[comp.sys.atari.st] Leaving it on

ljdickey@water.waterloo.edu (Lee Dickey) (01/06/89)

In article <3542@cs.Buffalo.EDU> ugthomps@sunybcs.UUCP (Gregory Thompson) writes:
>I am surprised to hear you have had such problems with your power supply.

Me too.

>I have a 520st that I purchased back in February of 1986.
> ...
> I have left my machine on round the clock every day of the year  ...

Me too, I started with a 1040, which I ran all the time.  But it was
not out of fear of blowing the power supply.  I just didn't like to
wait for it to boot up, and I hated having to set the clock.

>Is there any problem with leaving a 1040 on for extended periods of time
>as a result of the power supply getting too warm?

I had no problem.  I think that the heat transfer is good enough in that
machine, but can not say anything about what happens if you load it up
with extra chips.  I noticed that the underside of the desk top warms
up, after the machine was on a couple of days. 

I recommend that you keep the top vents clear of papers, floppies, etc. 
Some folks store their floppies on top of the vents; I try not to for
two reasons: first, the heat, second, proximity to the power supply, at
the left side of the unit, I think, whose magnetic flux could cause
deterioration of the information on the diskettes. 

Now i have a Mega ST and my only complaint is the noise of the fan. 

-- 
    L. J. Dickey, Faculty of Mathematics, University of Waterloo.
	ljdickey@WATDCS.UWaterloo.ca	ljdickey@water.BITNET
	ljdickey@water.UUCP		..!uunet!watmath!water!ljdickey
	ljdickey@water.waterloo.edu	

mark@lakesys.UUCP (Mark Storin) (01/08/89)

	I have a 1040 and used to leave it on all the time.  We had some VERY
warm days last summer and one day, ZAP, out it went (the power supply).  So,
have care, the internal power supplies do succumb to extremes of heat.

-- 
Mark A. Storin
Lake Systems, Milw., WI
mark@lakesys.lakesys.COM

dav@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (William David Haas) (01/14/89)

Several people have stated that they leave thier st on 24 hours a day.  Can
someone from atari who knows the hardware tell me if this is a good/bad idea?

dav