Power to the Pluggers and Players

[DeVaultSetter]

Essentially a thread sparking on all things that thrive on AC/DC power, and what better way to open up than with a rather circuitous diatribe on a blinkered bevy of UPS technological marvels pervading the vault.
Right now, the W11 PC & monitor + NAS are connected to an old APC Back UPS RS 900G (purchased mid 2017 so, yip, the battery is not new). Posted an enquiry at Schneider, ended up answering it after tweaking something in their recently installed software.
There remains an outstanding issue with the PC automatically waking just after hibernation (as an older rig used to do on the same UPS), sampling the venerable apcupsd before dear old W11 having taken umbrage and bricking it (next one down) altogether.
Beginning to understand why AndalayBay wasn’t a fan of hibernate as it functions in today’s HW, either, and as to future prospects, a working model of hibernation is sure to be entering a long period of hibernation itself, succeeded only by a long line of hibernation groundhog days. 😛
Edit: Just before diving into a total immersion trip with UEFI and timers, there came good news- switched off wake for all USB Hid keyboards and mice as explained at the end of here, and the machine stays off! 🙂

• This topic was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by DeVaultSetter.

[Spastic Hamburger]

I’ve always had issues with hibernate. Back in the XP days, weird stuff would happen so I eventually quit using it. These days, Windows doesn’t even show the option unless you do some magic. Wouldn’t be too terribly surprised if they phase it out altogether by W14

How do you turn the system back on in sleep mode? Press the power button, I take it? Or did you turn it off for hibernate?

While you’re messing around in the UEFI settings, you may want to turn on the virtualization features to improve performance in stuff like DOSBox. 🙂

[DeVaultSetter]

Right now, using a “low-impact” customer power plan, as for the keystrokes, unfortunately the Prodigy has no power button! The PC chassis is endowed with one hence an unswerving reliance on that. 😛
The power plan includes a hybrid sleep which keeps the fans spinning, followed by full hibernation after 60 minutes. Thing is, if it’s not hibernated by command, the rig does actually power up intermittently during hibernation, and, after around 10-15 seconds, (realising it’s “supposed” to be off) turns itself off again! Consequently, this poor user has lent himself to falling into the marvelous rhythm of shutting the “****” thing down once a day, an arrangement the machine and human can come to terms with, at least on an “equal” basis. 😛
Will be planning to surf the UEFI sometime, a minor tweak at best (said Nervous Nellie to Cautious Conrad.)

Moving on to other issues bouncing in on the spectrum, the first was an ongoing going issue with FTA digital from the antennae, “solved” by power reset on the amplifier. A friend suggested boosting the antennae signal which entails more spaghetti and expense so probably just have to live with it.

A slightly more disturbing occurrence is the effect of the new rig on the AM/FM radio reception at the other end of the room. The task now being what component in the PC is the cause – another use case it turned out to be a fan described in this old thread. In which case, here it could be the Cryorig QF120 LED Silent Series 120mm PWM Fan installed as an extra. These days many are pointing their RFI fingers at PSUs, the one here is a Cooler Master MWE Gold FM 650W Power Supply with about the same throughput as the one in the old rig.
To help diagnosing the issue (apart from spectrum analysers and the like) is what type of sound the RFI produces on the radio. Here it’s just a static buzz, not at constant pitch, as it modulates to the voices and music in broadcast. A site which offers different types of RFI sounds of computers is this, if only there were more samples from other components like fans and PSUs. In any case, a great resource for Sounds and Music! 🙂
Here’s a very good read-up on RFI

UPSing the ante yet again is the upstairs 1200 VA Eaton UPS: 5S1200AU, old (early 2017) so only the manual is hosted now, which does the job, sort of, except the USB unit control codes can no longer be read by the installed driver software, presumably because something got fried. Well, there are connect alerts (every ~3-4 mins) when a USB ommunication port is connected to the UPS. Hard to diagnose, as it started to do this while diagnosing software freeze-UPS back in ’21. One could re-install the driver at connect, and things would work, however the process had to be repeated every bootup. Regrettable, as Eaton Tech Support were very much on the side of accentuating the turn on/turn off/ install/uninstall approach, with little regard for other methods e.g. USB Analyzer.
And to cap it all off, attempted to register in order to become one of the family, rather miffed at the return email:

Thank you for contacting Eaton.

 

We regret to inform you that your request has been denied. Further inquiries should be directed to your Power Systems Administrator or your Eaton Contact.

 

Sincerely,

Eaton Access Request Management

🙁

[Spastic Hamburger]

I haven’t seen a power button on a keyboard in years. Do they still put them on the keyboards? Last one I had with the button on it was an old Mac from the early 90’s/late 80’s.

For the EMF interference, you can try putting some aluminum foil on the side of the case facing the radio. That’ll create an RF shield and may help some. If not, you can always use the foil in the oven 🙂

For the amp here, I had some buzzing coming in from it to the speakers that I fixed by buying some shielded caps for the RCA jacks.

