I bought a Trip-Lite 2400W power line conditioner. It’s was a bit pricey, but it corrects for under- and over-voltages, as well as filtering noise and spikes. Not sure it would save a cap whose time has come, but it gives me a warm fuzzy about plugging in old gear. On Tue, Aug 20, 2019 at 12:33 PM Jason Perkins via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
If you get an APC Smart-UPS, be sure to calibrate the charge voltage. They drift over time, and end up cooking the cells:
http://www.jjoseph.org/notes/apc_smartups_battery_float_voltage
Thanks,
On Tue, 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
-- Jason Perkins 313 355 0085