[mythtv-users] power failure - now lirc stopped working

Brian Wood beww at beww.org
Wed Apr 5 01:45:54 UTC 2006


On Apr 4, 2006, at 6:44 PM, Lucien D. wrote:

>
> As for it being a hw issue because of the power failure, it is on a
> decent surge protector and everything else has been working perfectly
> for over a week now, so I'm crossing my fingers that this isn't the
> case.
>

Not sure what you mean by a "decent" surge protector, but a *really*  
decent one would cost more than your entire PC. The ones sold for  
consumer goods are practically worthless IMHO. They also can give you  
a false sense of security because the MOVs they use are not self- 
healing, and you have no way of knowing if the "protection" blew in  
the first ten minutes of use.

I'd really get the best UPS you can afford as soon as you can.

But I don't think your potential HW problem is necessarily surge- 
related, but rather what I call the "light bulb effect".

When does a light bulb burn out ? When you turn it on. It does happen  
rarely that one will be just sitting there burning away and  
spontaneously burn out, but in the vast majority of cases it happens  
just as you turn it on. Basically any electronics can behave the same  
way, and the best surge protector can't protect against the worst  
surge of all, the inrush when you turn it on, because you *want* that  
surge to happen.

Anyway, I hope it isn't HW as much as you, but as you pointed out you  
are running out of other possibilities.




More information about the mythtv-users mailing list