Hey, it might not rust, cooking gear can be pretty tough.
However, you're right about tossing years of experience out the window. And wasting your time. Yeah, it's a clever project for home wi-fi stuff. It's irresponsible for a TV station.
What's the antenna's gain?
What's the beamwidth?
What's the maximum wind load?
How is the cable routing and stability?
These are very important things, never taken into account by the Wok designers. If your wok falls off the mount and lands on someone, how do you explain that to the insurance company? Really, the other posters are right, $80 vs. $10? For a TV station???? Apparently their time isn't worth much at all. If they have that much free time to half-ass the solution, they could lay off someone. Then they'd definately have the cash for a proper solution:) .
Try power supply design. More lab work, more smoke. Today's designs can be quite complex and understood by few. A worthy challenge. Oh yeah, and the product really is out to get you.
Actually, I do have electric heat, and one interesting side-effect of that is that I can leave on computer equipment and the like without worrying about extra power consumption.
Also, incandescents heat quite efficiently. Even though some of them are near the ceiling, quite a bit of their output is infrared, and provides a radiant heating effect. Certainly, bulbs placed in standard table lamps will heat convectively, as air moves upwards through the lamp shade, exactly as it would my electric baseboard heat.
I'm sorry, they can keep their CFL's. The incandescent is more in tune with what my body likes, a warm, radiant light source, much like the sun we're used to. I use a CFL outside by the front door, as it's more tolerant of the vibration from closing the door. I've noticed that it's spectral output is terrible for outdoor use, and not nearly as effective in lighting the front walk when compared to a simliar output standard bulb. I use one other CFL near the computer room, as it doesn't dim every time the fuser in the large laser printer kicks on.
While I admire efforts to save energy, let's go for the low-hanging fruit, like our incessant need to light up the great outdoors all night long, when no one's awake. What a waste. Yeah, light up the mall parking lot allllll night long. Real nice.
That's why they carry their own UL listing. The UL listing is UL's means of saying that if that part ever fails, it won't fail in a way that can cause personal injury. These are not like normal caps. They have a very thick dielectric, and are epoxy encapsulated. Every cap is tested at mfg, it's automated. Then the final assembly is tested.
And a loose solder joint? They kinda go open, not shorted.
It's the other parts you should be concerned about, and those I never touched on. Blown FET's shorting to frame ground? check. Overheated transformers breaching the primary to secondary boundary? check. Pinched wires? check.
The issue is that a laptop shouldn't be leaking any current. None.
Almost all devices which utilize wall-operated power supplies can have leakage current associated with them.
A circuit designed as you suggested is a potential lawsuit - if a capacitor shorts, the user gets full line current
Dropping a laptop on your toe is a potential lawsuit. The capacitors mentioned by the other poster are called X and Y caps. Any transformer-coupled switching power supply will electrostatically couple energy from the primary of the transformer, to the secondary. This energy can result in lots of signal integrity related problems in the connected equipment, as well as EMI/EMC issues. In order to minimize these problems, a ceramic capacitor is connected from one leg of the primary, to one leg of the seconday. It gives a return path to the coupled energy. These capacitors have a UL listing that is separate from that of the power supply. They don't fail. Ever. They have a rating of almost 4kV, and are hi-pot tested to that at the factory.
I think it would be nice if the slashdot crowd learned more about the toys we hold so dear. It's worth knowing.
Also, DMM's are very high-impedance, you can measure 'dangerous' voltages by just holding the leads in the air. Like any piece of lab gear, it's nice to know when you can believe it's output.
Yes, I'm the same kind of bum, I've used low-dollar Belden duo-bond RG-59 for audio and video cabling on my toys. It's reasonably flexible, non-lossy at a 6ft distance, and free. I've tried all kinds of shielded, twisted pair for balanced signals.
I've never bothered to shroud my toys in wire mesh, since I do love the clean looks of them, though it does work well for certain things.
My solution was much easier, I turned off that damn lamp dimmer. Now sitting in silence. Those things suck so bad I can hear even the lamp filament vibrate from it's output.
Otherwise, I just try to make sure all toys are of exceptional quality, it's easier to fix things when the design is sound to begin with.
