Brownouts, shorts, explosions and the unix pc.
Augustine Cano
afc at shibaya.lonestar.org
Sat Jan 5 15:59:17 AEST 1991
I recently had a couple of quite dramatic power related experiences:
One day, while at the keyboard, I experienced dozens of brownouts over a
period of at least 45 seconds. All lights would dim for periods between
1/3 second and 1 second, the unix pc power supply would whistle and then
go back to normal. The system never crashed, even though I frantically
closed all windows, killed all processes and got ready for an orderly
shutdown.
On another occasion, the power went crazy; not in the orderly and
predictable fashion described above. This time the fluctuations were
completely random and even more serious. This also went on for at
least 30 seconds. Amazingly, I could hear explosions from outside,
perfectly synchronized with the power fluctuations. I thought a
transformer was about to blow up but everything went back to normal.
No crash this time either. It was a rainy day so I assume some wet
branch fell on the power lines and shorted them.
No damage occurred in either instance, possibly thanks to the very old
surge suppressor I have protecting the computer...
--
Augustine Cano INTERNET: afc at shibaya.lonestar.org
UUCP: ...!{ernest,egsner}!shibaya!afc
More information about the Comp.sys.att
mailing list