Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!uunet!mcvax!ukc!icdoc!syma!marksm From: marksm@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Mark S Madsen) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: A500 power supply (how good is it?) Message-ID: <1239@syma.sussex.ac.uk> Date: 16 Aug 89 15:58:39 GMT References: <1400@bnr-fos.UUCP* <435@eagle.wesleyan.edu* Reply-To: marksm@syma.susx.ac.uk (Mark S Madsen) Organization: University of Sussex Lines: 46 In article <435@eagle.wesleyan.edu* jtreworgy@eagle.wesleyan.edu writes: *In article <1400@bnr-fos.UUCP*, protcoop@leibniz.uucp writes: ** ** Hi. I recently upgraded from an A1000 to an A500 (yes, I do consider it ** to be an upgrade :-). * *Hmmph! You've fallen by the wayside with that Atari-ST lookalike. :-) * ** I was wondering how long I could safely leave my ** 500 powered up? I remember that at one time I left my 1000 on for 4 ** months straight (not the monitor though) and it didn't hurt it a bit. I ** realized that this would probably blow up my 500 so I want to know what ** the safe limits are. Also, how could I expand these limits? Would the ** main problem be with the power supply over-heating, or the computer ** itself? Would rigging a fan up to either/both do me any good? * *Leaving it on shouldn't tax the power supply... if something is going to kill *it, it's going to kill it within a couple hours of turning it on. (This would *happen if you tried to draw too much power, i.e. you hooked up a second disk *drive. :-)). Right about the early kill, but wrong about the disk drives. *Some people say that it's actually better for the machine to leave *it on all the time (i.e. less wear & tear on the circuitry from turning on & *off). This is nice if you have clean power. We have blackouts & spikes all the *time so I prefer to leave my machine off when I'm not using it. I use DMouse (yeah, I know QMouse is supposed to be more fashionable ;-) to blank the screen after 300 seconds, and never turn off my A500 unless I'm going away for more than 24hrs. The system has been turned on for about 10 months out of the last 12 (with a second drive and an A501) and has never suffered a glitch (touch wood :-) Tips: leave disks in the drive (but not irreplaceable ones !) for peace and quiet, and vacuum out the disk drives, just placing the nozzle over the opening briefly, regularly. This will considerably reduce the number of "disk errors". *-- *James A. Treworgy "You should have seen me with the poker man, Hope this helps. -- ####################################################################### ## Mark S. Madsen #### marksm@syma.sussex.ac.uk ################### #### Astronomy Centre, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QH, UK. ## #################### Life's a bitch. Then you die. #################