powering up older machines - is it safe?

That very much depends on the switcher!. In _any_ switching supply there can be a failure in the regulation loop. It's not common, and it's not what I'd really worry about, but that can make the voltage jump, of course. And in most swtichers, an open-circuit or high ESR capacitor on the output side can put high voltage spicks on the outputs. These spikes typically get bigger as you draw more current from the supply. I've had a couple of cases where the supply was fine on minimal load, but tripped the crowbar when you loarded it, precisely because the output capacitor was drying up. And both were in classic computer devices (a PDP11/44 CPU and an HP1350 graphics translator). I don't know if these spikes have enough energy to damage logic chips, but I wouldn't risk it! Howeever, there's an even worse case. There is a switching supply design that was quite common in classic computer hardware of the 1970's and 1980s. I've come across it in an HP printer/plotter, the PERQ 1, a Sanders printer, and so on. It goes like this : Incomiong mains is rectified/voltage doubled to give about 350V DC. This is fed to a non-isolating step-down switching regulator, giving about 150V on the output This feeds a free-running oscillator (typically 2 or 4 power transisotrs) which drivs the main chopper transformer. The output of that is rectified and smoothed as you'd expect, There's a feedback loop from the output to the _first_ stage (the step-down regulator), this controls the voltage supply to the oscillator, thuscontrolling the output voltage. Now for the failure. If the chopper transisotr in the first stage shorts, the output of that stage jumps to the 350V input. In most cases the oscillatorr keeps on running, and the low voltage outputs of the supply jump to over twice what they should be. Hopefully yhe crowbar fires. If not, then your logic is toast. If the crowbar does fire, well, it's not pleasant either, in that the overcurrent trip circuit normally operates on the 1st stage. Needless to say, if the chopper is shorted, it doesn't do a lot, with the result that when the crowbar fires, the oscialltor transistors die too, often shorted, which puts a dead short across the 350V supply. This gnereally results in current sense resistors,. small signal transistors, and even PCB tracks, exploding. And yes, I've seen it happen and had to sort it out. Fortunately the crowbar _did_ fire in my case, I had a nasty PSU rebuild, but the 1000-or-so chips i nthe PERQ 1A were OK. -tony