Need some O.T. help

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Thu Feb 4 05:17:23 1999

> On Wed, 3 Feb 1999, Jim Strickland wrote:
> I HATE ATX.

Max Eskin <max82_at_surfree.com> wrote:
> Actually, I find it to be one of the most hilarious pieces of poor
> engineering in modern computers. ATX machines can switch off without any
> good reason, refuse to turn on, refuse to boot, refuse to turn off, and
> other things. If M$ designed a PSU, this would be it.

I've read the ATX spec, and I can't find anything in it that requires
this sort of flaky behavior, or even encourages it the slightest bit.
What you are complaining about isn't the ATX standard, but the crappy
implementations that typical motherboards and PSUs have. After 18 years
of history of IBM PCs and clones, surely you don't expect the things to
start being well-engineered?

For my own part, I only use Tyan and Asus ATX motherboards, and ATX PSUs from
PC Power & Cooling, and of the problems you describe, the only one I've
experience is failure to turn off. I haven't attempted to determine the
cause.

My server machine has been running 24x7 for about 20 months with no
unplanned outages except for two power failures that lasted more than
90 minutes. (My software is set to trigger a shutdown at 25% remaining
UPS battery level, although I probably should increase the threshold to
75% to reduce the cycling of the gel-cells.) Even after the power outages
it started up automatically with no problems.

I suspect that all of these problems are due to poorly engineered PSUs,
although it is quite possible that some of the fault lies with the
motherboard. Poorly enginered PSUs certainly aren't a new phenomenon;
the ATX standard has merely given them a few new ways to demonstrate
their lack of quality.

The PC P&C PSUs seem much better engineered than the dime-a-dozen PSUs that
come in the cases. Of course they cost a lot more, but that's no surprise.
It seems that in just about every type of product, the majority of consumers
are willing to put up with inferior crap as long as it is cheap, so those of
us that want quality are forced to pay a much higher price, even though if
everyone demanded a quality product it would only increase the cost slightly.
Sigh.
Received on Thu Feb 04 1999 - 05:17:23 GMT