19 Oct
2007
19 Oct
'07
12:28 p.m.
On Friday 19 October 2007, JP Hindin wrote:
You know, it's ironic this topic has come up, as
I'm currently
working on converting my 3ph SGI Onyx to single phase and had looked
into static and rotary phase convertors. Having never had any reason
to look at one before I started anew - and decided quickly that they
did not appear to be safe for computer use.
The easiest and best way to do this, is to either rewire things to be
happy with single-phase, or just run single phase to it.
In general most modern-ish computer three phase supplies (since at
least '90 or so) will be perfectly happy if you wire them up to a
single phase supply - you may want to bond the third phase to one of
the "hot" wires of the single phase supply.
I've run IBM S/390 and SP systems off of a single phase supply like
this, with no other work to convert them, and they're perfectly happy
with it. One small "gotcha" is that it may have some control bits of
the power supply that are wired to two of the three phases, so if you
have the third phase bonded to one of the hot leads, and it doesn't
work, you may want to try bonding it to the other phase instead.
Worrying about any sort of single to three phase converter for a
modernish computer is just a waste of money. The only things that
truly need three phase (real or improvised) are things with three-phase
motors in them...
Pat
--
Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/
The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org