3B1 Hard Disk Woes (Plea for HELP!)

[Thad P Floryan]

John McMillan concludes one of his recent postings with:

"	PS: In a recent power hit in Lincroft, several 3B1 disks expired.
	Oddly, none of us with Spike/Noise suppression units were hurt.
	Then there's the fellah who hadn't put his suppression unit in
	service yet... sad fellah.  Don't you be sad: use line conditioning.
"

Sage advice.  Prior to installing a UPS _AND_ a line-conditioner on every
system here, I could expect several failures a week (on any of Amiga, UNIXPC,
several homebrews, etc.).  Even turning on a flourescent room light or turning
off a modem while writing to a floppy would trash the disk; now I can operate
drill motors, etc. on the same line circuit with impunity ... ZERO errors for
over 3-1/2 years now, and ALL my systems are operated 24 hours/day, 7 days/wk.

In my quest for 100% system reliability, I rented a line monitor for 30 days
and let it record everything on the AC power.  What it saw almost made me poop
my pants ... literally.  2000V spikes, hash, RF, etc etc etc  even lossage of
a cycle (of the 60 Hz) now and then (and this was NOT during the "normal" power
outages for this area).

The types of crap one finds on the AC power line are caused by any/all of:
	air conditioners,
	refrigerators,
	flourescent lamps,
	any other inductive or capacitive loads (modems, printers, fans, etc.),
	thunderstorm activity ANYWHERE near your power grid,
	hospitals and medical equipment,
	construction activity (esp. the ol' backhoe digging up power lines),
	air pollution and acid rain,
	animals "playing" around power lines/transformers (and this includes
		your neighbors' kids with their kites), and
	anything else that plugs into the AC power line.

If your livelihood depends on reliable system operation, you're living on
borrowed time (or walking the edge) if you don't have at least a good spike
and surge/transient suppressor between the wall outlet and your system(s).  I
even have special modem protectors (designed/built by GTE) to work in
conjunction with the "Primary Phone Line Protector" (the "box" where the phone
service enters your site) installed on every line by one's local TelCo.

Yeah, I sometimes joke about operating my computers under candlelight during
a power failure (when the UPS is powering everything), but the peace of mind is
definitely worth it.  The only thing I haven't got working with the 1200 Watt
units yet is getting the signals from the UPS' DB-9 connector into the UNIXPC
to carry on the dialogue between the UPS and the computer as has been done with
the Convergent Tech Miniframes (these UPS systems were DESIGNED for use with
the Miniframe under contract to SAFE in Arizona).  If you want to contact them
for the address of a dealer near you:

	SAFE Power Systems, Inc.
	528 West 21st Street
	Tempe, AZ  85282        602/894-6864

"PC" magazine had a good article several years ago about surge protectors; some
they tested even AMPLIFIED the spikes to yet higher voltages!  At least you know
that nothing over approx. 4,000 volts will come into your system ... 4000V is
the flashover point between the two prongs (hot and neutral) on your standard
USA AC power plug.

Thad Floryan [ thad at cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]