Flash Pop Smoke Smell
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That's what happened to my desktop computer when I turned it on after the hurricane. Note to self, next time unplug everything even if you've a UPS.
My experience is that what you probably need is a surge protector. I have lost a monitor and a stereo system in a previous house where I had been away for two weeks. I am no electrics expert but reading up on it I discovered that what sometimes happens is that you can get a surge in electricity if a cable has not had current flowing through it - I don't understand why... So I am guessing that what has happened in your case is not that you should have unplugged everything but that when you switched things on again you got a surge... I may be completely wrong in this... The chances are that you may just have blown the PSU in the desktop so it is probably well worth getting it checked out by a decent IT repair shop(by decent I mean not a PC World type chain...).
Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.(Winston Churchill)
modified on Monday, August 29, 2011 9:28 AM
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That's what happened to my desktop computer when I turned it on after the hurricane. Note to self, next time unplug everything even if you've a UPS.
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That's what happened to my desktop computer when I turned it on after the hurricane. Note to self, next time unplug everything even if you've a UPS.
Few months ago there was a power-outage here too. There is a high tension cable entering the building (gazillion Volts), which goes into the transformer that turns it into a nice EU-standard 230V. Unfortunately, someone had switched the transformer back on with the main circuit still open. Apparently if you switch on a transformer of that size, the coils need some time to build up the magnetic field, or the computers get kicked in the face with 400V. There were a lot of casualties due to having little to no surge protection in the building. Luckily I had unplugged my computer and the server survived. :-D
Giraffes are not real.
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Oops! Years ago I worked in a company when we had a lightning strike - ground strike, rather than power lines. Apart from Fred having to have a lie down (he was connected to earth to do some testing at the time) we lost the fax, telephone exchange and the IDE card (very old fashioned hard drive controller, for the youth-of-today) in every PC that was plugged in, whether it was turned on or not. A company a few miles away lost their PDP15 - the UPS exploded and showered it in battery acid!
Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."
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OriginalGriff wrote:
IDE card (very old fashioned hard drive controller, for the youth-of-today)
Bah, MFM and RLL are "very old" controllers. IDE is just old. :) Now you've gone and made me feel old.
There are people here for whom changing the Interleave setting and defragging means nothing, alas... :-D For me, the former was an essential part of setting up a new PC, and the later a good way of wasting a Friday afternoon...
Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."
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That's what happened to my desktop computer when I turned it on after the hurricane. Note to self, next time unplug everything even if you've a UPS.
IdUnknown wrote:
desktop computer
Ooooh. That's so '90s. Who uses those monstrosities anymore. :rolleyes:
Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. [Yogi Berra] posting about Crystal Reports here is like discussing gay marriage on a catholic church’s website.[Nishant Sivakumar]
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IdUnknown wrote:
desktop computer
Ooooh. That's so '90s. Who uses those monstrosities anymore. :rolleyes:
Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. [Yogi Berra] posting about Crystal Reports here is like discussing gay marriage on a catholic church’s website.[Nishant Sivakumar]
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I would have wrapped it with seran wrap if I was expecting it to get wet.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997Ah, improvised dental dam.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson My comedy.
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IdUnknown wrote:
desktop computer
Ooooh. That's so '90s. Who uses those monstrosities anymore. :rolleyes:
Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. [Yogi Berra] posting about Crystal Reports here is like discussing gay marriage on a catholic church’s website.[Nishant Sivakumar]
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My experience is that what you probably need is a surge protector. I have lost a monitor and a stereo system in a previous house where I had been away for two weeks. I am no electrics expert but reading up on it I discovered that what sometimes happens is that you can get a surge in electricity if a cable has not had current flowing through it - I don't understand why... So I am guessing that what has happened in your case is not that you should have unplugged everything but that when you switched things on again you got a surge... I may be completely wrong in this... The chances are that you may just have blown the PSU in the desktop so it is probably well worth getting it checked out by a decent IT repair shop(by decent I mean not a PC World type chain...).
Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.(Winston Churchill)
modified on Monday, August 29, 2011 9:28 AM
An UPS should have a surge protector built in. However if you don't have everything connected to the PC protected a surge can enter via the back door. ex0 unprotected monitor - video cable - GPU - rest of box ex1 unprotected data line - cable/dsl modem - misc networking hardware - network port on mobo - rest of box The explanation you found sounds like non-sense. If your hardware was off long enough for the PSU/CRT/etc's big capacitors to fully discharge you could see a larger than normal startup current on the AC line; but unless something was broken nothing should get through to the DC parts.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
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There are people here for whom changing the Interleave setting and defragging means nothing, alas... :-D For me, the former was an essential part of setting up a new PC, and the later a good way of wasting a Friday afternoon...
Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."
Feh. I remember when the first step of installing a new hard drive was to perform a low level format before doing the standard format. This was because different operating systems needed to set up drives very differently: a disk partitioned and formatted for OS/2 would not work with CP/M, which would not work with DOS, which would not work with Amiga, which would not work with NEXT, which would not work with... you get the picture (and God help me, I've worked on all of those operating systems.) It wasn't enough to just format the disk: you had to effectively redesign the way the way the disk itself was organized on a very basic level.
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Feh. I remember when the first step of installing a new hard drive was to perform a low level format before doing the standard format. This was because different operating systems needed to set up drives very differently: a disk partitioned and formatted for OS/2 would not work with CP/M, which would not work with DOS, which would not work with Amiga, which would not work with NEXT, which would not work with... you get the picture (and God help me, I've worked on all of those operating systems.) It wasn't enough to just format the disk: you had to effectively redesign the way the way the disk itself was organized on a very basic level.
