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- From: jch+@cs.cmu.edu (Jonathan Hardwick)
- Subject: Re: Sun3/50 at home : UPS, SPS, or line conditioner recommendations?
- Message-ID: <C1KwBL.Bv7.2@cs.cmu.edu>
- Summary: summary of responses
- Keywords: sun3, power
- Sender: news@cs.cmu.edu (Usenet News System)
- Nntp-Posting-Host: gs69.sp.cs.cmu.edu
- Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
- References: <C1DMvw.2AB.2@cs.cmu.edu>
- Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 19:18:55 GMT
- Lines: 52
-
- Here's a summary of the responses I got to the following question:
- > 1. What are the power requirements of my Sun and its monochrome
- > screen? (I know how much the Quantum drive draws) It came
- > without docs, so I'm in the dark here. Under 250W? 450W? 600W?
- > 2. How sensitive is the Sun power supply to fluctuations in the
- > supply? I can remember an office glitch in which two IBM RT's
- > went castors-up whilst a Sun3/60 never even blinked. Are Sun's
- > generally good in this respect?
- > 3. Is the extra expense of a UPS/SPS worth it? In other words, how
- > often *is* there a blackout which a line conditioner can't handle
- > but a UPS can?
- > 4. Does anyone have (dis)recommendations? Tripplite line
- > conditioners score highly in Eric Raymond's 386-workstation FAQ.
- > From a quick look through catalogs, there are also Sola UPSs
- > out there. Which other manufacturers should I be considering?
- > Ability to be interfaced to the system is a plus.
-
- First, my thanks go to Jay Rouman, Andrew Burnette, Jeff Aldrich, Y.
- Tsuji, Anthony Datri, Kevin Cosgrove, Scott Gordon and Peter Wargo for
- their advice and experiences.
-
- 1. As someone kindly pointed out to me, "look on the back of the
- box!". Whoops. Anyway, there's a 4A 110V fuse back there, so it
- shouldn't take more than 440 VA even at startup. We have a
- known-working datapoint of a Sun3/50 system running on a 450 VA SPS,
- and drawing 1.8A when idle -- so a 400 VA SPS (which is cheaper)
- should be ok, as long as you're not overloading the Sun with eg 8M of
- RAM.
-
- 2. Sun power supplies are generally supposed to be good; they'll live
- through power fluctuations that would crash other machines. Note that
- surges that the motherboard will live through are still bad for
- monitors, so a line conditioner (or better) might be a good idea...
-
- 3. There were two separate camps : "Suns are cheap and tough, so live
- dangerously", vs "I've never used anything less than a UPS/SPS since x
- happened", for various x :-)
-
- 4. Tripp-Lite, American Power Corporation, and Best products were all
- recommended by name. It's easy to find mail-order houses selling
- Tripp-Lite and APC stuff in any issue of eg Computer Shopper, and the
- two companies seem to be competing on price and features (good news
- for us!). Best products are tougher to find, and seems more
- expensive, but got good reviews.
-
- There was some interest in the responses, but not enough to warrant
- posting them all here; I've e-mailed an edited copy to everyone who
- requested them. E-mail me if you're interested.
-
- Once again, thanks!
-
- Jonathan H.
-