[plug] Mobile .mp3 results to date

Brad Campbell brad at seme.com.au
Tue Aug 10 20:18:04 WST 1999


Just in case anyone may be interested, have some quick results on
PC power consumption from the development of my 12 v PC PSU

The LOWEST consumption I managed to get was 1.68A while IDLE
using a 2.0.35 Kernel. This was with an ASUS P55T2P4 HX Based
board and an AMD K6 200 running at 166Mhz (Coz I couldn't be
bothered re-jumpering the board after taking out the Cyrix M2)
The AMD Draws about 3.5 amps until INIT boots up, then it 
dropped down to about 2 amps. Then further to 1.6 while Idle.
Average Consumption during a kernel compile was about 3.5 - 4
amps.

This was at 13.8 v input.

The Cyrix M2 idled at about 3.5 amps lowest, tho it did compile
the kernel faster :p)
Average current for a compile was about 5.5-6 amps.

This was with Keyboard, Floppy Drive, Maxtor 850mb Hard Disk
ISA Video Card and ISA Ne2000 Network card.
The network was connected. Current increased by over 80ma with
the network cable disconnected.

This works out about 7 amps at 5 volts.
Anyway, based on these figures the linear regulator someone was
going to use will be dissipating about 70 Watts..
I guess your car would stay warm..

Our power supply is nearly finished.., well at least we have
stopped blowing up FET's anyway..
It uses readily available, off the shelf parts and is not to hard
to build. The transformer winding is the tricky bit, but given 
the longest winding is 7 turns, it's not to bad.
Details will be available as soon as I can verify that I'm not going
to fry any more Hard Disks..
Death Toll so far.

One VX Motherboard
3 Hard Disks
14 HexFets..
A handful of capacitors.. ( They are fun to blow up )

All in the name of mobile.. linux powered.. music..

On a final note, the lowest power I could get out of WIN95 while idle
was about 4 amps.. ditto for DOS.
Penguin Power

Brad....


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