Gregory.Gadow wrote:
formatted for OS/2 ... and God help me, I've worked on all of those operating systems
You have my sympathy.
Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."
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Gregory.Gadow wrote:
formatted for OS/2 ... and God help me, I've worked on all of those operating systems
You have my sympathy.
Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."
Thanks: I still have nightmares.
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Few months ago there was a power-outage here too. There is a high tension cable entering the building (gazillion Volts), which goes into the transformer that turns it into a nice EU-standard 230V. Unfortunately, someone had switched the transformer back on with the main circuit still open. Apparently if you switch on a transformer of that size, the coils need some time to build up the magnetic field, or the computers get kicked in the face with 400V. There were a lot of casualties due to having little to no surge protection in the building. Luckily I had unplugged my computer and the server survived. :-D
Giraffes are not real.
That sounds unlikely... The excitation or magnetization current of a transformer builds slowly, as a transformer is an inductor, which resists a change in current. The output voltage is fairly fixed, and determined by the turns ratio of the transformer. It is possible that some resonance between the load reactance and the transformer inductance could cause a voltage overshoot condition, but that would require a highly capacitive load. Modern power supplies are supposed to incorporate power factor correction, which prevents the upstream power source from "seeing" the capacitance in the dc side of the PSU circuit. Of course, some people - call them "cheapos" - buy PCs with odd names and components of dubious origin, which may not incorporate PFC. In any event, with proper surge protection and a cheap UPS, this sort of failure doesn't happen.
Will Rogers never met me.
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That sounds unlikely... The excitation or magnetization current of a transformer builds slowly, as a transformer is an inductor, which resists a change in current. The output voltage is fairly fixed, and determined by the turns ratio of the transformer. It is possible that some resonance between the load reactance and the transformer inductance could cause a voltage overshoot condition, but that would require a highly capacitive load. Modern power supplies are supposed to incorporate power factor correction, which prevents the upstream power source from "seeing" the capacitance in the dc side of the PSU circuit. Of course, some people - call them "cheapos" - buy PCs with odd names and components of dubious origin, which may not incorporate PFC. In any event, with proper surge protection and a cheap UPS, this sort of failure doesn't happen.
Will Rogers never met me.
OTOH something active PFC does disagrees with the modified square wave output of consumer level UPSes in a way that reduces the amount of runtime they can output. At some point I'd really like to see informed commentary from a EE not being filtered through marketing at a company trying to sell sine wave UPSes. Those types make the problem sound apocalyptic which with >90% of consumer UPS/PC pairings in the last few years being modified square wave/active PFC is obviously not the case. Among the things I'm curious about are how large the runtime deficit is vs a true sine ups, and vs the capacitive load distortions and lower efficiencies of older PSUs.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
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That sounds unlikely... The excitation or magnetization current of a transformer builds slowly, as a transformer is an inductor, which resists a change in current. The output voltage is fairly fixed, and determined by the turns ratio of the transformer. It is possible that some resonance between the load reactance and the transformer inductance could cause a voltage overshoot condition, but that would require a highly capacitive load. Modern power supplies are supposed to incorporate power factor correction, which prevents the upstream power source from "seeing" the capacitance in the dc side of the PSU circuit. Of course, some people - call them "cheapos" - buy PCs with odd names and components of dubious origin, which may not incorporate PFC. In any event, with proper surge protection and a cheap UPS, this sort of failure doesn't happen.
Will Rogers never met me.
Well, obviously. When I have to deal with power problems, I usually just reverse the polarity then reroute all auxiliary power through the deflector array. :laugh:
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OTOH something active PFC does disagrees with the modified square wave output of consumer level UPSes in a way that reduces the amount of runtime they can output. At some point I'd really like to see informed commentary from a EE not being filtered through marketing at a company trying to sell sine wave UPSes. Those types make the problem sound apocalyptic which with >90% of consumer UPS/PC pairings in the last few years being modified square wave/active PFC is obviously not the case. Among the things I'm curious about are how large the runtime deficit is vs a true sine ups, and vs the capacitive load distortions and lower efficiencies of older PSUs.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
That's something I'd like to understand better, too. For starters, why would you use a modified square wave to begin with? A square wave is 1/2 fundamental frequency, 1/3 3rd harmonic, 1/5 5th harmonic, etc, IIRC. Why would you waste 50% of your capacity that way, when it's so easy to use switching technology and a LC tank to smooth things out without significant losses? A 4th order bandpass filter is easily made with a series LC circuit, followed by a parallel LC tank, and that will appear to be resistive to the driving source.
Will Rogers never met me.
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That's something I'd like to understand better, too. For starters, why would you use a modified square wave to begin with? A square wave is 1/2 fundamental frequency, 1/3 3rd harmonic, 1/5 5th harmonic, etc, IIRC. Why would you waste 50% of your capacity that way, when it's so easy to use switching technology and a LC tank to smooth things out without significant losses? A 4th order bandpass filter is easily made with a series LC circuit, followed by a parallel LC tank, and that will appear to be resistive to the driving source.
Will Rogers never met me.
Roger Wright wrote:
For starters, why would you use a modified square wave to begin with?
Other than the fact that a modified square wave is the cheapest wave form that generally will keep the magic smoke in electronics... I'd always assumed that the extra hardware needed for a true sine wave (or something reasonably close to it) was relatively expensive since it only ever showed up on double conversion UPSes which also need significantly higher grade charging and inverter circuitry.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
