Learn How To Diagnose Power Supply Problems

Learn How To Diagnose Power Supply Problems

by: Otis F Cooper

The Power Supply convertกs your regular household current into low DC voltage used by the computer. When this component fails,there is simply no activity going on wih your computer.Remember to do the easy troubleshooting first.Inspect the Power Supply for any damage.DoubleCheck all connections.

Learning how to check your power supply and how to replace it when needed can be a life saver if you’re a computer buff or in business with the trusted PC.Don’t take for granted the simple pleasure of turning on your PC and everything works just fine.

We turned on one of our computers recently and in about one hour,it just rebooted itself.And it continued doing so about 10 times a day until we found out the power supply was the culprit.Things to look for when your power supply is going bad or just dies on you are the following.

NO POWER TO THE COMPUTER

Here you must first check the wall outlet for power by connecting another device such as a radio or lamp to be sure power is present.If the computer is connected through a surge protector,check it as well.

If the wall out has power,check the power cable going to the PC to see if AC voltage is making its way to the system unit.Do this with the use of a multimeter.

If there is power,you will have to open the PC and check for power from the power supply to the motherboard.

When using a multimeter to check voltage,be sure you have a good ground for the black lead of the multimeter.

REBOOTING PROBLEMS

One main problem you may face with an ailing Power Supply is that it may reboot the computer without any warning.All information is lost and it seems as though this happens at the worst possible time.

Booting errors when the computer first startกs up is another indicator of this component going on the blink.

POWER DISTRIBUTION PROBLEMS

When the power supply begins to fail,you may receive power at one device and not another.For example,the Hard Drive may receive power but the CDROM Drive has nothing at all.

Another headache with would cause rebooting is the intermittent power going to the drives or the motherboard itself.Follow the steps below to check your power supply should you experience some of the above problems.

CHECKING THE POWER SUPPLY

If the wall outlet,and the power cord are good,make sure the connection at the motherboard is secure.Then you may have to face the fact that the power supply itself is bad.If you have a Multimeter you can test the power supply output before purchasing a new one.Simply follow these steps.

Turn off the PC,but do not unplug it,open the system unit. Set the multimeter to read DC volts in the next range higher than 12 volts.Locate a power connector similair to the hard drive,or cdrom drive connector that is unused and turn on the PC.

You can also unplug a drive connector and use it as well.Turn on the PC and insert the BLACK probe into the power connector on one of the BLACK wires.Touch the RED probe to the YELLOW wire on the power connector.

The multimeter reading should be +12 volts Now touch the RED probe to the RED wire and the reading should be +5 volts.If no readings or different readings occured,youกll have to replace the power supply.If the readings were correct,you should check the P8 or P9 connectors at the motherboard. These connectors may also be named P4 and P5.To check these connectors,perform the following…

Insert the BLACK probe into P8 at one of the BLACK wires. Insert the RED probe into the P8 connector at the RED wire. The reading on the multimeter should be +5 volts

Check the power going to the Motherboard connections by inserting the RED probe into P8 at the YELLOW wire and you should get +12 volts.Leave the BLACK wire touching the black wire at the P8 connector.Check the BLUE wire and the reading should be a 12 volts.

Now move the BLACK probe to the BLACK wire on the P9 connector.Test the WHITE wire by inserting the RED probe and the reading should be 5 volts.Check the RED wires on the P9 connector and you should get +5 volts on each red wire.You won’t get exactly 5 or 12 volts but the readings will be very close, such as 5.02 volts.

If the Power Supply is a couple of volts off,in either direction,such as when the RED wire should be reading 5 volts but it reads 8 volts,or if there are no readings,replace the power supply.

DO NOT remove the power supply from the system unit case when performing these tests.DO NOT perform these tests if you do not feel comfortable.Be sure to remove any and all electrical static buildup from your clothes and body BEFORE touching any parts inside the system unit.And NEVER open the power supply case for any reason,since high voltage may be present.

