Those with incredible memory may know lightening hit the house last
summer and took out two computers. Boot SSD drive in one and the video
card in another. Both computers anitques.

I've replaced the MB in one and am making it into the files storage
location for everything. It now has six hard drives running and will
go to ten if I can get a drive controller card to work.

Now the power supply is hopelessly under size. What would you get,
especially with an eye on lightening protection?

karl

On Thu, 05 Mar 2015 08:11:12 -0600, Karl Townsend
wrote:

Those with incredible memory may know lightening hit the house last
summer and took out two computers. Boot SSD drive in one and the video
card in another. Both computers anitques.

I remember cringing then, too.


I've replaced the MB in one and am making it into the files storage
location for everything. It now has six hard drives running and will
go to ten if I can get a drive controller card to work.

Now the power supply is hopelessly under size. What would you get,
especially with an eye on lightening protection?

So, if you're fighting against lightening, you need a heavy-duty
Lightening Darkener. They're very expensive, but you can make your
own. Just buy a gallon and spray India ink all over everything. There
ya go: Darkening achieved!

What, guys? Oh, he meant to say "lightning"? Well why didn't he say
so? That's different.

I don't recall what you did last year, but first would be to set up a
lightning arrestor, followed by a high-joule whole-house surge
suppressor, tailed by a nice UPS. You know how electronics are. The
combo units all do lesser jobs than the discrete components, so I try
to go discrete when I can. Just like the stereo, way back when. (I
miss my good ears.)

Power supply: ATX or other format? I like to have 30-50% more power
available to prevent the power supply from straining its whole
lifetime, and I've never had a p/s die on me. What wattage is the
package drawing now? Figure it out from there. All of my ATX style
power supplies have been the cheap Chiwanese junk from the local
stores, but, as I said, I've never had to replace one due to failure.
And when I started DIVERSIFY!, I was doing mostly computer building
and repair. I think I only replaced one bad p/s in those 3 years, too.

Hope that helps.


--
Stain and poly are their own punishment.

Larry Jaques fired this volley in
:

I don't recall what you did last year, but first would be to set up a
lightning arrestor, followed by a high-joule whole-house surge
suppressor, tailed by a nice UPS. You know how electronics are. The
combo units all do lesser jobs than the discrete components, so I try
to go discrete when I can. Just like the stereo, way back when. (I
miss my good ears.)

yeah... My nice high-joule surge suppressor supplied by the Power
Monopoly a) isn't covered for direct strikes, and b) went up in smoke
when my shop had a direct strike to the power pole/pig just outside.

It took out everything electrical including some infrastructure wiring...
All my CNCs, every computer, every EVERYTHING electronic that was plugged
in. We do stay very well backed-up, and Ajax CNC special-shipped all the
parts in just a day to rebuild what we had to.

We now have a protocol in the shop that on my command OR at the first
audible sign of thunder, every single piece of anything we want to
protect gets unplugged from EVERYTHING it's connected to... wall,
ethernet lines, phone lines... everything.

That is the only sure way to protect it... and it wouldn't help in a
lightning-induced fire... sigh.

The only good thing was that we ended up with better machines than we had
before, since even the servos and encoders got fried. The baddest of all
was that 'insurance' paid about 1/3 of the cost. ("Depreciation, you
know!")

LLoyd

"Karl Townsend" wrote in message
...
Those with incredible memory may know lightening hit the house last
summer and took out two computers. Boot SSD drive in one and the
video
card in another. Both computers anitques.

I've replaced the MB in one and am making it into the files storage
location for everything. It now has six hard drives running and will
go to ten if I can get a drive controller card to work.

Now the power supply is hopelessly under size. What would you get,
especially with an eye on lightening protection?

karl

These, and disconnect them during storms.
http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Expans...717111-3226909

I run them from inexpensive older laptops with USB3 ExpressCards and
powered hubs.

http://www.amazon.com/J-Tech-Digital.../dp/B005STWIQ2
I notched the plastic for the tab on the stabilizer and taped then
together.

XP may have (solvable) issues with drives over 2TB.

-jsw

On Thu, 05 Mar 2015 08:11:12 -0600, Karl Townsend
wrote:

Now the power supply is hopelessly under size. What would you get,
especially with an eye on lightening protection?

Two Part suggestion

(1) biggest power supply that will fit the computer with
reasonable cost

(2) UPS which will also work as a super surge protector.

Some suggestions

http://tinyurl.com/p6z7j56

http://tinyurl.com/ln25btr

I have bought several items from Tiger and have been
satisfied with their service. I have had the UPS shown for
several years and it has worked with no problems.

Tiger also has some good deals on large capacity HD. I have
had good luck with Western Digital, although the back-up
software they supply with their drives sucks.
http://tinyurl.com/qhyrpks
http://tinyurl.com/l626wwf

Political commentary: NSA? installed "back door"
pre-installed on all hard drives.
http://tinyurl.com/plhw9a4
http://tinyurl.com/qa9vwzm

My [rhetorical] question is: With all this capability, and
the billions "we the people" spend on snooping, how were the
banks and other financial institutions able to run the
LIBOR, FX, commodities, etc. scams for so long, and why is
it so hard to track the tax evaders and money launderers?
Are our snooper troopers getting a "piece of the action,"
getting paid to look the other way, been ordered to look the
other way, or are they just stupid? The "terrorists" are
half a world away, and have no way to get here ==unless we
help them,== but the scammers and tax evaders are among us,
stealing from the majority every day.


