[Coco] Live AND Learn..........

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 10 August 2018 00:04:57 Joe Schutts via Coco wrote:

> Hi Everyone,

[...] 

> It's called a UPS (a 
> "Universal Power Supply").

No, its an Un-interruptable Power Supply, but we get the idea.

I have a 1500 watt unit here, runs everything in this room but the lights 
and one printer and some x10 stuff.  x10 won't go thru a UPS, and 
printers, if laser, take a big surge for 10-15 seconds while warming up 
the drum, a surge that will trip off even this 1500 watter. Inkjets, 
even huge ones, this brother can print or scan tabloid sized stuff, and 
are much more frugal.

> I have 3 of them hooked up to my 
> "ENTERTAINMENT (and PC) CENTER" that I listed above and I couldn't
> live without ANY of them... They have saved my BACON in more times
> than I can count and saved me HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of dollars in
> repair/replacement costs over the years. Now don't get me wrong, each
> of these "UPS" units cost me around $50-$100 each and a replacement
> battery costs about $30-$50 (for each unit) but I would rather dish
> out $30-$50 for a replacement battery than have to spend HUNDREDS if
> not THOUSANDS of dollars in repair/replacement costs for a fried piece
> of electronic equipment...

All of my stuffs here, mostly running cnc machinery, are also running 
linux whose ext4 journaling file system is close to, if not bulletproof 
in the presence of a poor power source. A failure would have to occur in 
the precise time of the journal write, a few milliseconds. I quite 
commonly shut them down by hitting the power button. Since theres a 4 
second delay, and linux knows the button has been pushed and held, thats 
eons of time to complete any pending disk writes. So where I used to 
have a second ups out in the shop building, I didn't bother to replace 
its batteries the last time they failed. With amanda doing a backup 
every night, if a disc gets contaminated, the cd to re-install is right 
there, and once the reinstall is done, and the package manager has 
installed the latest amanda-client, I can start an almost bare metal 
recovery which might take amanda an hour, turn out the lights and leave. 
When I next check I find the machine is exactly the way it was a few 
hours before the failure. But amazingly to me, in the decade since those 
batteries died, thanks to linux and its journaling file systems, I have 
not had to do anything. Many times I've gone to a machine, turned on the 
monitors, and found a login prompt, my only clue that there has been a 
power failure. 

> Sometimes when my power gets cut off - by either an electrical storm
> or a power outage I can manage to get to the UPS and turn it off and
> save the battery (after I recharge it) for later use. Sometime not,
> and the battery get completely drained and needs to get replaced. But
> like I said, I'd rather pay the $30-$50 than the "COSTLY"
> alternative...

I don't even have that long duration failure problem. Cost me about 8 
grand, but because the wife has COPD, the oxygen generator can't be off 
for very long. So power failure durations are well under 10 seconds as 
long as there's nat gas pressure, as its all automatic start and 
transfer, and its big enough to run the air conditioner and all my stuff 
too.

> Now some here might say this is "NOT A COCO RELATED RANT"...
> I cannot agree. This pertains to the CoCo (and ALL it's users) and ALL
> it's hardware. By buying AND using a UPS on your systems you can save
> your HARD TO REPLACE CoCos and it's ALL it's hardware for future
> generations and possibly save you some time and money in the
> process... Give it a thought, I sure that many of you will agree with
> everything I've said here... If not I'm always here to respond to your
> suggestions AND/OR comments...

I agree. My pair of 1GB scsi disks are stuck, stiction and can't start. 
So one of these days I need to make it boot a drivewire  modified 
nitros9 from the cocosdc, and then see if I can get the first drive 
started and copy all of my stuff to the sdc. But I was an early 
receiver, mine is from the first batch and has never been recognized by 
my 2meg,6309 equiped coco3, so I need to update it for that first.

Links and howto's appreciated.
 
> Take care everyone...

My sentiments exactly... 
> Joe...

-- 
Cheers, Gene Heskett
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>