Monday 25 September 2006

Load limited

Yesterday at about 17:30 I plugged in my new battery backup power supply and hooked in all the equipment. I've got my PC, Anthony's too, and his monitor on the battery backup outlets and other peripherals on the three surge guard outlets. Then at about 22:00 I was transcoding video and Anthony was on Final Fantasy XI, the thing starts screeching at us like a smoke alarm in panic mode. Turns out the battery outlets are overloaded.

Now, if I were more electrically-minded, I probably could have predicted that a UPS like this couldn't handle two PCs running hot, but I'm not a sparky. I'm a softy with a screwdriver at best. So now I've got to make the difficult choice of how to arrange things. Only one PC gets to have battery backup now, but the choices for the other outlet are my monitor (pointless without the PC up and running), the modem (with no router to keep it on the network), the router (with no PCs to connect to) or Anthony's speakers.

It seems like the speakers are the most logical choice, in the same way as smooth peanut butter, of all the peanut spread varieties, is the most like dairy butter. It might be true, but it's still a long way from right.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Of course, I could boot Anthony's PC off backup.
PPS - Since I own the UPS, after all...

No comments: