Blew the fuse in my multimeter, wanted to replace it, grabbed it, but

$8io$ snipped-for-privacy@news.albasani.net...

Nah, just suck one end out at a time (leave the fuse soldered to the board). And then, replace the wire inside the fuse. Resolder the ends of the fuse. Done! :)

In a pinch, you can actually repair equipment in the field this way....

seconds.

Sorry to hear about that. But there should be lots of neighbors with similar damage now, so you should be able to make a case at the utility.

Check the other more expensive stuff like TV etc. Much of that is always connected with standby power.

This is why aircraft stuff is designed surge-proof. Has to be.

the ADSL modem...

And there you guys always razzle on about the poor power grid in the US. I haven't lost one piece of electronics in 13 years, and no UPS here :-)

Anyhow, I have me site and all that hosted professionally and even when a ferocious storm knocked power where the server farm is there was no outage. They have their own backup power, mirror sites and so on. All for around $80 a year.

actually paying for

interesting

I don't because I'd prefer to keep my ISP username away from the spammers, besides it's fun to register some playful names and run a low-volume server from home ;)

Grant.

I've done it. Ok, no pics but a schematic. In the days of our previous governor where the grid was screwed up and regular black-outs happened Romania-style. Fired up laptop, plugged in modem cable, dialed in, meep .. meep .. phssssshhhhhhhhhhhhh ... done.

Use external current shunts? Much safer for the meter. Though I'm in the habit of using shunts 'cos often working with a bit more current than common meters will handle.

Grant.

Thought about it -- but more in terms of how fun it would be to build, not to use.

On a sunny day (Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:11:17 +1000) it happened Grant wrote in :

Yes, for high current for sure. This was only 200mA range and I accidently slipped one probe it seems, no real damage.

On a sunny day (Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:07:37 +1000) it happened Grant wrote in :

It is also much easier, as I do not have to ftp upload or whatever. And ISPs suck anyways.

This had been done commonly for many years. (usually bit fuses with pigtail leads...) There is an adapter that snaps on the blown fuse, basically a double sided fuse holder. Put a good fuse on one side, and snap over the blown fuse. Instant fix, no soldering required.

On a sunny day (Wed, 28 Apr 2010 14:03:25 -0700) it happened Joerg wrote in :

I dunno yet. I got every thing up and running again! I am good :-)

The ethernet switch started working again all by itself (it is on an wall wart), and I have no idea why. I opened it and looked up the chip RTL8309SB, looking for some EEPROM that could have been corrupted, but it has none. I brought it up one port by one. Very strange, tested it many times, absolutely no go... Maybe because I am stuffing lots of UDP packets in half duplex through it reconfigured the network (last status when it went down), dunno. PC power supply will need replacing, bad capacitors.

Maybe it was no surge, never seen anything like this. Fixing (well ..) the switch also fixed the camera... I tried that camera directly on the PC, no go! Looks like some auto configuration of ethernet stuff I do not know about.

I do not have an UPS either now, but I do have battery backup as a lot of systems are 12 V DC.

Why,. the server is mine, it sits here in my house, why bother with some ISP with a help desk that has no clue most of the time? Last time I had one they charged 1 guilder per minute, having no clue makes a lot of money that way :-)

On a sunny day (Wed, 28 Apr 2010 14:07:57 -0700) it happened Joerg wrote in :

Yes, I could do that, even with DSL, I think the router needs 28 V AC though.. But I think I had enough of the power problems, gona order a UPS now. Will google again for a Honda generator too.

On a sunny day (Wed, 28 Apr 2010 13:15:45 -0700) it happened "Paul Hovnanian P.E." wrote in :

Yep.

I may stil lhave some of those clips, good idea.

Crunch the glass with pliers and desolder the ends separately.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

DSL usually goes out as well when power is gone in your area. The boxes on the street corners are usually not on any sort of UPS scheme. But telco continues because it is safety-critical. However, you have to write down several dial-in numbers because chances are that one of them is also suffering an outage and I don't think they'll have the modems on backup power.

lot of money that way :-)

Guilder? That must have been a looong time ago then.

My web hosting provider never charged me for support calls or emails. Plus the computer and Internet gets shut off at night. The power savings alone probably make up the $80/year. Although it's more like $45 because if I had no host I'd have to pay InterNic $35 for the domain name I guess, unless that price has come down by now.

That works fine for me.

lot of money that way :-)

GoDaddy is cheaper :-) ...Jim Thompson

I have never had a problem using his links...

a lot of money that way :-)

Better commercials, too. ;-)