Tuesday 29 April 2014

M1ABD went from the map last night. I took a trip up the hill today and all that was required was to turn the computer on.
It seems that the older computers had a power switch on the front that, once you had turned it on, you needed to push the switch again to turn it off. This meant that after a power cut the computer was still turned on and just powered itself up again.
Modern computers have a power switch that just turns the power on but does not latch. This means that after a power cut the computer does not power itself up and needs somebody to push the power switch to turn it on.
Obviously, this is not a good plan when the computer is on top of a hill with a flaky power supply!

I am not sure what the answer to this problem is. I have considered a UPS but it would need a large one to run the computer for several hours and the cost is prohibitive.
It occurred to me that I could just short out the live and neutral pins on the switch so that it was always latched. I am not sure how this would affect the power supply in the computer though. Would it burn something out in that condition?

If anybody does have an answer to the above question, or knows what the answer to the problem is, I would be grateful if you could let me know at 2e1ejc@dpars.net.

Thursday 24 April 2014

Took a trip up Bullbarrow Hill today to check out M1ABD. Once again a power cut caused problems. The computer did not re-start itself after the loss of power. A quick push of the button and we are back in business.

Wednesday 23 April 2014

M1ABD appears to have stopped working and my APRS map is empty. Will take a run up the hill tomorrow and see what the problem is.