About The Author

Otis F. Cooper is solely dedicated to boosting the knowledge and confidence of every computer user that is serious about knowing computers.Use his informative articles and videos to understand every aspect about the PC. Read more about his formula for pc training at http://www.ultimatepcrepair.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on January 26, 2004

by Otis F Cooper

Creating a Virtual Art Gallery

Creating a Virtual Art Gallery

by: Cynthia Houppert

To the online artist, it might seem a paradox, at first glance, to hear a recommendation to hold back work. The artist on the Internet often overproduces and displays their entire body of work. In essence, by placing it for casual viewing, known as กshoppingก the work, devalues its worth by defying the Law of Supply and Demand.

How can the artist benefit by applying the advantages of the Internet with the successful business practices of the traditional gallery? Letกs look at the traditional galleryกs sales structure.

At the Preview, in an inner gallery, and by invitation only, previously unviewed works are presented to the galleryกs selected collectors. The works are tagged as sold, but left for viewing. An aspect of human nature, wanting what one cannot have, has been accommodated as well as a relationship to supply and demand.

To paraphrase Israel A. Kirzner, the, almost, universally accepted theory of supply and demand shapes production and consumption, and is, not only the skeleton, but the flesh and blood of the economic system which determines the artistกs survival in the marketplace.

[‘the Law of Supply and Demandก, by Israel Kirzner At the time of publication Kirzner was an economist at New York University. http://www.libertyhaven.com and The Freeman, a publication of The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., January 2000, Vol. 50, No. 1.]

The show opens to the general public. As the show closes, unsold works are then considered shopped, since the public has viewed them. Then, they are placed in an outer gallery for the casual onlooker. Those traditions have held true, stemming from the basic nature of human beings and how market prices are determined.

This brings us back to the question of how might the traditional practices be adapted to the Internet? The artist could, for instance, set up a number of galleries.

The Inner Gallery would contain works previously unseen. A collector might pay a onetime fee, the purpose of which is to discourage windowshoppers. The fee could then be applied to their purchase. Those who purchase are the collectors who go into your special Guest Book to receive Preview invitations, thus, eliminating the major pitfall of current Internet based galleries, the windowshopper.

How does one structure a Preview Page? Obviously, for your Preview Page you wouldn’t want just anyone dropping in. This could be accomplished through a member login given only to your private collectors. By closely monitoring their login dates, you can determine when the Preview is over and itกs time for the show to be opened to the general public.

A Middle Gallery is for works that didn’t sell in the Preview, but are only available to those who have registered in the Guest Book and agree to receive future newsletters and updates. Finally, there is an Outer Gallery, that is for browsers and only contains images that have been sold, their price, but never to whom it was sold.

Although there will be many windowshoppers, as the exclusive nature and as the reputation of the site grows, the more exclusive collector will come to the site, sign the Guest Book, and come to the Preview ready to collect.

Perhaps Museum Directors, Curators, Critics and Reviewers could be contacted as well. Given passwords, they could actually look at the work online, without the artist having to physically move the works as in a landbased gallery. Their reviews could be then added to the Preview Page and the artistกs resume for future use.

Anyone with experience on the Internet knows you can’t just create a web site and expect people to show up. The site must be properly marketed as well as have something the web surfer desires. Go to ARTNews and see how the ads are structured. Ask yourself what it is about that ad that makes you want to visit that gallery. What makes it desirable?

Look at the size of the images in the ad. Are they thumbnails or fullsize images and details? Collectors want to see brushstrokes and have the monitors to do so. Remember, that the majority of the nationกs assets lie in the hands of those over fifty years of age. Many of them wear eyeglasses. Accommodate their eyesight. Bigger is better.

Of course, not all artists who put up a web site are going to be worth collecting, just as galleries will not find all artists suitable. Not all collectors will want a given artistกs work. Without demand there are no sales.

Therefore, critical analysis of the web statistics should be carefully monitored. If you get a lot of hits and no sales then the problem is not in the marketing. Conversely, no hits, or very few, would indicate poor marketing. At some point you have to figure whether or not you’re no good at marketing or the work is not collectible.

As for meeting with the artist, the web cam, if not a personal visit, makes for an enjoyable time. With the development of Japanese graphic technology, one day soon the collector and others members of the art community will view the minute details of the artistกs work in truly a virtual gallery without defying the laws of human nature which drives all mankind.

About The Author

Cynthia Houppert is an art consultant in Atlanta, Georgia and the author of กArt Gallery Safari: Bagging the Big Oneก

(c)2003

[email protected]

This article was posted on December 05, 2003

by Cynthia Houppert

Emarketplaces from Sellerกs Perspective

Emarketplaces from Sellerกs Perspective

by: Nowshade Kabir

What is an Emarketplace anyway?

Emarketplace is a business to business web based venue, where buyers and sellers meet online, generate business leads and conduct business transactions. The emarketplace features are tailored in a manner so that a large numbers of buyers and suppliers can be serviced as a community. A participant of an Emarketplace can be a buyer, a seller or both. Unlike an Edistribution portal which is oriented to assist suppliers selling their products or an Eprocurement system which is focused on buyers solely, an Emarketplace is a platform which caters buyers and sellers equally. As a participant of an Emarketplace you are able to explore buying and selling opportunities, make sales offers and buy products and services, add products and services to aggregated ecatalog and use numerous other value added features.

Emarketplaces are tremendously beneficial to all businesses that decide to participate in them. However, the potential benefits that a company can accrue from an Emarketplace are directly proportional to the factor — how heavily the company uses the offered features of that Emarketplace. Naturally, a company that makes emarketplace as its primary sales channel and integrates its sales resources to supply chain solutions of the Emarketplace avail more in sales and administrative overhead cost savings, reduced paper work, better customer service, reduced product distribution costs and online sales growth than a seasonal user of the emarketplace.

A committed participant of an Emarketplace can benefit from and improve two primary factors of company productivity: Revenue Growth and Cost Savings.

Revenue Growth

Expand Customer Base

A seller, once registered with an Emarketplace, gets immediate access to a large community of prospective buyers of his products or services.

Revenue Increase from Existing Clients

Existing clients get faster and easier access to product information, quicker response to their requests, get better customer support and buy products online.

Revenue Increase from Value Added Services

Once an Emarketplace is set as primary sales channel, freed resources can be used to create more value added services for clients. Some of the services that the Emarketplace offers also can be utilized to generate more value.

Cost Savings

Order Processing Cost

The supply chain solutions of Emarketplace allow sellers to reduce order processing cost significantly. Studies show that cost of processing a purchase order can be reduced from US$ 70 down to US$ 6 only.

Sales and support costs

By automating sales and customer support processes companies can reduce over head costs over 2530% easily.

Inventory keeping costs

Clearer visibility and forecasting ability allow companies considerably reduce inventory keeping costs.

Most executives agree that primary reason why they feel that the companies should participate in Emarketplace is its ability to streamline supply chain mechanism. Many inherent inefficiencies of supply chain process can be eliminated thanks to integrated to emarketplaces supply chain solutions.

What sellers have to do in order to participate in Emarketplaces and reap numerous benefits that it can provide?

As most of the administrative and operational tasks are done automatically by the emarketplaces, participation in them is not a difficult process.

These are the basic steps that a seller must take to participate in an Emarketplace:

Register

Registration might be an easy job of filling up a form. It is much better to take some initial preparations before doing this.

Choose a good login name: your login can be used by the Emarketplace to give you subdomain name, i.e. login.emarketplace_name.com.

Profile: A wellwritten profile increases company image.

Logo: your logo helps you brand your company.

Add your products or services to Ecatalog

Most Emarketplaces furnish with easy to use forms or wizards for sellers to add their products to Ecatalog. As the product and service classification used in the Ecatalogs often is an industry standard, it is important to spend some times to find the perfect subcategories for your products or services. If you have any doubt contact the customer support of the Emarketplace. Fill up as many given fields are there for a product as you can. The more information buyer gets right away the faster his buying decision would be.

