blown, so something else died. No scorch marks anywhere ont he breadboard (only 3 chips on the whole thing and the rest is components soldered to the breadboard ) and no smell of burnt/charred components or insulation. When troubleshooting this, the first step was to swap the P/S from my good machine to my bad one. I removed the P/S from the machine that was dead with ease. The other machine kind of irked me for a while. It seems that the P/S there was made for that case. There is a fan hardwired to a hot and common lead from the P/S. That's fine, however, the fan has NO screws holding it on. It has these silly plastic tabs. I had to push 3 of the 6 tabs back through the holes (in a very tight space, I might add) to remove the silly thing. I put that P/S in the dead machine with the hardwired fan just sitting on the bottom of the case (upright so I don't burn up that fan). It worked like a charm. That would be the LAST time I ever buy a case that isn't just a generic case. I can't put the fan on this machine anywhere because the fan has NO screw holes! That fan will ONLY work with the case that the P/S came with! Grrr. I hate proprietary hardware. p.s. I would cash in the guarentee on the surge protector if it would be worth the effort. A 300 Watt P/S is too cheap to bother with...

[havnblast]

I had pretty much the same thing happen to me this summer on another machine, thank god it wasn't my main computer. I walked out of the room and by the room the other computer was in and could smell that smell you never want to smell. I walked in and hit the power button and nothing. Tore it apart and stuck in another power supply from the used pile I have here and it wanted to go but wouldn't. I thought wow that is odd and I replaced the hard drive and she took right off, so apparently it took the P/S and hard drive out on me. This is what I get for not running it on a decent surge protector, but turned it into the insurance company and they covered the costs. If your deductable isn't too high it might not be a bad idea to check with your home owners insurance.

[Cluttermagnet]

Had one about 1:30 PM today.  One of my machines didn't come back up.  I was less than pleased as I have a protector WITH a guarentee.  Fortunately it was only the power supply.  Unfortunately, I can't afford a multimeter and a soldering iron or I'd have tried to fix it myeslf.  The fuse in the P/S wasn't blown, so something else died.  No scorch marks anywhere ont he breadboard (only 3 chips on the whole thing and the rest is components soldered to the breadboard ) and no smell of burnt/charred components or insulation.  p.s.  I would cash in the guarentee on the surge protector if it would be worth the effort.  A 300 Watt P/S is too cheap to bother with...

Sorry to hear about your incident. Depending on what kind of 'surge' your gear saw, a power line conditioner might have helped. I do have one on one of my several computer setups. They can be a bit pricey as standalones- I paid a little over 100 bucks for mine. With a 5 amp rating, it should handle all but the most power hungry computer/ monitor combos. It would not offer much protection if you saw a sustained overvoltage, but that is unlikely unless something wierd is going on with an intermittant neutral connection in your power line. I think most surges are of brief duration, in which case a line conditioner should smooth them out just fine. Don't count on those surge arrestor strips that just have a few MOV's in them. They might offer some limited protection in case of a nearby lightning hit, but only so as to decrease the amount of really major destruction. Gear 'protected' by them can still get a lot of fragile electronics fried in the case of that lightning hit. They are not very effective at clipping most 'normal' power line transients (spikes) caused by big machinery turning on and off- compressors in refrigerators and A/C, etc. Although they are not entirely useless, they really don't give the protection you need against spikes. For that you need line conditioning. BTW most battery- backed UPS's also can't remove those unpredictable spikes, unless they have line conditioning built in. A costly feature that most UPS's do not have.BTW a good meter and a soldering iron are not often going to help in the case of blown components in a computer supply. Those little guys are all switchers now, so far as I know, and some of the components used in them are pretty exotic and not available over the counter anywhere. Even the manufacturer in China or Hong Kong or Taiwan or wherever would never bother to try repairs. Most of these boxes are very low- end and are considered throwaways. The days of troubleshooting down to the component level are nearly gone now. You can't get the parts even if your diagnosis is 100 percent right. Manufacturers routinely pare costs to the bone by custom specifying various components. They get manufactured for that one customer, the manufacturer of the power supply. You can't get them, nor can I. How good is your mandarin or korean? Even if you were fluent, you probably would still meet a brick wall, unless you had some connections over there with someone on the design staff in the appropriate manufacturing company. If the design function is even in- house. If you begged and pleaded, you might get them to send you a little care package. Not likely, mate. A 300 watt PS may be a few years old anyway. I see a lot of 350 and 400 watt units lately. If that PS is a few years old now, even the overseas manufacturer probably no longer has those parts in- house. Sorry to rain on your parade. You got it right in the first place, thinking in terms of the PS being one single 'part'.

[Stonegiant]

<sigh> Ah well. I was just happy to see something I was familiar with when I opened up the PS. You may or may not know that US Navy equipment is (at least in the nuclear power plants) old, old breadboard equipment. That's the stuff that is fun to troubleshoot. Only a few pieces of equipment even had printed circuit boards.Now I'm out of the Navy and in a world that doesn't use that equipment for the most part. I truly wish I'd have known that before I chose my career path...

[henderrob]

I'm lucky because I have underground services. No power poles to attract lightning. I've a power strip but I've never had a power surge. It's a good suggestion to try your home insurance to replace the computer if it was wrecked.

[Stonegiant]

Ouch... Was it a shipyard <ahem> bubba? That's what we called the stereotypical shipyard worker in the Navy. If you've ever been to one, you'd probably know just what I'm talking about (a US Navy contracted shipyard, that is )