Awesome! We’ll need to get some of those sounds added! 😀

Looking over their page there, it sounds like that’s for their business customers but it’s not entirely clear. Yeah, it’s starting to sound like the UPS is on its last legs. 🙁

[DeVaultSetter]

Oh, have some with power buttons in the PC graveyard underneath, there are old Logitech, Laser, and Sky keyboards all from the noughties I think. Do remember posting a piccy of the nice looking Sky at AL, these days images on Google are buried, did happen to surf into a nice bit of banter re keyboards wayback. 😛
The foil Will definitely help, but will also look rather awful. Partially settled the issue by turning the aerial on the radio to face the other way. 😛
Fun fact: The radio is much closer to the microwave, which performs a much better job of killing the conversation. 😛

Btw, the APC software deposits this directory APCPowerChuteConfig in C:\ (Root) containing a file currentprocess.xml with a bit of data including proc id. Why, don’t ask. 😛

[Spastic Hamburger]

You could also use something like a sheetpan. Any large piece of metal will work! But, yes, it’ll look weird unless it’s in the kitchen 😛

Microwaves are good for a lot of things! 😀

Weird. Usually, that information is stored in RAM as opposed to ROM

[DeVaultSetter]

Nice, do declare the scourer/sponges here are well used, and at the same time not too hard on the nose. 🙂

Watch those sponges! There was someone on the radio today with something to say about carnivorous sponges. Here’s a refresher:

In the actual Windows boot, do they up the performance of the power plan until the core system is loaded? Because of the size of the hosts file, it’s taking a long time for the internet to come online after boot, hence the question.

[Spastic Hamburger]

Cool! Good thing the Spongebob universe avoided them. Who knows how that would have worked out otherwise 😛

I think part of it is that it needs to start all the drivers and things. All my systems have started off at 100% fan speed until everything is fully loaded, for example. I know there’s a bug in Windows that’s existed forever where it sometimes doesn’t initialize the Internet connection and requires a reboot. Large hosts files can definitely slow things down.

[Spastic Hamburger]

As we know, I’m constantly doing research on a variety of things mostly related to circuits and other bits of science and came across this bit: https://www.avnirvana.com/threads/surgex-zerosurge-brickwall-tripplite-or-what-kind-of-surge-protector-do-you-use.9205/

It was a pretty interesting read. My understanding is that the current into the wall, along with the voltage, is constant, which is why our devices use transformers to change the voltage. That would leave the power rating as being modified with resistance or a drop in voltage, leading to a drop in power. That’s in regards to the bit about brownouts. It is also my understanding that the joule rating is the amount of energy the MOVs can absorb before blowing with a higher rating equating a longer life to the devices and a lesser chance of failure. Those points are refuted by that thread, interestingly enough. That said, it doesn’t go into too much detail on how the non-sacrificial surge protectors dissipate the extra energy, as heat or something else. More research is definitely required and may even be worthy of a blog post 🙂

If I can find a dead one, it may be worth dissecting it to figure out how it works. They’re too expensive to break down a working unit 😛

• This reply was modified 2 months, 3 weeks ago by Spastic Hamburger.
• This reply was modified 2 months, 3 weeks ago by Spastic Hamburger.

[DeVaultSetter]

[Post moved] hope that’s okay. 🙂
Very interesting thread! As noted in the last bit of the second answer to this question, a consideration is the fuse going if the MOV gets too hot for risk of fire.
Don’t think Zero Surge do units for Australian power outlets, found this for the aerial, something with more outlets would be nice. The Surge Interceptor up here is now a H/W relic, this old post mentions the listing at Wayback, no pictures captured for some reason.
The local Dick Smith electronics store automatically replaced old faulty ones with new, no charge, the labour required to analyse, order and replace components in the unit often exceeds the value of a new unit. The store closed around 2018, so now left with this unit, still functional with the outlets, but connections with the aerial now cause pixellation on the set, so slow burn happening somewhere. 😛

[Spastic Hamburger]

No worries!

Yep. I’ve actually seen some old surge protectors that have had burn marks on them, likely from such an event. I have no idea how mine are designed. Surge protectors are one of those devices that are important but hard to get much information on a specific model so I generally just stick to buying well-known brands like Belkin.

Yeah, it looks like Zero Surge only ships to Canada and the US. You could try reaching out to the folks at Brick Wall (recommended by Stereophile and based in Florida!), which are just rebranded Zero Surge units from the sounds of it.

If you want a traditional one, these are ones I got last year. Haven’t tried them with the antenna, though. In fact, I haven’t tried them with the coaxial jacks at all 😛

[Spastic Hamburger]

So the Wikipedia article on brownouts is severely lacking and nigh useless: it’s basically just a dictionary definition with a short blurb of examples. Been experiencing that a lot on Wiki. Articles that were once well written and informative are now basic and generic. 🙁

[DeVaultSetter]

Belkin make really good stuff, so will keep an eye out. Have to replace an aging 6 outlet power board and – er – a few more around as well. 😛
The Back-UPS seems to be working after the battery change, although the same thing still happened with the HP, until the realization the UPS settings are per computer, and not stored on the unit. Awaiting confirmation for that. 🙂
Something happened to the post dates on that site when it migrated back in ’21, some of my older posts were redated to that date like these ones from around 2017 now all having the same date of ‎2021-06-28 06:40 AM. 😛
Could it be “AI” behind it – time then to hit the Wikipedia comment pages. 🙂

[Spastic Hamburger]

Great!

Could be that the dates weren’t convertible so they were just set to the date of migration. There was a similar issue back on Dark Creations before I arrived that never got resolved.

Possibly! There is some discussion on the Talk page that last saw activity twelve years ago about it. Perhaps it’s time to revive it?

[Spastic Hamburger]

Got an old surge protector that’s ten years old. It still works as a power strip but, after ten years, its MOVs are probably suspect so I may disassemble it to see how it’s wired. Haven’t decided yet if I want to keep it as a strip or simply dissect it, though. Leaning towards the latter as I really want to know how it works outside of reading on the web 🙂

• This reply was modified 1 month, 1 week ago by Spastic Hamburger.
• This reply was modified 1 month, 1 week ago by Spastic Hamburger.
• This reply was modified 1 month, 1 week ago by Spastic Hamburger.

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