On 4/11/10 6:37 AM, Rob Jarratt wrote:
I have a faulty power supply in one of my
VAXstation 4000 VLCs (clicks on
and off more than once a second).
This failure mode of switching power supplies has been discussed here
before. What was the common cause of this, Tony? The startup resistor
or something, right?
No. If the startup resisotr fails, the supply simply fails to start up.
The outputs sit at 0V.
A PSU that 'tweets' or clicks is starting up, detecting a problem and
shutting down to protect itself and the load. And then trying again.
This may be due to a fault in the overcurrent circuitry (but whatever yo
do, don't disable said protection to see what happens unless you like
scraping bits of transistor off the ceiling!). It may be a shorted
rectifier or capactior on the secondary side. It may be tghat the crowbar
circuit is tripping and shorting out one of the outputs, either because
of a fault in the crowbar circuit or becuase there is a problem with the
regulation loop and the output voltages are genuinely getting too high.
Or it may be high ESR capacitor on the secondary side so there are
spikes on the otuptus to trip the crowbar. It might even be an open
capacitor on the primary side so the chopper control circuit can't get a
steady supply (had that one once, took me a long time to find it!).
I asusme you have a suitable load on this supply. Some PSUs will not
regualte correctly (and thys trip the crowbar) if there is insufficient load.
-tony