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From: Ron Hardin on 8 Feb 2010 14:05
A power hit last night shut down a Vostro 1500's
power adapter, which apparently has a "something's wrong"
mode that leaves it off even after power returns.

Then the laptop runs the battery to exhaustion and shuts off,
even though the house is awash with mains power.

If the power had gone off for a decent interval instead of
just fluctuating, that would have reset the power adapter
and there would have been no problem.

It was all connected to a UPS, too, but the complexity of the
hit apparently screwed things up enough to interrupt the power
it put out.
--
rhhardin(a)mindspring.com

On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.
From: RnR on 8 Feb 2010 14:52
On Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:05:15 -0500, Ron Hardin
<rhhardin(a)mindspring.com> wrote:

>A power hit last night shut down a Vostro 1500's
>power adapter, which apparently has a "something's wrong"
>mode that leaves it off even after power returns.
>
>Then the laptop runs the battery to exhaustion and shuts off,
>even though the house is awash with mains power.
>
>If the power had gone off for a decent interval instead of
>just fluctuating, that would have reset the power adapter
>and there would have been no problem.
>
>It was all connected to a UPS, too, but the complexity of the
>hit apparently screwed things up enough to interrupt the power
>it put out.


Not sure what you are asking but is the UPS working properly (ie:
battery, etc..) ? Can the laptop work with or without the battery
if plugged into the wall without the ups ? You might want to let the
laptop sit a few hours unplugged and off as well as the power adapter
too. I'm just trying to eliminate some variables here since I
haven't a clue what's wrong.
From: William R. Walsh on 8 Feb 2010 18:59
Hi!

> A power hit last night shut down a Vostro 1500's
> power adapter, which apparently has a "something's wrong"
> mode that leaves it off even after power returns.

Probably just a thing of timing that kept it from starting up again--or
realizing that it needed to.

If the rest of the circuitry ran out of power and stopped functioning but
somehow the PSU controller did not, it might not go through the motions of
starting things up again. Usually there needs to be a "kickstart" performed
before the power supply can be up and running.

> It was all connected to a UPS, too, but the complexity of the
> hit apparently screwed things up enough to interrupt the power
> it put out.

A lot of UPS units have at least some switching delay caused by the time it
takes their controller to realize the power left, to energize the relay that
turns on the inverter and for the inverter to stabilize. This all happens
very quickly, and the assumption made is that the filter capacitors in a PSU
should carry the load until the UPS starts up. Usually they do and nobody
notices a thing.

Plug something like a CFL bulb into the average UPS and pull the plug with
nothing else attached. Most of the time you'll notice the bulb go dark--but
only for a very brief time.

Laptop power bricks don't have large filter capacitors like you'd find in a
desktop-type power supply.

William


From: Ron Hardin on 9 Feb 2010 08:06
William R. Walsh wrote:
> Probably just a thing of timing that kept it from starting up again--or
> realizing that it needed to.
>
> If the rest of the circuitry ran out of power and stopped functioning but
> somehow the PSU controller did not, it might not go through the motions of
> starting things up again. Usually there needs to be a "kickstart" performed
> before the power supply can be up and running.

I'm comparing it more to what happens when your laptop develops a motherboard
short, namely the power adapter goes dark and stays dark until you remove
the AC power, even if the laptop is unplugged from the adapter.

There's some state internal to the adapter that's a failsafe turnoff bit,
probably to keep from starting a fire in whatever the short was.
--
rhhardin(a)mindspring.com

On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.
 | 
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