Something is going on

[Opry99er]

I have ghosts or something....

 

Less than two years at this new house, and I have had 3 TI-99/4A computers, a Toshiba laptop, an Asus laptop, a Dell desktop and now (tonight) my beloved iMac G3 ALL die on me for different reasons.

 

The TI computers all developed the screaming black screen of death, the hard drives on both laptops and the desktop went bad, and now my PAV board kust eent out in my Mac.

 

 

Less than 2 years.

 

 

The TI computers, the desktop, and the Mac were all plugged into a wicked UPS power supply, the laptops were plugged into various wall sockets around the house.

 

 

I swear, I am cursed....

[zzip]

Electrical problem of some sort?

 

 

I swear my house burns through lightbulbs at an insane rate, even those Compact Florescent bulbs that are supposed to last years. When you keep replacing the same bulb over and over, it's hard to believe it's just coincidence. Fortunately for me it was just light bulbs, not other electronics.

[+save2600]

I have a friend that lives within a block or two of a power substation and he's always blowing through things. Usually cheap consumer audio gear, bulbs, etc. You guys have a power plant or substation near by chance?

[accousticguitar]

Have you checked the outlet voltage?

[Opry99er]

I live at the end of a long road on top of a hill, middle of nowhere.

 

I have not personally put a meter to the socket, no... but we have had the power company out here once or twice during weather outages, etc. They have never mentioned an issue (although at the tine it did not strike me to have them test voltage)

[Omega-TI]

First, if you do not already have a << WHOLE HOME SURGE PROTECTOR >> for your breaker box, get one.

Second, if you have low voltage issues, consider getting << SOMETHING LIKE THIS >> to use with your hard to replace classic gear.

 

A little upfront protection & insurance can save you from nightmares later.

[Metal Jesus]

I think you know who to call...

 

[Opry99er]

[accousticguitar]

The power company won't tell you the voltage is bad, even if it is.

[simbalion]

I would definitely check to see if you are getting either constantly high voltages or erratic spikes in voltages. A little bit low probably wouldn't hurt anything, considering we are running on higher voltages than most of our stuff handled back in the day anyways. My tube checker makes a good meter to at least see what is going on. During the winter I have to constantly reset the line voltage control on it as the furnaces actually make it jump up and down!

[awhite2600]

In the late '80s I worked as an IT manager. We had about 50 PCs. Electrical equipment kept getting fried at an alarming rate. Simple voltage checks with a multimeter didn't show any problems. We ended up renting a voltage logging machine for a few days. Its a device that records the voltage over time on a paper adding machine tape as a line graph. We discovered brief voltage spikes over a few days. I can't remember the exact cause. I think it was a faulty HVAC component that was feeding voltage surges back into the power line. Our electrician figured it out pretty quickly from the graphs, changed the equipment and the problem went away.

[Keatah]

Whatever UPS you use be sure it's a true sine-wave unit. And not a PWM type. Vintage transformers don't like square waves, certain resonance frequencies (in pwm) can and will generate excess heat and mini-spikes.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Could also be the problem I had lately.

[David Baldwin]

Power Lines might be sparking the cones shorting out sending bad power to your house.

[CatPix]

I live at the end of a long road on top of a hill, middle of nowhere.

 

I have not personally put a meter to the socket, no... but we have had the power company out here once or twice during weather outages, etc. They have never mentioned an issue (although at the tine it did not strike me to have them test voltage)

 

If you are on the end of he line, you might experience voltage drop and psikes. If there is a large consumer on the line before you.

In the 60's up to the 80's, my grandparents were on the end of the line, behind a flour mill. They could tell exactly when the mill was running, because then, the lights wuld be a tad dimmer, and then going back to normal every time.

 

Could also be the problem I had lately.

Strange. I guess your houses are wired differently than here, or you have three phase currents? Neutral breaking shoudl'nt affect your power if you are in monophase. At least here, well your power just goes off.

[SignGuy81]

Strange. I guess your houses are wired differently than here, or you have three phase currents? Neutral breaking shoudl'nt affect your power if you are in monophase. At least here, well your power just goes off.

 

Here in US we call it single phase. Looks like he is in Germany and you are in France so all of our wiring is different probably. I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, but in France you have 240V for everything correct, and single phase? Well, here in US we have single phase 240V but the transformer is center tapped to give us our 120V from center(neutral which is also grounded) to either hot. So we would have issue in US as well with a loose neutral because most of everything we run except for big appliances runs off of 120V which requires neutral. Not sure how Germany is wired though.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Here is a picture from German Wikipedia, which describes the issue:

 

We have Three-phase electric power.

Edited May 3, 2017 by Thomas Jentzsch