Re:Got called to a professor’s office after a complaint his ...
by erosenbe0 on Tuesday July 25, 2023 @11:30PM
(#36872761)
One of the highest stresses on passives and power components occurs when there is an inrush of current (di/dt) or a voltage spike (dv/dt), which can occur on power cycling or plug in. So it is not a myth that hard reboots can be stressful on older hardware, but there is a certain amount of red herring because power cycling is also when an aged or diseased component is likely to show failure due to hours of service.
Modern devices and standards are able, at a low cost, to implement ripple, transient, reverse voltage, inrush limiting and the like. So failures are more isolated.
Nowadays, with stuff like USB there is inrush limiting, reverse voltage protection, transient suppression and it costs very little to implement, so it's mostly going to be power supplies.
Re:Got called to a professor’s office after a complaint his ...
by kristopolous on Wednesday July 26, 2023 @10:22AM
(#36878219)
Power bricks are certainly a huge failure point. Luckily they're cheap. It's a great place to fail if we must assign it somewhere
I'll readily admit this may have been apocryphal. It was a common adage when I was a child in the 80s and now that I'm actually qualified enough to suss out such a statement I've never cracked open the historical literature at archive.org on this one to actually check.
It could just be a portage from incandescent lightbulbs (where this is true) and older cars (where this is also true). The idea of non-technicals thinking magical computer dust having the same problem is understandable