28 Sep
1997
28 Sep
'97
9:58 a.m.
While *I* have never seen it happen, friends have told
me that the
electrolytic capacitors in the power supply can cause problems if they have
been sitting for long periods of time. Some of them have put a variac on
the unit and brought the voltage up slowly over a period of ???? but I seem
to recall it was at least hours. Someone else on the list might have more
info there.
Yes, please remove the supplies from the load (the boards, etc.), and
replace it with a suitable BIG power resistor to simulate a proper load
(also known as a dummy load). If you do not have a variable transformer
(Variac or otherwise), go ahead and turn the thing on - the Nova is not
that ancient, so the caps probably have not degraded much. If you do have
a transformer, ramp up the voltage from 0 over ten minutes or so. It
really only needs it once.
For truely ancient capacitors (no use for 15-20 years), it is probably
best to ramp it up over a half hour or so thru a 240 v light bulb (current
limitter). Most of use, however, never run into computer stuff that needs
this extreme treatment - some radio stuff, however, does.
William Donzelli
william(a)ans.net