| William H. Magill on 21 Aug 2004 20:27:02 -0000 |
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On 21 Aug, 2004, at 14:47, Paul wrote: What I do need it at least 15 feet (About 5 meters, right?) of extension cord to actually connect the Windows PC to the UPS. Now there's a power question in the making. Is it OK to have a six foot PC power cord that is connected to a 15 foot extension cord that is connected to a power strip that is connected to the UPS? I know the circuit isn't overloaded, but that's lots of cables and connectors! Would a Fire Marshall smack me down for that? Visit either Home Depot or CVS (especially around the holidays... i.e. next couple of weeks) Pick up a 20 or 25 foot 3 wire extension cord. They have "triple" headed ones in addition to the single headed version. They are also cheap -- especially at CVS when they sell off their Holiday merchandise for 10cents on the dollar -- I quite literally got a $10 extension cord packaged as a "holiday" item for $1! Other than that -- the primary answer is get the largest gage wire you can for you cords. The "normal" "zip" cord (aka lamp cord) based extension cord is really not satisfactory today. The larger the gage wire, the more current it can carry without heating up. The "triple headed" cords are usually of a larger gage than the single headed ones (or at least they should be.) The primary "fire" issue is the fact that the cord does heat up when current flows through it -- so don't run it under ANYTHING, especially things like rugs and paper. The only issue with the power strip plugged into the extension cord is, just that... the power strip allows you to pull a lot of current through the wire (multiple devices instead of just one) and therefore generate heat. A large gage extension cord both carries more current, AND doesn't consume a lot of current itself generating heat! If you have a triple headed extension cord, you don't need the power strip -- the UPS will provide all, and normally much more, protection than the power strip. Truth be told, I have a power strip plugged into my UPS simply because the blood UPS doesn't have a rational number of outlets, especially for all the damm "blocks" that everybody uses, that have no "standard width" plug on them. Most of the damm power strips on the market have the outlets spaced too close together. One needs to spring for one of the Kingston units that separate the outlets out so you can plug in 3 or 4 blocks into one power strip instead of needing two strips! I'm glad to see that a lot of the manufactures are finally getting smart and upgrading to "cubes with tails" on them ... usually universal "cubes" which can take a different "supply cord" depending upon use in the US or the UK. T.T.F.N. William H. Magill # Beige G3 - Rev A motherboard - 768 Meg # Flat-panel iMac (2.1) 800MHz - Super Drive - 768 Meg # PWS433a [Alpha 21164 Rev 7.2 (EV56)- 64 Meg]- Tru64 5.1a # XP1000 [Alpha EV6] magill@mcgillsociety.org magill@acm.org magill@mac.com ___________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
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