That's correct, if you use uber high quality cabling, and equally matched equipment, you won't have these problems.
However, recording studios do not use BNC connectors, multi-shielded cable, or GHz RF receivers. Pray tell, how do you shield the pickup on an electric guitar with 100% effectiveness? Or an open frame tube-based amp? Tape machine heads? You don't. You keep the environment quiet. It's the only way.
Noise supression on GHz class receivers is easy, since the offending signal is only a few harmonics out from the nonsense generated in a CFL, and the whole chassis is solid metal, without so much as a vent hole.
It's about time my luck has improved. I have all the LD versions, including the original 1980 pressing of IV. Sweeeeet. Dolby 4-channel surround, anyone?
They actually sell 'Swimming Pool' Heat Exchangers. These are used so you can heat a pool with your boiler, but not let the corrosive pool water destroy your home heating system.
They have the added benefit of making it impossible to drain your whole pool into your house when a line breaks.
A lender is in the business of making money through loans. In order for them to do this, they invariably must get their money back. Not all borrowers have the means or intention of returning the money that they have borrowed. A credit score is used to give a lender an idea of how much risk they are taking on by lending to this person. A person that has a long-standing record proving that they can both borrow and return money in a responsible, timely manner will have a high score, as they pose less risk to lenders.
The reason I don't have enough credit (which is almost as bad as having bad credit) is because I don't feed the credit industry their rediculously[sic] high interest rates.
The high interest rates having nothing to do with this. You do not need to float revolving debt to maintain a high rating. If a credit card company floats you $3k every month, and you pay it back every month, that looks good to them, and affects your score likewise. If they give you $3k every month, and you pay it back at interest, that also looks good, as you pay it back on time. If they give you $3k a month, and you skip payments, that looks bad. If you don't spend any month on the card every month, that looks like nothing, and will not raise your score, or lower it.
If you never borrow money, and therefore never return it, your score will be low. No one wants to be the first person to find out the hard way if you'll repay a debt, so they simply don't lend to you.
Credit ratings have their place for weeding out people that are bad with money and buy things they can't afford.
You've hit the nail on the head. You attempted to borrow $5k to purchase a car. That raises flags in and of itself. Needing to borrow the trivial sum of $5k to afford a car puts you on the verge of not being able to afford to maintain, repair, insure or operate said vehicle. This puts your loan into a high-risk category. You will probably require a higher credit score to purchase this loan than someone buying a $30k car. The $30k car is likely to be in better condition, will have a resale value, and loan is less likely to be abandoned. Your previous did not affect your credit score much as it was a trivial sum. A credit score is simply a guideline. A bank may decide to extend you credit based upon other merits, such as your banking history with them. The company that gave you your original loan may be willing to do that again. A different bank may see that you are a high-risk, and elect not to.
Your credit rating has very little to do with the way you manage your finances.
It has everything to do with this. Even if part of your management is managing to have no income.
Seems less intrusive and better for people's safety than the credit ratings that are used to discriminate against people instead.
Huh? I fail to see the connection.
If you can't manage your life or finances, I don't see why any company would want to trust you with any of their money, either. That may be better for your safety, keeping you from digging a deeper hole for yourself, or having Fat Tony show up on your doorstep.
And the NSA is being more intrusive, they are recording EVERY phone call you make. Credit bureaus DON'T record every little credit card transaction.
I will continue to drive my Silverado as normal....only it will be more enjoyable, as the roads will be empty. In fact, in a round-about kind of way, it will cause my city mileage to improve:) Sounds win-win to me.
Actually, he meant Astec. They are a very popular OEM for custom power supplies.
Additionally, a poor power factor has nothing to do with power supply efficiency.
There are many suppliers out there that could've provide a workable solution for the xbox, but they are all requirements driven. You tell them what you want, they make it for you, and get all required certifications (UL, etc). BUT, you have to give them requirements, and you can make them so detailed that you shoot yourself in the foot.
I don't pretend to know what happened here. I could come up with a million possibilities, but that doesn't make them right. I would be certain that someone, somewhere knew about this problem before release, but I imagine they had ramped up production so fast that they had to actually ship these suckers or face a huge scrap charge, or a missed deadline. They probably figured it wouldn't affect most users, and they new for sure it wasn't a safety problem... But these are just guesses for your typical scenario.
