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Originally Posted by Slick Fork
I realize that a tv has more decisions to make then an alarm clock, my speculation was more along the lines of is a $20 alarm clocks circuits really that much more robust then a tv or dvd players?
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Yeah in a way they are more robust. The density of transistors in something like a computer CPU is such that small irregularities can become big problems. You won't see complicated ICs like that in an alarm clock but things like TVs and DVD players are full of them. I'm reminded of a motherboard I had a few years ago that exhibited odd behavior under heavy loads. It turn out that some of the capacitors on the board were faulty and were resulting the in 3.3v line to the CPU dropping to 3.21v under load, then the computer would crash.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Slick Fork
I think the trouble with most of the computer battery backups is that since they are designed for computers that don't care what kind of signal they're getting the easy way is for them to output in a modified or stepped sine wave. The more expensive ones will output a true sine wave which is what ac motors need.
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That's a whole other kettle of fish though. If your power is so bad that you get issues running something "electrical" like a powerhead you need to get an electrician out, they're not very fussy. It's "electronics" like PCs and home theater things like are more likely to need something to regulate power. Even if a switching power supply does not fail it's output can get skewed enough to cause problems.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Slick Fork
I saw at future shop the other day a Monster brand power bar with the phase one power cleaner for $99. I guess if I looked at it as $40 for a decent powerbar and $50 for a power cleaner I could justify it if the consensus is that the power cleaners aren't just smoke and mirrors. I think the most fool-proof protection would be one of those "always-on true sine wave" UPS's but that's an investment of another $900.
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I think $99 is still pretty spendy, again the necessity of these things is being overstated. In 12 years of computer related work I can count the number of times bad power was a problem on one hand. I can't believe that a DVD player is any more susceptible to this type of thing than a PC and aquarium equipment is most definitely not.