[geeks] Questionable Voltage

[Sridhar Ayengar]

My house is pretty old.  Mostly ungrounded outlets, but there are a 
smattering of grounded ones around.

One of those outlets has a power strip with two computers plugged into 
it.  Both of those computers are acting flaky.  The one with the big 
honking power supply (650ishW) and fancy newfangled Geforce 8-series 
video card is quite a bit flakier.  The other machine has a whole bunch 
of disk in it, and the only time it seems to lock up solid is when I 
hammer on all the disks at the same time.

Will the breaker on the circuit pop before I pull enough current to drop 
the voltage on the circuit, or might I be pulling more than the circuit 
can take and causing my problems?  Might an outlet with a separate 
ground pin be installed without a corresponding upgrade in the wiring? 
I can test all that stuff, but it would involve unplugging stuff, and I 
can't do that right away.

I hope I don't have to rewire up there soon, but I'm afraid that I might 
have to.  This is in my office, and I don't even have everything running 
yet.  I wanted to eventually have a 220V 20A plug up there with a good 
sized UPS, but running the new home run from up there to the basement 
two floors down will be enough of a pain that I might not want to do it 
myself.

Peace...  Sridhar