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little computer tried to kill the big one
Oct. 30th, 2011 09:51 pmAfter resisting it for a long time I finally got myself a smart phone. Motorola Atrix 2 to be precise. Very nice. More or less the same as iPhone, but different. Actually I don't think this is exactly what Apple meant in their "think different" ad campaign :)
The only problem is that the battery doesn't last for a week as in a normal phone. So I left it plugged into the PC USB connector. Sooner of later I went to sleep and a faithful computer also decided to hibernate. In the morning I press the wake up button as usual and the computer doesn't wake up. To make the long story short I traced the problem to the power supply. A trip to FRY's with $30 changing hands remedied the situation.
While there is no clear cause and effect evidence I have a suspicion. In low power mode the ATX power supply provides just enough juice to operate the circuits that need to stay on. For example the wake-on-whatever. This power comes from a different source than the main 400 Watts. And having a significant load plugged in could have overload it. Sure this is only a guess. Sure a better design would protect the power supply from overloading... But I'm just telling the story so that you may consider not pushing your luck with stand-by power.
The only problem is that the battery doesn't last for a week as in a normal phone. So I left it plugged into the PC USB connector. Sooner of later I went to sleep and a faithful computer also decided to hibernate. In the morning I press the wake up button as usual and the computer doesn't wake up. To make the long story short I traced the problem to the power supply. A trip to FRY's with $30 changing hands remedied the situation.
While there is no clear cause and effect evidence I have a suspicion. In low power mode the ATX power supply provides just enough juice to operate the circuits that need to stay on. For example the wake-on-whatever. This power comes from a different source than the main 400 Watts. And having a significant load plugged in could have overload it. Sure this is only a guess. Sure a better design would protect the power supply from overloading... But I'm just telling the story so that you may consider not pushing your luck with stand-by power.
