G'day!
In a former or future life I must have been a very bad person to computers!
The computer died again last week, the guru fixed it yesterday, the supply mob lost a sub station this morning, took out my monitor and beer fridge!
Much sadness at my place![B)]
xxup lives in Brisbane as well and had a much worse problem/ disaster a while back; asked him via an email this morning what he has done to protect his electronics.....
My query is what do you blokes do in the protection depatment.Thanks.


ps
the guru had a replacement monitor at my joint in 50 minutes,on a Saturday, and refused any payment.
The good people are still out there.
( he got paid anyway [^] )

pps (edit 21/09/08)
I bought the totaly off topic subject about the beer fridge in because a fridge is a pretty robust electrical device.
If you substitute computer holding Win Digipet for beer beer fridge...
.... and Central Station for computer monitor.[:0]
There could be much more then great sadness at your and my place.[xx(]

My apoligies for such a slack lead article for a new thread.[:(]

no smiley

ppps

... an almighty kick in the guts and the beer fridge is just chugging away, is that cool or what![:p]

ROwan,
For my Computer equipment a use a 750 VA or 1 KVA UPS. Not very expensive. give a phone call re a cost.
very reasonable. Ask Adrian.

N

It has indeed something to do with MRR since power surges can take out our precious controllers. Had two computers + a TV taken out some years ago during a thunderstorm... Had to replace the power units in the computers, luckily the electronics still was ok... The TV was not so lucky, though...

I myself have not yet invested in power protection/UPS equipment but will do that soon...

Just a power surge filter as built into some power strips may protect you from some overvoltage but are not good when you get power dips, which can be just as harmful.
I have power surge protection in power strips in my "repair corner", but not anywhere else.

I will buy some APC distributors with built in UPS when I get to start my layout seriously since the electronics is worth protecting, esp regarding the cost of the UPS units vs the time & cost of repairing M controllers... Luckily we have a rather stable power supply here in Sweden, but it can happen anywhere... Better safe than sorry...

I believe that surge protectors are a must for a model train system. The loss could be catastrophic if high voltage gets into the line through lightning or other causes. We had a power outage just yesterday.

I unplug my system when not in use but use a surge protector anyway just in case it happens while it is plugged in.

I know of a couple who lost 30,000 dollars worth of equipment due to a lightning strike while they were out of the country. Air conditioners, refrigerators, computers, freezers, TV's most every lighting system in the house, etc, etc.

I thought it lucky that the house didn't burn down. Also, they had no protectors, but that wouldn't have helped all those systems anyway. That was a lesson to me to protect those systems that are not replaceable. Like my Marklin.

When they got home there was that smell of rotten food in the house. They called me and we found a slight burned place on the outside air compressor.

Then I remembered the storm while they were gone. That was it. The surge went all through the house taking out most everything. Their insurance company paid some of it but they still spent thousnds out of pocket. It's not funny and it's always worth having the protection.


Cheers, Bob

Hi Dale, couple of good points you bought up there.

When I look back at my lead post for a new thread, very slack effort Rowan.[:I] Maybe not so much off topic as unfocused on what I was trying to convey.I did think about where to post it and even when I did post I was latter thinking wether it was in the right spot.

Pretty important subject, any one thinks it would be better placed for more members to see it, only too happy to request that it be moved.

I shall now go and put a PPS (edit ) in the lead post.

I was in a pretty heavy duty "geek" store near Boston. Named "You do it electronics". The store is large and has all the wire,resistors or any other electronic part you can think of.

I was looking at the surge protectors - anywhere from $ 15 to hundreds of $. The salesman said - " why do you want to spend a lot on one of these?". " Just buy a cheap one and if it blows buy another. The expensive ones just shut down and you can restart them."

I never really thought about it that way before but it seems to make sense. Buy a cheap surge protector for protection if you ever need it. I have had them on my computers, TV's and trains for years but am unaware of them ever being called into play. At least, I have never had to reset one except when I was screwing around with things and caused to blow out.

Eric

Basically a car hit the power pole down the street and blew up some very expensive electrical items including a PC a couple of years ago. All of our PCs and electronics (like stereo and TV) have been on power board based surge units for years, but unfortunately when the high voltage line touches the domestic power line even momentarily the surge will even jump to devices that are switched off at the wall at the time.. I recommend that you unplug everything in the train room when it is not in use..

After the event, the electrician recommended that we install a main board surge protection as a way to protect the board and the household from another surge like the one we had at that time. They vary in price from a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars for units that can also supply high grade power to the house. So we selected an affordable one. It is shown within the red circle in the picture below. It is yet to be fully tested, but it won't be long before another knuckle head hits that power pole!



We still use the cheaper power boards for the PCs, TV, Stereo, train room gear etc. We also have a UPS, as mentioned by Nev for our main PC and the ADSL/Wirless network, the one I am using now, so that when the power goes out the PC is shudown gracefully and the wireless network and ADSL keep running so that I can get the laptop out of the bag (hopefully with a full battery) and continue to use the forum until the power comes back on..

Hi Rowan
I use a dedicated servo-controlled automatic voltage regulator (not too expensive and easily obtainable) to fix the supply to the train power supplies at 220VAC. We have heaps of over voltage problems here which mess around with my controllers. (IB in particular)

Together with quick acting surge protectors , this may help to prevent overvoltages to your sensitive equipment.

Man!!! the beer fridge - that is priority ..Get a new one quick!!!