Create offers

Most sophisticated Emarketplaces have various sales platforms apart from the Ecatalog inclusion. Make general sales offers, time sensitive offers (hot offers – with offer expiry dates) and auction offers of your products and services. Determine the terms and methods of price, payment and shipment.

Decide how you will handle portions of the supply chain that you have to do offline.

Although, most of the supply chain process can be done online, not all emarketplace offer a complete end to end solution. You also have to figure out what part of your back office can be integrated to the Emarketplace.

About The Author

Nowshade Kabir, Ph.D., is the founder, primary developer and present CEO, of Rusbiz.com, a global business to business ecommerce portal with feature like storefronts, aggregated catalog, emarketplace, trade leads, internal messaging system supply chain solutions, etc. With a doctorate in Information Technology, Dr. Kabir has worked an advisor to government projects and has over 12 years experience in International Trade. An author of many B2B and business related articles; he publishes a biweekly Ezine for online business community. You can subscribe to his newsletter free of charge from http://www.rusbiz.com.

[email protected]

This article was posted on July 11, 2003

by Nowshade Kabir

Little Known Tax Deductions That Can Save You Big

Little Known Tax Deductions That Can Save You Big

by: Diane Hughes

When you say กend of the yearก, most small business owners think of two things immediately. The *second* is the holidays. The *first* is taxes! While almost all of us pay taxes quarterly, we still have to file in January. That means November and December are spent getting ready. When you’re gathering all your information together for your accountant, don’t forget about these regularly overlooked deductions.

Mileage

Sure, most of us already know that we can deduct a mileage allowance from our taxes. However, many of us (especially dot coms who don’t travel much) don’t bother to keep track of our travels thinking it won’t be worth the trouble. Oh, but it is!

I had the same mindset, but at the urging of my accountant decided to keep track and see for myself. Iกll never neglect to do it again! Even though almost every place that I travel is nearby, when I added up all the 10mile trips to the office supply store, the bank, etc., it turned out to be a hefty total. Haven’t kept track this year? Start now.

Go back and look for deposits in your check register. This would have meant you traveled to the bank on that date… write it down. Do you have receipts from the office supply store? You must have traveled on that day, too. Write that down. Keep all your information on a log sheet with the date, number of miles traveled round trip, and the purpose of the drive (i.e., office supply store, bank deposit, etc.). Youกll be pleased to find that even short, weekly trips all throughout the year can add up to 800 1,000 miles or more. Multiply that times the 2002 allowance of 36.5 cents per mile and you get a $292 $365 tax deduction!

Bad Debt

Did you sell products or services to someone who did not pay you? Have you tried to collect the money without success? You can write those losses off and get a deduction for them. No, it won’t equal the total amount of the money you lost, but it is better than nothing.

Simply gather the information about the sale, the invoice you submitted to the customer, and documentation of your attempts to collect the amount owed. You do not have to file bad debt deductions in the same year they occurred, so if you have old losses, gather the information now so you can include it on your 2002 return.

Travel

Almost any trip can become a business trip if you plan it right. Even if you’re traveling to your 20year high school reunion, you can write off your travel expenses IF you play your cards right.

While mingling with your old chums, collect some business cards, and hand out a few of your own. Ask people what they do for a living (in tax talk that relates to กmarket researchก), and set up a phone call or two for when you return home.

I know one woman who took a pleasure trip to England. However, while she was there, she took tons of pictures of museums, landscapes, etc. She gathered brochures and picked up some information from a few local vendors. She used these things to justify her trip as business travel for her set design (theater) company.

No, you don’t have to spend the entire trip talking/doing business. Just be able to document that you did some business while you were there. You can also take deductions for lodging and meals while you’re on your trip so save your receipts!

As you can see, there are many tax deductions available to you. To find out about more, set up a กpretaxก appointment with your accountant or tax pro. They can give you information on additional tax deductions that might apply to your particular industry. When you add up all the small stuff, you can end up with some major tax savings!