--
Unka' George

"Gold is the money of kings,
silver is the money of gentlemen,
barter is the money of peasants,
but debt is the money of slaves"

-Norm Franz, "Money and Wealth in the New Millenium"

On Thursday, March 5, 2015 at 11:51:32 AM UTC-5, Lloyd E. Sponenburgh wrote:
Larry Jaques fired this volley in
:

I don't recall what you did last year, but first would be to set up a
lightning arrestor, followed by a high-joule whole-house surge
suppressor, tailed by a nice UPS. You know how electronics are. The
combo units all do lesser jobs than the discrete components, so I try
to go discrete when I can. Just like the stereo, way back when. (I
miss my good ears.)

yeah... My nice high-joule surge suppressor supplied by the Power
Monopoly a) isn't covered for direct strikes, and b) went up in smoke
when my shop had a direct strike to the power pole/pig just outside.

It took out everything electrical including some infrastructure wiring...
All my CNCs, every computer, every EVERYTHING electronic that was plugged
in. We do stay very well backed-up, and Ajax CNC special-shipped all the
parts in just a day to rebuild what we had to.

We now have a protocol in the shop that on my command OR at the first
audible sign of thunder, every single piece of anything we want to
protect gets unplugged from EVERYTHING it's connected to... wall,
ethernet lines, phone lines... everything.

That is the only sure way to protect it... and it wouldn't help in a
lightning-induced fire... sigh.

The only good thing was that we ended up with better machines than
we had before, since even the servos and encoders got fried. The
baddest of all was that 'insurance' paid about 1/3 of the
cost. ("Depreciation, you know!")

Hey, it must be fancy to have insurance against not only vandalism, liability, accident and theft, but acts of nature.

On Thursday, March 5, 2015 at 1:11:03 PM UTC-5, F. George McDuffee wrote:
On Thu, 05 Mar 2015 08:11:12 -0600, Karl Townsend
wrote:

Now the power supply is hopelessly under size. What would you get,
especially with an eye on lightening protection?

Two Part suggestion

(1) biggest power supply that will fit the computer with
reasonable cost

(2) UPS which will also work as a super surge protector.

Some suggestions

http://tinyurl.com/p6z7j56

http://tinyurl.com/ln25btr

I have bought several items from Tiger and have been
satisfied with their service. I have had the UPS shown for
several years and it has worked with no problems.

Tiger also has some good deals on large capacity HD. I have
had good luck with Western Digital, although the back-up
software they supply with their drives sucks.
http://tinyurl.com/qhyrpks
http://tinyurl.com/l626wwf

Political commentary: NSA? installed "back door"
pre-installed on all hard drives.
http://tinyurl.com/plhw9a4
http://tinyurl.com/qa9vwzm

My [rhetorical] question is: With all this capability, and
the billions "we the people" spend on snooping, how were the
banks and other financial institutions able to run the
LIBOR, FX, commodities, etc. scams for so long, and why is
it so hard to track the tax evaders and money launderers?

If 'A' puts $1000 dollars a day in the cash register of 'B', how can you track that? If you have a tractor trailer full of cash, guns and ammo, how can that be tracked? Good question. Or imagine if you paid your rent in cash and got all of it back? Is that tax evasion?

Imagine if 'B' was a politician. And you just stuffed the cash under the sofa?

Are our snooper troopers getting a "piece of the action,"
getting paid to look the other way,

It wouldn't be smart to do the transactions at the moment. Its a lot like "you do this now in government" and then we'll take care of you with overseas speaking fees in about five years from now. Or is it even worse?

been ordered to look the
other way, or are they just stupid?

And if you had all those millions, wouldn't you eventually figure out how to join-in, too ??

The "terrorists" are
half a world away, and have no way to get here ==unless we
help them,== but the scammers and tax evaders are among us,
stealing from the majority every day.

A few snuff videos have the entire United States Air Force and Navy hitting out at some more people in tents, etc...

Crazy.

fired this volley in
:

Hey, it must be fancy to have insurance against not only vandalism,
liability, accident and theft, but acts of nature.

I don't know where you live, but around here, insurance for lightning
damage is pretty 'standard'. They just won't cover replacement costs for
anything a normal human could afford.

Lloyd

On Thu, 05 Mar 2015 10:51:28 -0600
"Lloyd E. Sponenburgh" lloydspinsidemindspring.com wrote:

snip
We now have a protocol in the shop that on my command OR at the first
audible sign of thunder, every single piece of anything we want to
protect gets unplugged from EVERYTHING it's connected to... wall,
ethernet lines, phone lines... everything.

I'm in complete agreement on that method. I've been doing the same for
years and haven't lost much. Missed an RS232 cable many years ago and
that cost me an external modem. Still had some ground loops in between
stuff even though everything else was pretty much unplugged. Working at
a two-way radio shop with two ~160ft towers by the building didn't
help...

We took a lightning hit once during work around noon time. I has
standing in the garage bay where some of the towers radio equipment was
in the corner. BIG KERZIT! Then a huge BOOM! I saw the arc flash in
the corner by the radio equipment in numerous places. Didn't have to
drive far for that service call ;-)

I saw a lot of different protection schemes back then and NONE of them
were 100 percent. I use to have a collection of lightning damaged parts
that was kind of cool. Sorry I left it behind now when I retired. Would
have made some interesting images to post...