Nope, 1000A is the figure, @ 1.2VDC. Of course, that still only amounts to 1200W. And no, that won't kill you on contact. Output voltage is so low that it could never overcome the body's internal resistance. So yes, a z9 with all four PU books installed will have roughly 8000A@1.2VDC for Vcore. Not to mention things like memory, which would only be about 800A@2.5V.
Yes, real big iron still uses 3-phase power. I can only speak on behalf of large IBM system (zSeries, etc). These systems will accept 192VAC to 508VAC on the input, 3-phase Delta. This means no neutral required. Additionally, they will even run with one phase totally missing.
The first power conversion stage in any piece of their 'big iron' is a very large AC to DC converter, rated for a 350VDC output at over 42kW. Actually it's six 7.5kW converters paralled, and these are redundant/hot swappable. Totally modular, with no cable connections. This block is about 95% efficient.
This DC is then distributed to the rest of the system power supplies, with redundant cabling supplying all point of load converters. All point of load converters are also redundant and hot swap. These converters have a range of efficiencies, but are typically much better than industry standards. A DC/DC converter in the z9 can source 1000A alone on the CPU Vcore level (12 of these supplies are in the machine). Supplies are used for CPU nodes, I/O cages, blowers and refrigeration.
All blowers are 3-phase DC-brushless type, with the 3-phase synthesized off the 350VDC feeds. The blowers are usually 300W or larger, each.
The CPU refrigeration is also run by 3-phase compressors, this power also being synthesized off of 350VDC. This is done to allow a conventional off-the-shelf compressor to be run off any line voltage, and ride through phase losses (as this is seen by the bulk AC/DC converter instead).
The 'big iron' also supports built in UPS cabability, allowing you to connect battery packs directly to the bulk AC/DC converters. A machine will handle six 400V@2.5Ah battery packs connected to it. This feature is used to ensure a system such as a z9 has true 100% availability, and won't suffer a hard shutdown due to careless datacenter workers or electricians.
In short, the article is intend to address small white box systems that use $12 power supplies with very poor reliability and efficiencies.
And to another poster that brought up 3-phase being more efficient for power conversion...that's not really true these days, as everything requires power-factor correction. Nothing in the IT uses huge three-phase bridge rectifiers and phase-regulated primaries anymore.
Yes, real big iron still uses 3-phase power. I can only speak on behalf of large IBM system (zSeries, etc). These systems will accept 192VAC to 508VAC on the input, 3-phase Delta. This means no neutral required. Additionally, they will even run with one phase totally missing.
The first power conversion stage in any piece of their 'big iron' is a very large AC to DC converter, rated for a 350VDC output at over 42kW. Actually it's six 7.5kW converters paralled, and these are redundant/hot swappable. Totally modular, with no cable connections. This block is about 95% efficient.
This DC is then distributed to the rest of the system power supplies, with redundant cabling supplying all point of load converters. All point of load converters are also redundant and hot swap. These converters have a range of efficiencies, but are typically much better than industry standards. A DC/DC converter in the z9 can source 1000A alone on the CPU Vcore level (12 of these supplies are in the machine). Supplies are used for CPU nodes, I/O cages, blowers and refrigeration.
All blowers are 3-phase DC-brushless type, with the 3-phase synthesized off the 350VDC feeds. The blowers are usually 300W or larger, each.
The CPU refrigeration is also run by 3-phase compressors, this power also being synthesized off of 350VDC. This is done to allow a conventional off-the-shelf compressor to be run off any line voltage, and ride through phase losses (as this is seen by the bulk AC/DC converter instead).
The 'big iron' also supports built in UPS cabability, allowing you to connect battery packs directly to the bulk AC/DC converters. A machine will handle six 400V@2.5Ah battery packs connected to it. This feature is used to ensure a system such as a z9 has true 100% availability, and won't suffer a hard shutdown due to careless datacenter workers or electricians.
In short, the article is intend to address small white box systems that use $12 power supplies with very poor reliability and efficiencies.
