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From: oster@lapis.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Surge Suppressors
Message-ID: <2105@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Wed, 7-Jan-87 03:06:58 EST
Article-I.D.: jade.2105
Posted: Wed Jan  7 03:06:58 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 7-Jan-87 18:44:21 EST
References: <1094@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU>
Sender: usenet@jade.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: oster@lapis.berkeley.edu.UUCP (David Phillip Oster)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 19
Keywords: Power Supplies, Surge Suppressors, AC Power, PG&E


  If you remember MacWorld Vol.1#1, you'll remember there ewas a
discussion of the mac hardware in that issue.  You can see the surge
protector on th Mac boards. I've been in a room with 3 Macs and 2 Lisas,
and watched a power glitch crash the Lisas without touching the Macs.
  The Mac is simply better than most computing equipment when it comes to
coping with real world power.
  However, surge protection is done with a circuit element called a MOV.
The problem with MOVs is that for every surge they suppress, they wear out
a little. Eventually, they are all used up and nobody has a cheap tester
to tell you when you should replace yours or augment them with an extra
surge protection box.
Steve Ciarcia had a long article discussing surge protection a few years
ago in Byte magazine. It gave tips for building your own surge suppressors
buy buying your own MOVs and soldering them into your extension power
strips.
--- David Phillip Oster		-- "The goal of Computer Science is to
Arpa: oster@lapis.berkeley.edu  -- build something that will last at
Uucp: ucbvax!ucblapis!oster     -- least until we've finished building it."