--
Leon Fisk
Grand Rapids MI/Zone 5b
Remove no.spam for email

"Karl Townsend" wrote in message
...
Those with incredible memory may know lightening hit the house last
summer and took out two computers. Boot SSD drive in one and the video
card in another. Both computers anitques.

I've replaced the MB in one and am making it into the files storage
location for everything. It now has six hard drives running and will
go to ten if I can get a drive controller card to work.

Now the power supply is hopelessly under size. What would you get,
especially with an eye on lightening protection?

karl

How about just throwing a second power supply on it? Have to hang it from
the outside, but with 10 drives in it its already got be be kind of
Frankenstein.

"Leon Fisk" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 05 Mar 2015 10:51:28 -0600
"Lloyd E. Sponenburgh" lloydspinsidemindspring.com wrote:

snip
We now have a protocol in the shop that on my command OR at the
first
audible sign of thunder, every single piece of anything we want to
protect gets unplugged from EVERYTHING it's connected to... wall,
ethernet lines, phone lines... everything.

I'm in complete agreement on that method. I've been doing the same
for
years and haven't lost much. Missed an RS232 cable many years ago
and
that cost me an external modem. Still had some ground loops in
between
stuff even though everything else was pretty much unplugged. Working
at
a two-way radio shop with two ~160ft towers by the building didn't
help...
....
--
Leon Fisk
Grand Rapids MI/Zone 5b
Remove no.spam for email

I grouped the devices that most need isolation into one coax panel for
outdoor antennas and cameras and two accessible outlet strips, one for
the stereo rack and the other for the computer bench, so I can react
quickly to thunder.
-jsw

In article ,
Karl Townsend wrote:

Now the power supply is hopelessly under size. What would you get,
especially with an eye on lightening protection?

The PS is a poor place to deal with that issue.Just make sure to get a
high efficiency supply since it's a 24/7/365 drain, and the less it's
acting as a heater, the better.

Scatter a bunch of Delta LA302R and/or LA603s at the main power feed and
the power feed to each building if it feeds from building to building.

Where you care more, toss on a CA302R or CA603 as well.

--
Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by
Please don't feed the trolls. Killfile and ignore them so they will go away.

On Thu, 05 Mar 2015 10:51:28 -0600, "Lloyd E. Sponenburgh"
lloydspinsidemindspring.com wrote:

Larry Jaques fired this volley in
:

I don't recall what you did last year, but first would be to set up a
lightning arrestor, followed by a high-joule whole-house surge
suppressor, tailed by a nice UPS. You know how electronics are. The
combo units all do lesser jobs than the discrete components, so I try
to go discrete when I can. Just like the stereo, way back when. (I
miss my good ears.)

yeah... My nice high-joule surge suppressor supplied by the Power
Monopoly a) isn't covered for direct strikes, and b) went up in smoke
when my shop had a direct strike to the power pole/pig just outside.

Eek! So the suppressor handles all the ugly noises the Monopoly makes
but doesn't cover lightning?


It took out everything electrical including some infrastructure wiring...
All my CNCs, every computer, every EVERYTHING electronic that was plugged
in. We do stay very well backed-up, and Ajax CNC special-shipped all the
parts in just a day to rebuild what we had to.

Total suckage. Kudos to Ajax.


We now have a protocol in the shop that on my command OR at the first
audible sign of thunder, every single piece of anything we want to
protect gets unplugged from EVERYTHING it's connected to... wall,
ethernet lines, phone lines... everything.

That should help.


That is the only sure way to protect it... and it wouldn't help in a
lightning-induced fire... sigh.

Nope.


The only good thing was that we ended up with better machines than we had
before, since even the servos and encoders got fried. The baddest of all
was that 'insurance' paid about 1/3 of the cost. ("Depreciation, you
know!")

In which case you ask your insurance agent for "replacement cost
insurance". It costs only a bit (15%?) more but it pays actual costs.

--
Stain and poly are their own punishment.

On Thu, 05 Mar 2015 12:10:57 -0600, F. George McDuffee
wrote:

On Thu, 05 Mar 2015 08:11:12 -0600, Karl Townsend
wrote:

Now the power supply is hopelessly under size. What would you get,
especially with an eye on lightening protection?

Two Part suggestion

(1) biggest power supply that will fit the computer with
reasonable cost

(2) UPS which will also work as a super surge protector.

I still think 2 extra layers (lightning rod + WH suppressor) would be
required.


Some suggestions

http://tinyurl.com/p6z7j56

http://tinyurl.com/ln25btr

I have bought several items from Tiger and have been
satisfied with their service. I have had the UPS shown for
several years and it has worked with no problems.

Tiger also has some good deals on large capacity HD. I have
had good luck with Western Digital, although the back-up
software they supply with their drives sucks.
http://tinyurl.com/qhyrpks
http://tinyurl.com/l626wwf

Political commentary: NSA? installed "back door"
pre-installed on all hard drives.
http://tinyurl.com/plhw9a4
http://tinyurl.com/qa9vwzm

Privacy? What's that?


