arritt@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (02/18/90)
I'm in the market for a 386sx, and our state contract says "thou
shalt buy Zenith and no other". The Zenith 386sx has a 120 watt
power supply, which is small for this type of machine. The Zenith sales
rep said they use some special chips which reduce the power
requirements. The whole business seems weird -- the power supply
is a pretty small-dollar item in the context of the price of the
system, and the power usage of pc's is an insignificant contributor
to the electric bill of any governmental institution (i.e. Zenith's
primary market). Just what are they trying to accomplish by designing
the system to use such a low-rating power supply?
Anyway, my main question to you fellow netters: Is this something to
be concerned about? For example, what happens if I add a tape backup,
a transputer board, maybe a few more megabytes of memory, or other
electrical load?
Whatever advice, anecdotes, warnings, etc. you can offer would be
appreciated.
________________________________________________________________________
Ray Arritt |
Dept. of Physics and Astronomy |
Univ. of Kansas |
Lawrence, KS 66045 |
arritt@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu |
arritt@ukanvax.bitnet |
mp2k+@andrew.cmu.edu (Michael Palmquist) (02/20/90)
Ray Arritt writes: "what happens if I add a tape backup, a transputer board, maybe a few more megabytes of memory, or other electrical load? " I installed a card in my PC-XT that said, "Requires a 150-Watt power supply or some such thing." I didn't upgrade the power supply, though, since my 125 (or whatever they installed as original) seemed to be working fine. BUT, when I added a new floppy controller and a 1.44 meg drive, I had problems with the system locking up. It turned out that my power supply needed to be upgraded at that point. New power supply, no problem. Mike Palmquist ************************ mp2k@andrew.cmu.edu Department of English Carnegie Mellon University voice: 412/268-5636