Re: Power consumption

I agree with you but the arcades I've worked at and had friends that have
worked at ALL have used the breaker panel to turn on their games.. In the
morning whoever was opening would just run their finger down the breakers
and turn them all on in rapid succession. One place had a breaker that
you had to turn on and wait until you heard QBert say "I'm turned on" before
turning on the rest.. Otherwise turning on the rest popped a breaker..
(QBert was kept around mainly for that sound.. :)

Kurt

> Minor observation:
>
> Breakers, as in, the devices that trip when you overload a circuit and stop
> the flow of power *really* shouldn't be used for day-to-day power cycling of
> a circuit. They are not designed with heavy use in mind, only the
> occasional overload tripping. I wouldn't want to increase the chances of
> failure in a safety system in my home. If at all possible use power strips
> of other ways of cycling your machines. I know that is how most of us do
> it, but a few folks have indicated that they use the breakers for this
> purpose.
>
> -Dan "Removing safety hat now"
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Matt J. McCullar" <mccullar@flash.net>
> To: <vectorlist@synthcom.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2000 8:56 PM
> Subject: Re: VECTOR: Power consumption
>
>
> > Most Atari games had metal signs on the back that usually said three amps.
> >
> > When I worked at Six Flags Over Texas, we used three amps as a rough
> > estimate for the current draw of an average game. One problem with an old
> > amusement park is, after 40 years the original electrical wiring
> schematics
> > for the park are null and void. Everything in it has been moved, dug up,
> > modified, spliced, lost, re-discovered, given up for lost, or just plain
> > broken. We had one arcade with 80 games that we could not control
> properly
> > from a breaker box; it was either turn on the whole building at once, or
> not
> > at all. We had no idea what most of the other circuit breakers in the box
> > did, and were loathe to try without telling anyone. Imagine what a power
> > surge 80 games coming on at once does. They didn't like it, either, but
> > there was nothing we could do about it except fix busted power supplies.
> I
> > had no shortage of work during my term. :)
> >
> > Matt J. McCullar
> > Arlington, TX
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Received on Thu Oct 12 11:59:29 2000