My [rhetorical] question is: With all this capability, and
the billions "we the people" spend on snooping, how were the
banks and other financial institutions able to run the
LIBOR, FX, commodities, etc. scams for so long, and why is
it so hard to track the tax evaders and money launderers?
Are our snooper troopers getting a "piece of the action,"
getting paid to look the other way, been ordered to look the
other way, or are they just stupid? The "terrorists" are
half a world away, and have no way to get here ==unless we
help them,== but the scammers and tax evaders are among us,
stealing from the majority every day.

Truly excellent questions, Unka. Every time I look at a larger
picture, I get even more pairs of noids. g The ultimate question:
_Which_ violent sociopath is actually in charge of said 'big picture'?


--
Stain and poly are their own punishment.

Two Part suggestion

(1) biggest power supply that will fit the computer with
reasonable cost

(2) UPS which will also work as a super surge protector.

I still think 2 extra layers (lightning rod + WH suppressor) would be
required.


Some suggestions

http://tinyurl.com/p6z7j56

http://tinyurl.com/ln25btr



I surfed the net and found the best plug in style surge supperssor.
I'll put that in front of the above UPS.

Newegg lists a 1000 watt power supply for $200 - ouch. Before I decide
between this and the Tiger offer. I'll see if i can make a SATA hard
drive card work correctly. I just orderred my third card, trying to
get this to work.

Larry Jaques fired this volley in
:

So the suppressor handles all the ugly noises the Monopoly makes
but doesn't cover lightning?

Exactly correct. And it costs the subscriber to obtain (and rent) a device
from them to remove the trash THEY put on the line.

Lloyd

On Fri, 06 Mar 2015 05:30:49 -0600, "Lloyd E. Sponenburgh"
lloydspinsidemindspring.com wrote:

Larry Jaques fired this volley in
:

So the suppressor handles all the ugly noises the Monopoly makes
but doesn't cover lightning?

Exactly correct. And it costs the subscriber to obtain (and rent) a device
from them to remove the trash THEY put on the line.

mumble,mumble There oughta be a law...


--
Stain and poly are their own punishment.

On Fri, 06 Mar 2015 02:46:18 -0600, Karl Townsend
wrote:

Newegg lists a 1000 watt power supply for $200 - ouch. Before I decide
between this and the Tiger offer.
================
Tiger also has higher power supplies. See
http://tinyurl.com/n5aubw7 1000W/90$
http://tinyurl.com/n88vmxq 1200W/90$

Also see their drive card 4 internal and 2 external
http://tinyurl.com/yfq9267 35$

you might also find this useful
http://tinyurl.com/l3p5ftk
http://tinyurl.com/pkupa9v


--
Unka' George

"Gold is the money of kings,
silver is the money of gentlemen,
barter is the money of peasants,
but debt is the money of slaves"

-Norm Franz, "Money and Wealth in the New Millenium"

On Thu, 5 Mar 2015 17:38:21 -0500
"Jim Wilkins" wrote:

snip
I grouped the devices that most need isolation into one coax panel for
outdoor antennas and cameras and two accessible outlet strips, one for
the stereo rack and the other for the computer bench, so I can react
quickly to thunder.
-jsw

In the day... I used an heavy on/off switch in a handy box mounted
underneath my workbench. Normally I would just turn off the switch and
that would kill power to everything at my workbench. That box had a
cord that was simply plugged into the wall. If I had even a hint of bad
weather coming I would pull the wall plug too, along with all the RJ-11
plugs to the phone lines.

Even during good times it was handy. If there was a power hiccup I
could quickly kill everything at my bench until I knew for sure it was
backup and stabilized again.

I remember reading an article in a trade magazine once. About a company
that made a power disconnect controlled by an AM radio tuned to detect
the static created by lightning activity. It would disconnect all power
connections at said location and shunt them to ground until the detector
registered that the storm had passed. I really liked that idea but
never saw anything advertised/produced for it...

--
Leon Fisk
Grand Rapids MI/Zone 5b
Remove no.spam for email

"Leon Fisk" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 5 Mar 2015 17:38:21 -0500
"Jim Wilkins" wrote:


I remember reading an article in a trade magazine once. About a
company
that made a power disconnect controlled by an AM radio tuned to
detect
the static created by lightning activity. It would disconnect all
power
connections at said location and shunt them to ground until the
detector
registered that the storm had passed. I really liked that idea but
never saw anything advertised/produced for it...

--
Leon Fisk
Grand Rapids MI/Zone 5b
Remove no.spam for email


I bought a single-pole relay rated for "only" 75KV once. It was the
size of a desk lamp and opened the contacts several inches.

-jsw

"F. George McDuffee" wrote in
message ...

you might also find this useful
http://tinyurl.com/l3p5ftk
Unka' George

5V-only laptop IDE drives can draw up to an Amp while USB2 ports are
limited to 500mA. I've found that my SATA laptop drives usually draw
less than the 900mA limit of a USB3 port. My 2TB WD My Passport Ultra
portable external drive idles at only 0.22A. I've recorded 1.7A peak
to a Crucial M500 SSD.

-jsw

On Fri, 6 Mar 2015 13:31:22 -0500
"Jim Wilkins" wrote:

snip
I bought a single-pole relay rated for "only" 75KV once. It was the
size of a desk lamp and opened the contacts several inches.

Ouch!

The way I remember it the product used standard relays. The key was
that in the off/relaxed position everything was shunted together to
common ground point. Lightning could still jump the relay but it would
be greatly reduced with everything shunted/grounded together. It was
a pretty ambitious scheme if I remember correctly. The antenna lines
were all disconnected, shunted too. Depending on the frequency, antenna
switches can be pretty expensive too...

One of the radios I used to work on was the Motorola Micor series. They
had an interesting antenna relay in them. They used two magnetic
reed-switches encased in an aluminum (I think it was aluminum) housing.
One switch had a magnet shrink wrapped to it keeping it in the closed
position (receive side). A small coil (12vdc) went around the metal
case. To transmit they applied 12vdc to the coil which in turn closed
the open reed and opened the one with the magnet affixed... For an
overall image:

http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/MTA0N1gxMzg5/z/li4AAOSwEeFU4uN5/$_1.JPG

They made a great lightning arrester. Many, many times that is the only
part I would have to replace after a tower lightning strike. If you
took one apart, quite often the two reed-switches would be completely
obliterated, just blown to bits... Motorola had a lifetime guarantee on
those relays. Sent many of them back in for warranty replacement. You
couldn't tell what happened to them without taking them apart

--
Leon Fisk
Grand Rapids MI/Zone 5b
Remove no.spam for email

"Leon Fisk" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 6 Mar 2015 13:31:22 -0500
"Jim Wilkins" wrote:

snip
I bought a single-pole relay rated for "only" 75KV once. It was the
size of a desk lamp and opened the contacts several inches.

Ouch!

The way I remember it the product used standard relays. The key was
that in the off/relaxed position everything was shunted together to
common ground point. Lightning could still jump the relay but it
would
be greatly reduced with everything shunted/grounded together. It was
a pretty ambitious scheme if I remember correctly. The antenna lines
were all disconnected, shunted too. Depending on the frequency,
antenna
switches can be pretty expensive too...



One of the radios I used to work on was the Motorola Micor series.
They
had an interesting antenna relay in them. They used two magnetic
reed-switches encased in an aluminum (I think it was aluminum)
housing.
One switch had a magnet shrink wrapped to it keeping it in the
closed
position (receive side). A small coil (12vdc) went around the metal
case. To transmit they applied 12vdc to the coil which in turn
closed
the open reed and opened the one with the magnet affixed... For an
overall image:

http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/MTA0N1gxMzg5/z/li4AAOSwEeFU4uN5/$_1.JPG

The Ph.Ds at Mitre let me design a couple of diode T/R switches that
worked well enough but I don't have the education to design the more
complex versions like duplexers or circulators. I never saw anyone
still using coaxial relays in digital radios, and they aren't cheap
enough at ham fests to buy one to play with.

Except for GPS the stuff I worked on operated below 1 GHz, what they
called "DC".

They made a great lightning arrester. Many, many times that is the
only
part I would have to replace after a tower lightning strike. If you
took one apart, quite often the two reed-switches would be
completely
obliterated, just blown to bits... Motorola had a lifetime guarantee
on
those relays. Sent many of them back in for warranty replacement.
You
couldn't tell what happened to them without taking them apart

--
Leon Fisk

On Fri, 06 Mar 2015 09:49:58 -0600, F. George McDuffee
wrote:

On Fri, 06 Mar 2015 02:46:18 -0600, Karl Townsend
wrote:

Newegg lists a 1000 watt power supply for $200 - ouch. Before I decide
between this and the Tiger offer.
================
Tiger also has higher power supplies. See
http://tinyurl.com/n5aubw7 1000W/90$


Thanks, I went with this one, you just saved me $100.

Karl

I had a friend in the Dallas area that had a heavy hit - very strong -
come down and burn the side of his house at the utility lead.
It killed every electrical or electronic item that was attached to
the wall or power...

His insurance man laughed at first - until he started making a list.

Martin

On 3/6/2015 12:08 PM, Leon Fisk wrote:
On Thu, 5 Mar 2015 17:38:21 -0500
"Jim Wilkins" wrote:

snip
I grouped the devices that most need isolation into one coax panel for
outdoor antennas and cameras and two accessible outlet strips, one for
the stereo rack and the other for the computer bench, so I can react
quickly to thunder.
-jsw

In the day... I used an heavy on/off switch in a handy box mounted
underneath my workbench. Normally I would just turn off the switch and
that would kill power to everything at my workbench. That box had a
cord that was simply plugged into the wall. If I had even a hint of bad
weather coming I would pull the wall plug too, along with all the RJ-11
plugs to the phone lines.

Even during good times it was handy. If there was a power hiccup I
could quickly kill everything at my bench until I knew for sure it was
backup and stabilized again.

I remember reading an article in a trade magazine once. About a company
that made a power disconnect controlled by an AM radio tuned to detect
the static created by lightning activity. It would disconnect all power
connections at said location and shunt them to ground until the detector
registered that the storm had passed. I really liked that idea but
never saw anything advertised/produced for it...

On Fri, 06 Mar 2015 22:58:04 -0600, Martin Eastburn
wrote:

I had a friend in the Dallas area that had a heavy hit - very strong -
come down and burn the side of his house at the utility lead.
It killed every electrical or electronic item that was attached to
the wall or power...

His insurance man laughed at first - until he started making a list.

Martin

On 3/6/2015 12:08 PM, Leon Fisk wrote:
On Thu, 5 Mar 2015 17:38:21 -0500
"Jim Wilkins" wrote:

snip
I grouped the devices that most need isolation into one coax panel for
outdoor antennas and cameras and two accessible outlet strips, one for
the stereo rack and the other for the computer bench, so I can react
quickly to thunder.
-jsw

In the day... I used an heavy on/off switch in a handy box mounted
underneath my workbench. Normally I would just turn off the switch and
that would kill power to everything at my workbench. That box had a
cord that was simply plugged into the wall. If I had even a hint of bad
weather coming I would pull the wall plug too, along with all the RJ-11
plugs to the phone lines.

Even during good times it was handy. If there was a power hiccup I
could quickly kill everything at my bench until I knew for sure it was
backup and stabilized again.

I remember reading an article in a trade magazine once. About a company
that made a power disconnect controlled by an AM radio tuned to detect
the static created by lightning activity. It would disconnect all power
connections at said location and shunt them to ground until the detector
registered that the storm had passed. I really liked that idea but
never saw anything advertised/produced for it...

That's why I LOVE underground electrical distribution. Storms don't
take down the lines, and lighting can't find the wires to deliver a
direct hit.
I use on-line (dual conversion) UPS for my sensitive electronics
(computers)

On 3/5/2015 9:11 AM, Karl Townsend wrote:
Those with incredible memory may know lightening hit the house last
summer and took out two computers. Boot SSD drive in one and the video
card in another. Both computers anitques.

I've replaced the MB in one and am making it into the files storage
location for everything. It now has six hard drives running and will
go to ten if I can get a drive controller card to work.

Now the power supply is hopelessly under size. What would you get,
especially with an eye on lightening protection?

karl



External hard drives!

On Saturday, March 7, 2015 at 1:10:45 AM UTC-5, Clare wrote:
On Fri, 06 Mar 2015 22:58:04 -0600, Martin Eastburn
wrote:

I had a friend in the Dallas area that had a heavy hit - very strong -
come down and burn the side of his house at the utility lead.
It killed every electrical or electronic item that was attached to
the wall or power...

His insurance man laughed at first - until he started making a list.

Martin

On 3/6/2015 12:08 PM, Leon Fisk wrote:
On Thu, 5 Mar 2015 17:38:21 -0500
"Jim Wilkins" wrote:

snip
I grouped the devices that most need isolation into one coax panel for
outdoor antennas and cameras and two accessible outlet strips, one for
the stereo rack and the other for the computer bench, so I can react
quickly to thunder.
-jsw

In the day... I used an heavy on/off switch in a handy box mounted
underneath my workbench. Normally I would just turn off the switch and
that would kill power to everything at my workbench. That box had a
cord that was simply plugged into the wall. If I had even a hint of bad
weather coming I would pull the wall plug too, along with all the RJ-11
plugs to the phone lines.

Even during good times it was handy. If there was a power hiccup I
could quickly kill everything at my bench until I knew for sure it was
backup and stabilized again.

I remember reading an article in a trade magazine once. About a company
that made a power disconnect controlled by an AM radio tuned to detect
the static created by lightning activity. It would disconnect all power
connections at said location and shunt them to ground until the detector
registered that the storm had passed. I really liked that idea but
never saw anything advertised/produced for it...

That's why I LOVE underground electrical distribution. Storms don't
take down the lines, and lighting can't find the wires to deliver a
direct hit.

Bullcrap. There are plenty of times that underground cables were struck by lighting, too. Lloyd should just tell the power company to put surge arrestors in before service is supplied to the property.

External hard drives!

You bring up a good point for the future. This box has 6 USB. They are
full - mouse, keyboard, camera, memory stick, two hard drives.

Any big deal to add more USBs?

Also can you beat the 2Tb limit on USB hard drives. I've had no luck
here.

FWIW, this is the box you helped pick out with a MB replacement. I'll
give you the old MB if you can use it.

Karl

Karl Townsend fired this volley in
:

Also can you beat the 2Tb limit on USB hard drives. I've had no luck
here.

For whatever reason, drives past 1TB are still fairly short-lived.
Although I own (and fairly frequently replace) some of the larger drives
(staying well backed-up), I still buy 1TB drives when I need some off-
line storage.

Adding more USB? Just use an active hub to run the lower-bandwidth
devices off a single physical port. At the least, you could 'hub' the
mouse and keyboard, and probably the stick, too.


Lloyd

On Sat, 07 Mar 2015 18:03:44 -0600, "Lloyd E. Sponenburgh"
lloydspinsidemindspring.com wrote:

Karl Townsend fired this volley in
:

Also can you beat the 2Tb limit on USB hard drives. I've had no luck
here.

For whatever reason, drives past 1TB are still fairly short-lived.
Although I own (and fairly frequently replace) some of the larger drives
(staying well backed-up), I still buy 1TB drives when I need some off-
line storage.

Adding more USB? Just use an active hub to run the lower-bandwidth
devices off a single physical port. At the least, you could 'hub' the
mouse and keyboard, and probably the stick, too.


Lloyd

I'm at 15Tb, making plans to go to 30Tb of storage. USB is of marginal
use in this case.

karl

On Sat, 07 Mar 2015 17:46:26 -0600, Karl Townsend
wrote:

Any big deal to add more USBs?

There may be some degrdation in bandwidth with USB 2.0, but
USB hubs are widely available (external power supply better)
For example
http://tinyurl.com/pf533ob
more expensive but USB 3.0
http://tinyurl.com/mlhf5jj
Theoretically you could daisy chain up to 127 ports off of
one master computer port, but there are other limits. see
http://tinyurl.com/p5rkdaz

Heres a 5T USB 3.0 drive
http://tinyurl.com/m55t68b

You may want to evaluate high capacity HDDs for the
computer.
http://tinyurl.com/nqzm7mw


--
Unka' George

"Gold is the money of kings,
silver is the money of gentlemen,
barter is the money of peasants,
but debt is the money of slaves"

-Norm Franz, "Money and Wealth in the New Millenium"

"Karl Townsend" wrote in message
...

External hard drives!

You bring up a good point for the future. This box has 6 USB. They
are
full - mouse, keyboard, camera, memory stick, two hard drives.

Any big deal to add more USBs?

Also can you beat the 2Tb limit on USB hard drives. I've had no luck
here.

FWIW, this is the box you helped pick out with a MB replacement.
I'll
give you the old MB if you can use it.

Karl

I'm seeing a 5 TB Seagate Expansion as size = 4.54 TB and I can open
the folders and play a video with 32 bit XP SP3 on a Pentium M laptop
made in 2005.
https://social.technet.microsoft.com...orum=itproxpsp

Low-power devices like a mouse, keyboard and memory stick can be
combined on an unpowered hub. AC-powered external drives can use a hub
too, but when I copy between drives I put them on different Mobo
ports.

"Portable" USB drives take operating power from the USB port and need
to be plugged in directly or into a powered hub.

The 2007-vintage Dell D820 laptop beside me can host 10 USB ports; 2x
USB3 on an ExpressCard, 4x USB2 on the Mobo and 4 more on a CardBus
expander. With 1 TB drives in the boot drive and CD bays it can have
over 20 TB plugged in directly.

There are PCI adapter cards for USB3, like this, if you don't have
PCI-E slots left:
http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-S...pci+usb+3+card

They won'r run at full USB3 speed because the PCI bus is too slow, but
neither will external hard drives. I've seen a little over 100 MB/S
from the USB3 ExpressCard which also won't meet the full spec.

-jsw

Leon Fisk wrote:
On Fri, 6 Mar 2015 13:31:22 -0500
"Jim Wilkins" wrote:

snip
I bought a single-pole relay rated for "only" 75KV once. It was the
size of a desk lamp and opened the contacts several inches.

Ouch!

The way I remember it the product used standard relays. The key was
that in the off/relaxed position everything was shunted together to
common ground point. Lightning could still jump the relay but it would
be greatly reduced with everything shunted/grounded together. It was
a pretty ambitious scheme if I remember correctly. The antenna lines
were all disconnected, shunted too. Depending on the frequency, antenna
switches can be pretty expensive too...

One of the radios I used to work on was the Motorola Micor series. They
had an interesting antenna relay in them. They used two magnetic
reed-switches encased in an aluminum (I think it was aluminum) housing.
One switch had a magnet shrink wrapped to it keeping it in the closed
position (receive side). A small coil (12vdc) went around the metal
case. To transmit they applied 12vdc to the coil which in turn closed
the open reed and opened the one with the magnet affixed... For an
overall image:

http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/MTA0N1gxMzg5/z/li4AAOSwEeFU4uN5/$_1.JPG

They made a great lightning arrester. Many, many times that is the only
part I would have to replace after a tower lightning strike. If you
took one apart, quite often the two reed-switches would be completely
obliterated, just blown to bits... Motorola had a lifetime guarantee on
those relays. Sent many of them back in for warranty replacement. You
couldn't tell what happened to them without taking them apart

If the tower was not properly grounded lightning will cause damage.
Good grounding will carry off the charge and prevent it from doing
damage. Our towers would get hit almost every lightning storm and no
damage to the electronics. Most all of the telecommunications towers
can withstand a direct hit with no damage. The power has to have some
place to go and the best place is directly into the ground with the
proper grounding system.

John

Get an external USB hub and connect the four ports up and use one
on the computer. The first 4 could be 1 and you have 3 more disk drives.

I've seen 3T USB's at Sams. They are coming. Slow.
Certain disk drive user sucks drives like drops of water...

Martin

On 3/7/2015 5:46 PM, Karl Townsend wrote:

External hard drives!

You bring up a good point for the future. This box has 6 USB. They are
full - mouse, keyboard, camera, memory stick, two hard drives.

Any big deal to add more USBs?

Also can you beat the 2Tb limit on USB hard drives. I've had no luck
here.

FWIW, this is the box you helped pick out with a MB replacement. I'll
give you the old MB if you can use it.

Karl

On Thu, 05 Mar 2015 08:11:12 -0600, Karl Townsend
wrote:

Those with incredible memory may know lightening hit the house last
summer and took out two computers. Boot SSD drive in one and the video
card in another. Both computers anitques.

I've replaced the MB in one and am making it into the files storage
location for everything. It now has six hard drives running and will
go to ten if I can get a drive controller card to work.

Now the power supply is hopelessly under size. What would you get,
especially with an eye on lightening protection?

karl

First thing Karl...is to implement GOOD lightening protection before
being concerned about power supply size......

THEN worry about an oversized power supply (www.microcenter.com)



https://www.google.com/search?q=good...utf-8&oe=utf-8


"At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child,
miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied,
demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless.
Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats."
PJ O'Rourke

On Sat, 7 Mar 2015 20:20:07 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:


"Karl Townsend" wrote in message
.. .

External hard drives!

You bring up a good point for the future. This box has 6 USB. They
are
full - mouse, keyboard, camera, memory stick, two hard drives.

Any big deal to add more USBs?

Also can you beat the 2Tb limit on USB hard drives. I've had no luck
here.

FWIW, this is the box you helped pick out with a MB replacement.
I'll
give you the old MB if you can use it.

Karl

I'm seeing a 5 TB Seagate Expansion as size = 4.54 TB and I can open
the folders and play a video with 32 bit XP SP3 on a Pentium M laptop
made in 2005.
https://social.technet.microsoft.com...orum=itproxpsp

Low-power devices like a mouse, keyboard and memory stick can be
combined on an unpowered hub. AC-powered external drives can use a hub
too, but when I copy between drives I put them on different Mobo
ports.

"Portable" USB drives take operating power from the USB port and need
to be plugged in directly or into a powered hub.

The 2007-vintage Dell D820 laptop beside me can host 10 USB ports; 2x
USB3 on an ExpressCard, 4x USB2 on the Mobo and 4 more on a CardBus
expander. With 1 TB drives in the boot drive and CD bays it can have
over 20 TB plugged in directly.

There are PCI adapter cards for USB3, like this, if you don't have
PCI-E slots left:
http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-S...pci+usb+3+card

They won'r run at full USB3 speed because the PCI bus is too slow, but
neither will external hard drives. I've seen a little over 100 MB/S
from the USB3 ExpressCard which also won't meet the full spec.

-jsw

I think at this point...Karl is needing a RAID array. They come in
all different configurations..most common is 4 drives..but Ive seen
them holding up to 16

http://www.startech.com/HDD/Enclosur...re~SAT3540U3ER

http://www.adaptec.com/en-us/_common..._compar_wp.htm

One can pick these up at used computer places for a couple hundred

http://www.pc-pitstop.com/iscsi_san/ix16.asp


Gunner

"At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child,
miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied,
demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless.
Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats."
PJ O'Rourke

On 3/7/2015 6:46 PM, Karl Townsend wrote:

External hard drives!

You bring up a good point for the future. This box has 6 USB. They are
full - mouse, keyboard, camera, memory stick, two hard drives.

Any big deal to add more USBs?

Also can you beat the 2Tb limit on USB hard drives. I've had no luck
here.

FWIW, this is the box you helped pick out with a MB replacement. I'll
give you the old MB if you can use it.

Karl




You have all the eggs in one basket. I too have a lot of video but it's
distributed over a number of computers on the network. None of the
computers are "first flight" and they have a couple of external USB
drives hanging off of them. The one computer on the TV then plays the
video from wherever it is, I have all the drives listed on the desktop,
all running XP. I think active UPS's give good electrical protection
but I just have MOV's. I prefer 1TB drives for price and reliability.

On Sat, 07 Mar 2015 22:55:42 -0500
John wrote:

snip
If the tower was not properly grounded lightning will cause damage.
Good grounding will carry off the charge and prevent it from doing
damage. Our towers would get hit almost every lightning storm and no
damage to the electronics. Most all of the telecommunications towers
can withstand a direct hit with no damage. The power has to have some
place to go and the best place is directly into the ground with the
proper grounding system.

Psst... John, wake up, you're dreaming...

I worked in two-way radio communication most of my career. Several of
the towers I serviced equipment at were grounded to R56 spec, which was
very ambitious and the best at the time. The equipment still took hits
that caused considerable damage...

And other towers that had little to no grounding and got hit regularly,
had very little equipment damage. Go figure...

Maybe our lightning had more oomph than your lightning ;-)

--
Leon Fisk
Grand Rapids MI/Zone 5b
Remove no.spam for email

"Tom Gardner" wrote in message
...
On 3/7/2015 6:46 PM, Karl Townsend wrote:

External hard drives!

Karl




You have all the eggs in one basket. I too have a lot of video but
it's distributed over a number of computers on the network. None of
the computers are "first flight" and they have a couple of external
USB drives hanging off of them. The one computer on the TV then
plays the video from wherever it is, I have all the drives listed on
the desktop, all running XP. I think active UPS's give good
electrical protection but I just have MOV's. I prefer 1TB drives
for price and reliability.

My backup scheme for valuable files is one port-powered 1 TB or 2 TB
portable drive to copy to immediately plus two AC-powered ones that I
save to when the internal drive approaches full. The USB drives are
plugged in only when I'm using them.

Fairly valuable files go on pairs of 2 TB externals, stuff I wouldn't
care too much about losing goes on the 5 TB drives which I bought to
free up filled pairs of smaller backup drives.

I've had one WD backup drive degrade to complete failure before I
could copy all the files off it, and a drive with a reallocated sector
count rising fast enough that Seagate replaced it without arguing,
although it passed their fitness test.

Here is a large user's comparison of drive reliability. Notice that
they may choose cheaper over better, and Seagates vary wildly by
model.
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/

Elsewhere they point out that their 24/7 environment doesn't imitate
the average user.

-jsw