And to another poster that brought up 3-phase being more efficient for power conversion...that's not really true these days, as everything requires power-factor correction. Nothing in the IT uses huge three-phase bridge rectifiers and phase-regulated primaries anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
As the saying goes: An ounce in the morning is a pound a night!
However, you're right about tossing years of experience out the window. And wasting your time. Yeah, it's a clever project for home wi-fi stuff. It's irresponsible for a TV station.
What's the antenna's gain?
What's the beamwidth?
What's the maximum wind load?
How is the cable routing and stability?
These are very important things, never taken into account by the Wok designers. If your wok falls off the mount and lands on someone, how do you explain that to the insurance company? Really, the other posters are right, $80 vs. $10? For a TV station???? Apparently their time isn't worth much at all. If they have that much free time to half-ass the solution, they could lay off someone. Then they'd definately have the cash for a proper solution :) .
Try power supply design. More lab work, more smoke. Today's designs can be quite complex and understood by few. A worthy challenge. Oh yeah, and the product really is out to get you.
Also, incandescents heat quite efficiently. Even though some of them are near the ceiling, quite a bit of their output is infrared, and provides a radiant heating effect. Certainly, bulbs placed in standard table lamps will heat convectively, as air moves upwards through the lamp shade, exactly as it would my electric baseboard heat.
I'm sorry, they can keep their CFL's. The incandescent is more in tune with what my body likes, a warm, radiant light source, much like the sun we're used to. I use a CFL outside by the front door, as it's more tolerant of the vibration from closing the door. I've noticed that it's spectral output is terrible for outdoor use, and not nearly as effective in lighting the front walk when compared to a simliar output standard bulb. I use one other CFL near the computer room, as it doesn't dim every time the fuser in the large laser printer kicks on.
While I admire efforts to save energy, let's go for the low-hanging fruit, like our incessant need to light up the great outdoors all night long, when no one's awake. What a waste. Yeah, light up the mall parking lot allllll night long. Real nice.
That's why they carry their own UL listing. The UL listing is UL's means of saying that if that part ever fails, it won't fail in a way that can cause personal injury. These are not like normal caps. They have a very thick dielectric, and are epoxy encapsulated. Every cap is tested at mfg, it's automated. Then the final assembly is tested.
And a loose solder joint? They kinda go open, not shorted.
It's the other parts you should be concerned about, and those I never touched on. Blown FET's shorting to frame ground? check. Overheated transformers breaching the primary to secondary boundary? check. Pinched wires? check.
Almost all devices which utilize wall-operated power supplies can have leakage current associated with them.
A circuit designed as you suggested is a potential lawsuit - if a capacitor shorts, the user gets full line current
Dropping a laptop on your toe is a potential lawsuit. The capacitors mentioned by the other poster are called X and Y caps. Any transformer-coupled switching power supply will electrostatically couple energy from the primary of the transformer, to the secondary. This energy can result in lots of signal integrity related problems in the connected equipment, as well as EMI/EMC issues. In order to minimize these problems, a ceramic capacitor is connected from one leg of the primary, to one leg of the seconday. It gives a return path to the coupled energy. These capacitors have a UL listing that is separate from that of the power supply. They don't fail. Ever. They have a rating of almost 4kV, and are hi-pot tested to that at the factory.
I think it would be nice if the slashdot crowd learned more about the toys we hold so dear. It's worth knowing.
Also, DMM's are very high-impedance, you can measure 'dangerous' voltages by just holding the leads in the air. Like any piece of lab gear, it's nice to know when you can believe it's output.
I've never bothered to shroud my toys in wire mesh, since I do love the clean looks of them, though it does work well for certain things.
My solution was much easier, I turned off that damn lamp dimmer. Now sitting in silence. Those things suck so bad I can hear even the lamp filament vibrate from it's output.
Otherwise, I just try to make sure all toys are of exceptional quality, it's easier to fix things when the design is sound to begin with.
However, recording studios do not use BNC connectors, multi-shielded cable, or GHz RF receivers. Pray tell, how do you shield the pickup on an electric guitar with 100% effectiveness? Or an open frame tube-based amp? Tape machine heads? You don't. You keep the environment quiet. It's the only way.
