keithe@teklabs.UUCP (Keith Ericson) (05/02/84)
I have my system (C64, 1541, 1702, modem) all plugged into one of those switched electrical power strips so I can power everything down easily. Everything except the C64 is left turned on. I turn the power strip on, and after a couple of seconds turn the C64 itself on. That way the 1541 is alive and ready for the reset/initialize instruction sent by the C64 when it (the C64) comes up. When I'm thru with a session I shut off the C64 (making sure the disk is out of the 1541, or at least the door is opened) and then flip the switch on the power strip to off. The modem I'm using (a Vadic) has an outboard supply similar to the C64's and so I'd have two idling supplies powered up if I didn't have the switched power strip. Up until a couple of years ago I wouldn't have worried about it. But then a car wreck occurred a couple of miles away in which a (higher- voltage) transmission line was knocked down onto the (lower-voltage) distribution line; it blew out the power supply in one of our TVs (it was on at the time), a neighbor's microwave oven and clothes dryer, and welded the on/off switch contacts closed on another neighbor's electric shaver. Since then I also want the isolation from the power line that the switched power strip gives me. keith ericson at teklabs