Recent content by westom

Nothing was drawing major power. Dimming lights indicate a house wiring problem. Often not serious. But in some rare cases, that dimming indicates a major human safety threat. Fix the problem. Don't cure symptoms by changing the power on sequence. A UPS is not for surge protection. Many...

Point was and is proven in virtually every town: A direct lightning strikes without damage is routine when proper protection is installed. Even unplugging remains an unreliable solution. Furthermore, how does one disconnect a dishwasher, furnace, dimmer switches, clocks, refrigerator, and...

Your protectors did exactly what they said they would do. Only protect from another type of surge that typically causes no damage. Many so believe advertising and hearsay as to become angry and nasty when that reality is explained. But you have a personal example that confirms even what...

No such conclusion is possible. That jumper has simply disconnected a power controller from the PSU. Faults that must cause a power off (including an overheated CPU) are no longer detected. Numerous reasons exist for strange operation. Too many to list here. Important are basic facts and...

Why are you trying to fix something without first identifying the problem? Exactly what does the FF error code report for that board? If motherboard and CPU failed as you have assumed, then nothing would appear on any screen. Video would act as if it was completely defective. Even the BIOS...

Underground or overhead make no difference to electrical anomalies discussed here.

How many designed power supplies? How many worked on disk drives even a decade before the IBM PC existed? How many fixed computers by literally tracing each fault to an IC. Only replacing that defective semiconductor. And then defined, in design reviews, why that part failed. We even opened...

Normal power for all electronics is even when incandescent bulbs dim to 50% intensity. As even defined in international design standards. Computers are required by ATX standards to be even more robust. Meanwhile, dimming lights are sometimes an indicator of a human safety threat. Fix the...

Learn how drives worked even when heads were moved with motor oil. Every drive (back then and today) first learns about power off when voltage starts dropping. Only then does it stop writing and park heads. All power offs (shutdown, yank the power plug, nuclear power plant shutdown) appear...

Many power supply parts suffer less stress when load increases. Unfortunately that hard reality is contrary to speculation that assumes more power means more strain. Learn from numbers. Changes you have assumed are major are actually small. Most of the power consumed by a computer occurs...

How to quickly identify a scam. That recommendation did not say why. And provided no numbers. That's basic layman knowledge. At least with layman who quickly identify and avoid myths and cons.

Describe a part at risk when a PC is doing something 'extreme'. And define 'extreme'. Posted previously was how so many *knew* heat was destructive. Speculation said so. Many did not learn that heat is a diagnostic tool to identify an already defective part. Many would blame heat...

That 'protection' is irrelevant. We made power supplies including making those coils. The coil is wrapped. Then placed into a vacuum. Then a sealant (ie varnish) enters. Vacuum sucks varnish into all empty coil spaces. Thereby locking each wire in place. Sometimes varnish does not get...

Many 'what will be new' concepts apply. For example, your symptoms are typical of a surge (even a direct lightning strike to AC wires far down the street) that found earth ground destructively via your appliances. First, it is electricity. So it must have an incoming path and an outgoing...

Which problem do you want to solve? A surge protector is for an anomaly that is completely different from a brownout or blackout. The latter is near zero volts. The former is thousands of volts. Which anomaly do you want to solve? Nothing solves both. All electronics contained some...