Power???

[cdsonic]

I live in a small country town in Australia. The power seems to be up and down all day long. It causes the computer to crash or reboot all the time. I can not afford a UPS is there anyway i can modify the computer to cope with out spending heaps of money.

 

[thevenin8888]

thats bad usually if it's a problem with supply to fusebox i would contact utility company ,is the supply generally bad in your area?have you problems everywhere in your house tv etc,

 

[cdsonic]

Whole area is bad. lights flicker and go dull alot, there are regular blackouts,etc

 

[pm]

Best way is a UPS. You should be able to get a fairly small one which shouldn't cost that much. I picked up a 300W UPS at a local office supply store for US$60 - which is pretty cheap. If not then you could make your own form of UPS using a car battery, a battery charger, and a 12V -> mains power inverter.

But fundamentally what you are asking is: I want to have a way to store power so that when the power goes out I can keep going but I don't want to buy a UPS. But what you want is exactly what a UPS is. The home-brew UPS using the car battery and inverter will work, but unless you have the parts lying around, it will probably end up costing more.

 

[cdsonic]

My main concern is the fluctuations in the power. The couple of seconds when it is high or low power seem to either look up or reboot the computer. It can be a real pain if the computer reboots 4 or 5 times in half an hour.

 

[thevenin8888]

ups seems only option,we're not great here either (rural ireland) but nothing as bad as you ,how rural are you ,what's your mains voltage 110/220 i'm an electrician and am interested thanks

 

[cdsonic]

240 volts even though last sunday it it 270 volts

 

[Jerboy]

Line conditioner utilizing ferroresonant transformer. Prepare to spend about $130 USD