Power blackout

robert muldoon

Had a power blackout last pm in our area,when I went to record something on Sky+,there was a system fault notice.Did a system restore but no good.Rang sky this am and they tried a system resore without success, the long and short of it is I have to get a new box.Does this often happen with power black outs and what can i do to prevent same??

DMC

Are you in an urban or rural location.

Dunno if a surge protector would help, probably would.

dmeehan

how old was the box, as a mater of interest

robert muldoon

DMC wrote:

Are you in an urban or rural location.

Dunno if a surge protector would help, probably would.

The blackout occured in the Kill- Johnstown area Co Kildare

DMC

Semi-rural so. With fluctuations in rural power supplies, a surge protector would be nice to have.

JCB's permitting.

watty

Most surge protectors are a waste of money. A Computer "UPS" with two 12V gel cells inside works perfectly, at least good ones like "APC" do. I had som equipment at a mountain top site and the UPS/ Surge system did not protect against very fast power glich off. The cpus in the gear did not reset till the system was manually unplugged and restored. Now it has a 96 AH low maint battery and smart charger.

byte

Some of the more expensive Belkin surge protectors are supposed to be pretty good. Though I'm just going on opinion of others, as I just have a not-to-be-relied-on cheaper surge protector on most items!

I should however consider an APC UPS for my computer system though for a cleaner supply (plus it would allow me time to shut down apps properly)

watty

The Belkin stuff is over hyped. The claims on thier packaging would not stand in court. You can't make USB data go better or modem go better by buying a "better" cable or using gold.

As for surge protectors I would ask someone on Nigeria or Panama where they get very regular storms. We put better circuitry into Industrial controllers and Telecom equipment, but it had limited protection. Anti RF protection designed in does work though.

The soirts of problems I find replacing or repairing would not be avoided byt surge protectors.

In any case if a sharp glitch power out occurs many CPU pbased / microcontrollers do not reset, a surge [protector doesn't help. The "power on reset" circuit does not have time to discharge so the CPU hangs. A design fault. I put a reverse diode across the reset capacitor charging resistor and then any power off glitch discharges the capapcitor instantly and if the CPU chip loses power then it gets a proper reset after the glitch.

robert muldoon

dmeehan wrote:

how old was the box, as a mater of interest

The box is just over 2 years old