[Techtalk] OT but I'm desperate.... Windows....!

[Maria Blackmore]

On Sat, 19 Oct 2002, Meredydd Luff wrote:
> On Friday 18 October 2002 17:49, Maria Blackmore wrote:
> > If the voltage drop caused by additional load on the same circuit is
> > sufficient to cause problems, then I would suggest that the house wiring
> > needs to be looked at in some depth.
> Well, from the sound of it, that is indeed the case here :-P

hmm, not neccesarily, this is still jumping to conclusions ..

> Yes, but you get dodgy stuff. My house is at the moment drastically 
> underpowered - there's a noticeable drop in the brightness of the lightbulbs 
> when you turn on the vacuum cleaner. This worries me, and not just for the 
> health of my computers, but we're re-wiring it completely soon (which will be 
> a welcome relief!).

If the lights are affected by a vacuum cleaner, then either there's some
very very dodgy internal wiring (lights and ring main should be
seperate!), or there's a problem with the mains supply.

If it persists after the place is rewired, I would find a sharp stick and
poke at electricity companies.

> As for the regulation of mains voltage - it's not just that it's heavily 
> backed up. When you get a blackout, often it's not because the line you're 
> feeding off has been severed, but rather that the national grid, for some 
> reason or another (usually some power stations being down), can't supply 
> enough power to keep the pd in an acceptable range. As a result, they 
> completely shut off some areas rather than having a (far more damaging) 
> universal brown-out.

As far as I know, this only happens in California ;)

The UK national grid is pretty good at predicting loads, they've got a lot
of history on trensd, and TV schedules to predict heavy loads, plus that
pumped-storage hydroelectric station in Wales that can come on stream
pretty quickly.

It's entirely feasible, just because I haven't heard of something that
doesn't mean it isn't true.

> What about long-term?

How long is long term? :)

> Within a few seconds (unless my knowledge of capacitors is way out),

that long? my power supply quotes a hold up time of much less than that :)

Well, actually the manual quotes it not the power supply, but hey, who's
being pedantic ;)

> no extra charge will remain in the PSU, leading to it being unable to
> maintain a high enough pd.

or just turn off :)

> One thing I would actually like would be a PSU that shuts itself off when 
> this happens, rather than carrying on regardless...

ATX power supplies give out a "Power Good" signal to the motherboard,
which is supposed to turn off when that is low.

> > Power supplies should be able to cope over a range of voltages at
> > least as far apart as 100 and 120 V or 220 and 240V.
> Yes, but in badly wired houses it's possible to have significant deviation 
> from those values.

Have screwdriver, will travel

> True - but every single kernel panic I've encountered resulted from hardware 
> problems. On the other hand, I may be failing to take into account the sheer 
> suckiness factor of some of our favourite monopoly's OSs...

I've been resisting the cry of "reinstall!"

It wouldn't exactly be terribly helpful, but then niether would
complaining of the lack of diagnostic tools to try to figure out what is
going on.

I have some ideas but I'm not sure how to suggest implimenting them, I
simply don't know enough about windows, I haven't even used anything since
windows 95 or NT 4.  Sorry

Maria