[rescue] Old PSUs & boards: useful to teach self?

[Carl R. Friend]

    On Tue, 23 Oct 2007, William Enestvedt wrote:

>   It sounds like the PSUs are either hazardous nor interesting,
> so I will toss them. I might save all the cages, though, so the
> empty chassis looks better once I repurpose it.

    Well, so long as one observes the normal rules for safety, PSUs
are no more hazardous than anything else one encounters in normal
everyday life; it's just a question of knowledge, attitude, and
skill.

    PSUs can, in some instances, be reused, especially if they have
proper terminals to attach the outputs to other things that you
may be working on.  One thing, though, to be aware of is that many
switching-mode supplies require some amount of load (it varies from
supply to supply) before they'll work properly.

    But, unless one is comfortable working around moderately high
voltages and high currents it's sometimes best to leave well enough
alone.  The flip side of that, however, is that unless you actually
work on the things you'll never get the experience of what precisely
to stay away from in a safety sense.

    Anyways, after two years of being powered off, there's virtually
no chance of anything nasty lurking in there.  Save, perhaps, critters.

+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin)            | West Boylston       |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast            | Massachusetts, USA  |
| mailto:crfriend at rcn.com                        +---------------------+
| http://users.rcn.com/crfriend/museum           | ICBM: 42:22N 71:47W |
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