Personally I just leave the devices unplugged from the AC power until I'm ready to use them. Then I have no worries about power spikes or even lightning strikes. But if you must leave them on constant power, then yes a UPS would be a very good idea. But before plugging anything of value into the UPS, hook up a load to capacity of the UPS to see how long it lasts on battery and if the batteries are still good. Of course you could do a battery test from the UPS menu as well. Mike R. Sent from: My extremely complicated, hand held electronic device.
On Aug 20, 2019, at 12:27 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
On 8/20/19 12:23 PM, John Heritage via vcf-midatlantic wrote: For longevity of vintage computers that are hooked up and powered on semi-frequently; I assume any kind of UPS is better than none to try to reduce power spikes, or reduce PSU fatigue from brownouts.
I was curious what folks recommendations or thoughts are here? I have a couple of old (~ 15+ year) UPSes that i'm debating replacing the batteries on, and one of them would be for plugging in some vintage hardware.
That's not a bad idea; most UPSes have MOVs in them, and some have decent line filters. Cheap consumer-grade ones typically don't, but those should be in the garbage anyway.
A note about MOVs: I generally like MOVs, but they do have one evil aspect: They fail silently, and you won't know that they're no longer doing their jobs.
Is there anything I should watch out for? Should I assume these are too old to effectively monitor/protect - or doesnt' that really matter? etc.
The UPSes? Many higher-end UPSes from even 20 years ago have serial ports for monitoring.
-Dave
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA