My Electronics R Dying?

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Last about about nine pm I decided to turn on my imac and come online. For the last several days I've been keeping everything including coffee pot unpluged in case of a power surge. I had to keep some things plugged in such as the fridge....and, and, my Radio Shack Wireless Jack system.

The wireless jack system is dead. I had purchased the pieces as they are costly one at a time, at different times, and at different Radio Shacks. It's dead as a door knob and surprisingly the mother was the last to go about 15 minutes after the satellite plugs.

I've no idea if it was a chip or a surge. It had to be one or the other because as I said the pieces were of different ages.

I was dying to come on and tell you all but had the crises of figuring out where I could possibly put my iMac. I've two curses, the weight of my computer set-up and baby cats vowing death to any cord. This morning I unpluged all the goodies and have it on a kitchen counter so I could reach a jack without the curse of the baby cats.

I haven't tested anything else. Frankly, I'm not sure I want to know what costly little gadgets I'm losing here.

-- Paula (chowbabe@pacbell.net), December 26, 1999

Answers

This sounds like a Y2K problem.

-- (yert@trentor.net), December 26, 1999.

One possibility is that you had a 220 v appliance -- now unplugged -- that was acting as an RF bridge between the two 110 v legs of your house wiring. If your controller was plugged into one leg, and the modules in the other, it's entirely possible that the carrier current RF signal can't jump across without some sort of bridge. (X10 sells devices -- essentially a capacitor -- that install inside your distribution box.)

Another possibility is that your controller somehow got knocked into a different house code.

-- Ron Schwarz (rs@clubvb.com.delete.this), December 26, 1999.


PS

I just e-mailed Radio Shack. I'll let you all know what they say. The only "coincidence" I can cough up if this wasn't Y2K related is that the mother was dying but not fully dead when I discovered this.

-- Paula (chowbabe@pacbell.net), December 26, 1999.


Paula,

Have you tested an emergency generator lately?

Last week I (finally) got around to getting a transfer switch installed for my generator. When we started it up and switched to generator power, the lights that were on in the house were very bright. The electrician checked the voltage coming in from the generator and it was too high. To fix it, we had to bring the engine RPM's down on the generator (an easy adjustment).

Unfortunately, the over-voltage burned out a transformer or something in my furnace which had to be replaced the next day. Luckily, everything else seems OK.

-- Clyde (clydeblalock@hotmail.com), December 26, 1999.


Check under your trailer!

-- Bumps (in@the.night), December 26, 1999.


"The electrician checked the voltage coming in from the generator and it was too high. To fix it, we had to bring the engine RPM's down on the generator (an easy adjustment)." uh......

That CAN'T be right. Adjusting the speed of the engine varies the hertz (cycles per second or frequency) of the electricity, period. There should be an adjustment sometwhere on the regulator board that adjusts the voltage.

Clyde makes a VERY good point though. Check the voltage of your generator output BEFORE hooking it up to appliances.

-- Ken Seger (kenseger@earthlink.net), December 26, 1999.


Is this a time-shift problem?

-- Butt Nugget (catsbutt@umailme.com), December 26, 1999.

That CAN'T be right. Adjusting the speed of the engine varies the hertz (cycles per second or frequency) of the electricity, period.

No, on some generators the voltage also varies with the speed of the engine. This is true of mine, as it happens. Of course, you should get approximately the right voltage at the right frequency if the idle speed is adjusted correctly, but such an effect does exist.

-- Steve Heller (stheller@koyote.com), December 26, 1999.


I haven't a generator so it wasn't that. I just tested phone line cords thinking a kitten might have chewed through one connected to the mother. It wasn't that. It couldn't be cat nonsense under the mobile as I had the new and very firm doors shut keeping them out.

I started testing a handful of my electronic gadgets and so far everything else is okay from Casio products to cell phone. I've more to go. My purse alone is a walking electronic store.

In the meantime I am officially living in misery. I moved my iMac to a big camping table I had set up in my den for my battery operated lamps and the like. It can cope with the weight of the iMac but not the goodies and I am having to lock all the kittens in my bedroom in order to come online as they won't leave the trailing phone cord alone. This is a bummer. I had the table set up in front of a couch so I could sit and watch my hand held battery t.v. ecetera, and now I've lost the table as I had to push it up against a wall. I'm starting to feel cursed. First I discover my sleeping bag is a joke and now I've lost my big camping table. I have a second a big table but it is already in use in another emergency. One, it wouldn't fit in my den with the second table in use and a small refrigerator I had purchased for my tobacco stash, and second, I wouldn't have anywhere to put my enormous t.v. and its goodies. Sometime back I had purchased a huge t.v. and my VCR broke, the repair shop told me those bigger end t.v.s put out so much heat one has to have the VCR's as far from such as possible, which is not easy due to the weight of the t.v., and so in a panic I had sprawled it all out on a long camping table with a brace underneath. The repair shop had classified me as a mega heavy VCR user and told me I had better take care about it all! My computer set up had all been sprawled across a heavy wood diningroom table because once those goodies are added nothing seems to cope with the weight.

What a web I have weaved. Gracious! The true American. A high technological web as complicated and sprawled about as can be. I can see how the American home is going to go in the ole bug melt down.

-- Paula (chowbabe@pacbell.net), December 26, 1999.


"In the meantime I am officially living in misery"

between this story and the other one about the dead thing under your trailer, so are we...

-- (cavscout@fix.net), December 26, 1999.



Ken,

No, it definitely changed the voltage. We were using a voltage meter on the lines coming in from the generator. It was originally putting out close to 140 volts on each of the two main lines coming in. After moving the position of the spring attached to the governer of the generator a few times to lower the engine speed, we got the voltage down to around 122 on each side, which the electrician said was just about perfect.

-- Clyde (clydeblalock@hotmail.com), December 26, 1999.


Bump,

LOL

-- (carcass@mobile.home), December 26, 1999.


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