Noise supression on GHz class receivers is easy, since the offending signal is only a few harmonics out from the nonsense generated in a CFL, and the whole chassis is solid metal, without so much as a vent hole.
I wonder, too. Go read the list and get back to us....
I think I'll watch a movie or two tonight :)
1920x1080 seems like a happy medium over here...
They have the added benefit of making it impossible to drain your whole pool into your house when a line breaks.
I want to live where you do. The land where five year olds are already computer experts. That sounds nice.
A lender is in the business of making money through loans. In order for them to do this, they invariably must get their money back. Not all borrowers have the means or intention of returning the money that they have borrowed. A credit score is used to give a lender an idea of how much risk they are taking on by lending to this person. A person that has a long-standing record proving that they can both borrow and return money in a responsible, timely manner will have a high score, as they pose less risk to lenders.
The reason I don't have enough credit (which is almost as bad as having bad credit) is because I don't feed the credit industry their rediculously[sic] high interest rates.
The high interest rates having nothing to do with this. You do not need to float revolving debt to maintain a high rating. If a credit card company floats you $3k every month, and you pay it back every month, that looks good to them, and affects your score likewise. If they give you $3k every month, and you pay it back at interest, that also looks good, as you pay it back on time. If they give you $3k a month, and you skip payments, that looks bad. If you don't spend any month on the card every month, that looks like nothing, and will not raise your score, or lower it.
If you never borrow money, and therefore never return it, your score will be low. No one wants to be the first person to find out the hard way if you'll repay a debt, so they simply don't lend to you.
Credit ratings have their place for weeding out people that are bad with money and buy things they can't afford.
You've hit the nail on the head. You attempted to borrow $5k to purchase a car. That raises flags in and of itself. Needing to borrow the trivial sum of $5k to afford a car puts you on the verge of not being able to afford to maintain, repair, insure or operate said vehicle. This puts your loan into a high-risk category. You will probably require a higher credit score to purchase this loan than someone buying a $30k car. The $30k car is likely to be in better condition, will have a resale value, and loan is less likely to be abandoned. Your previous did not affect your credit score much as it was a trivial sum. A credit score is simply a guideline. A bank may decide to extend you credit based upon other merits, such as your banking history with them. The company that gave you your original loan may be willing to do that again. A different bank may see that you are a high-risk, and elect not to.
Your credit rating has very little to do with the way you manage your finances.
It has everything to do with this. Even if part of your management is managing to have no income.
Seems less intrusive and better for people's safety than the credit ratings that are used to discriminate against people instead.
Huh? I fail to see the connection.
If you can't manage your life or finances, I don't see why any company would want to trust you with any of their money, either. That may be better for your safety, keeping you from digging a deeper hole for yourself, or having Fat Tony show up on your doorstep.
And the NSA is being more intrusive, they are recording EVERY phone call you make. Credit bureaus DON'T record every little credit card transaction.
Pardon my ignorance, but how do you get arrested for picking up litter?
I will continue to drive my Silverado as normal....only it will be more enjoyable, as the roads will be empty. In fact, in a round-about kind of way, it will cause my city mileage to improve
That was a lucid, well thought out post.
There is a reason they use the term disabled. It means he can't do things that others typically can. That's how that works.
One minor nit. Is 'reverse discrimination' actually a valid term? Discrimination is discrimination, isn't it?
Actually, he meant Astec. They are a very popular OEM for custom power supplies.
Additionally, a poor power factor has nothing to do with power supply efficiency.
There are many suppliers out there that could've provide a workable solution for the xbox, but they are all requirements driven. You tell them what you want, they make it for you, and get all required certifications (UL, etc). BUT, you have to give them requirements, and you can make them so detailed that you shoot yourself in the foot.
I don't pretend to know what happened here. I could come up with a million possibilities, but that doesn't make them right. I would be certain that someone, somewhere knew about this problem before release, but I imagine they had ramped up production so fast that they had to actually ship these suckers or face a huge scrap charge, or a missed deadline. They probably figured it wouldn't affect most users, and they new for sure it wasn't a safety problem... But these are just guesses for your typical scenario.
