Thanks, much appreciated. I only have only UPS and one surge protector. The UPS gets power through the surge protector which should hopefully short out before the surge gets through the PC. The problem in winter is that there are frequent power outages and when the power suddenly comes on its on a higher power than when it went off. Recently when theres a power out or a treat of a storm I unplug everything and go read a book....
Feroze graywolf wrote: > Didn't think I was going to do a surge protector tutorial <grin>. > > On the cheap surge protectors about the only way is to take them apart and > use an ohm meter on the MOV. On the expensive ones there is usually a green > LED or something that tells you it is still good, if it goes out or turns red > the MOV is bad. Please note that some of the cheap ones have a LED, but as > far as I know all it tells you is that there is power at the plug. > > A MOV, like any varistor has a non-linear resistance, as the current goes up > the resistance goes up exponentially damping the surge. If the surge is > beyond the capability of the MOV it should blow acting as a fuse. The real > expensive ones also supposedly have MOV's that work the opposite shorting the > surge to ground as well. > > Sometimes that surge can peak faster than the MOV can react and a smaller > surge gets through, and sometimes, not often, they can fuse instead of open > when they blow. That is why I like to use a couple in series. The real reason > for the extra one on the laser printer is to prevent back surges from > damaging things between it and the other surge protectors. Laser printer > fusors tend to pull a lot of current suddenly causing a surge although it is > not as severe as a power-line is likely to be. > > Please note that I am living in the mountains and thunderstorms walk through > this valley very frequently. When I lived in the lowlands I never actually > experienced lightning damage to my equipment. And the recent damage was to > network stuff which was not protected. 3 other of the 5 apartments in the > building had more damage than I did. Luckily no fires. > > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