Copyright 2004 Diane Hughes

About The Author

Diane C. Hughes * ProBizTips.com

FREE Report: Amazingly Simple (Yet Super Powerful) Ways To Skyrocket Your Sales And Build Your Business Into A Tower of Profits! ==>> http://madmarketer.com/diane

This article was posted on December 14, 2004

by Diane Hughes

Choosing The Right Power Supply

Choosing The Right Power Supply

by: Keith Park

The power supply is the least respected and most overlooked component in your PC. No one ever talks about how big their power supply is, all you ever hear is how fast their CPU runs, or how much memory they have, or how many MP3กs they can fit on their hard drive. The only time anyone ever talks about the power supply is when they got one really cheap or it was included free with their case.

Did you know that when manufacturers build their low cost systems one of the components they downgrade is the power supply?

You may think, so what? Well, here is an analogy.

You buy a new กlowcostก PC and as time passes you add components to it. You install a second hard drive, you get a bigger video card with a built in fan and you add a USB PCI card for extra ports. Then one day your PC starts rebooting on itself for no apparent reason. You can’t figure out what is going on. You install all the Windows updates, run a virus scan, check for Spyware nothing there! Whatกs up? Little did you know that by buying that กlowcostก PC you also got yourself a very cheap quality, 200 watt power supply. All the new components you have added over time the power supply can’t pump out enough power to keep up and even when it can supply enough juice, the quality of the power signal is unstable.

If you are going to spend the big bucks on all the other components in your PC, why skimp out on the power supply? A cheap no name power supply can cause system instability as well as damage other components in your PC that you have paid so much money for.

The Power Formula

In order to get the right power supply for your situation you need to take into account everything that is going into your PC as well as plan for any future additions or upgrades you may perform.

Write down every component going into your system and the watts required for each (Most devices will have the power information listed on the unit itself, the documentation that came with the device or the website of the manufacturer), now add them up, this will give you the maximum watts that your system could potentially use.

Another piece of the puzzle that must be considered is how many amps are being drawn by the components on each of the 3 main outputs (rails) of the power supply, +3.3, +5, and +12. These specs are a little harder to find. Some manufacturers will list this information on the device or documentation but most do not want to bore consumers with such detail. If your component doesn’t have this information, you can find an estimate by doing a search on the Internet for a particular component. I did the following search using Google how many amps does a floppy drive draw from the power supply and got back the result of, 1.0 amp of +5v power.

Now that you have all the numbers added up you need to find power supply that meets your needs. Both numbers you have are equally important, you may find a 400W power supply that will run everything you have but it will lack the power to meet your needs when it comes to the 3 main outputs.

One note of interest, as with most things in life, what it says on the box isn’t always what you get when you open it. Most power supplies fall short of the wattage spec listed on the box so this must be taken into consideration when making your final decision.

Other Considerations

Warranty Make sure you get a warranty with your power supply and consider the length of the warranty. If you plan on keeping your PC for 3 5 years then getting a power supply with only a 90 day or 1 year warranty maybe isn’t the best idea.

Cables/Connections Check the length and number of cables on the power supply. If you don’t have enough connections or the cables are too short to reach all your drives it can be really frustrating. Also, if you plan on connecting a SATA drive then you need a power supply that has the proper connection for it.

Conclusion

The power supply you need to buy completely depends on YOU!

There is no use buying a 500W top of the line power supply if you will never use 500W stick to what you need. As long as you do the math you should be safe.

Buy from the major manufacturers, Enermax, Antec, etc. They offer quality products with good warranties.

Finally, check out the Internet and see what others are saying about power supplies, which ones are good, which ones are bad. Reading reviews and others opinions can be a source of good information.

About The Author

Copyright © 2005 by Keith Park all rights reserved. Permission is granted to copy this article if it is published unchanged with all links and Resource box information kept intact.

Keith Park has been in the IT industry for the last 7 years and is the author of the website TechCorner PC Resource Zone. For more articles and resources go to http://www.techcorner.ca/computers

Also check out http://mgrcentral.com/computers/default.aspx?studentid=1575219 for even more computer resources.

[email protected]

This article was posted on September 14

by Keith Park