Nope, 1000A is the figure, @ 1.2VDC. Of course, that still only amounts to 1200W. And no, that won't kill you on contact. Output voltage is so low that it could never overcome the body's internal resistance. So yes, a z9 with all four PU books installed will have roughly 8000A@1.2VDC for Vcore. Not to mention things like memory, which would only be about 800A@2.5V.
Yes, real big iron still uses 3-phase power. I can only speak on behalf of large IBM system (zSeries, etc). These systems will accept 192VAC to 508VAC on the input, 3-phase Delta. This means no neutral required. Additionally, they will even run with one phase totally missing.
The first power conversion stage in any piece of their 'big iron' is a very large AC to DC converter, rated for a 350VDC output at over 42kW. Actually it's six 7.5kW converters paralled, and these are redundant/hot swappable. Totally modular, with no cable connections. This block is about 95% efficient.
This DC is then distributed to the rest of the system power supplies, with redundant cabling supplying all point of load converters. All point of load converters are also redundant and hot swap. These converters have a range of efficiencies, but are typically much better than industry standards. A DC/DC converter in the z9 can source 1000A alone on the CPU Vcore level (12 of these supplies are in the machine). Supplies are used for CPU nodes, I/O cages, blowers and refrigeration.
All blowers are 3-phase DC-brushless type, with the 3-phase synthesized off the 350VDC feeds. The blowers are usually 300W or larger, each.
The CPU refrigeration is also run by 3-phase compressors, this power also being synthesized off of 350VDC. This is done to allow a conventional off-the-shelf compressor to be run off any line voltage, and ride through phase losses (as this is seen by the bulk AC/DC converter instead).
The 'big iron' also supports built in UPS cabability, allowing you to connect battery packs directly to the bulk AC/DC converters. A machine will handle six 400V@2.5Ah battery packs connected to it. This feature is used to ensure a system such as a z9 has true 100% availability, and won't suffer a hard shutdown due to careless datacenter workers or electricians.
In short, the article is intend to address small white box systems that use $12 power supplies with very poor reliability and efficiencies.
And to another poster that brought up 3-phase being more efficient for power conversion...that's not really true these days, as everything requires power-factor correction. Nothing in the IT uses huge three-phase bridge rectifiers and phase-regulated primaries anymore.
Yes, real big iron still uses 3-phase power. I can only speak on behalf of large IBM system (zSeries, etc). These systems will accept 192VAC to 508VAC on the input, 3-phase Delta. This means no neutral required. Additionally, they will even run with one phase totally missing. The first power conversion stage in any piece of their 'big iron' is a very large AC to DC converter, rated for a 350VDC output at over 42kW. Actually it's six 7.5kW converters paralled, and these are redundant/hot swappable. Totally modular, with no cable connections. This block is about 95% efficient. This DC is then distributed to the rest of the system power supplies, with redundant cabling supplying all point of load converters. All point of load converters are also redundant and hot swap. These converters have a range of efficiencies, but are typically much better than industry standards. A DC/DC converter in the z9 can source 1000A alone on the CPU Vcore level (12 of these supplies are in the machine). Supplies are used for CPU nodes, I/O cages, blowers and refrigeration. All blowers are 3-phase DC-brushless type, with the 3-phase synthesized off the 350VDC feeds. The blowers are usually 300W or larger, each. The CPU refrigeration is also run by 3-phase compressors, this power also being synthesized off of 350VDC. This is done to allow a conventional off-the-shelf compressor to be run off any line voltage, and ride through phase losses (as this is seen by the bulk AC/DC converter instead). The 'big iron' also supports built in UPS cabability, allowing you to connect battery packs directly to the bulk AC/DC converters. A machine will handle six 400V@2.5Ah battery packs connected to it. This feature is used to ensure a system such as a z9 has true 100% availability, and won't suffer a hard shutdown due to careless datacenter workers or electricians. In short, the article is intend to address small white box systems that use $12 power supplies with very poor reliability and efficiencies. And to another poster that brought up 3-phase being more efficient for power conversion...that's not really true these days, as everything requires power-factor correction. Nothing in the IT uses huge three-phase bridge rectifiers and phase-regulated primaries anymore.