Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Two problems.

Good morning all - first, to the batteries!

Or...maybe not. I have proved the design in principle. With my AA horde I was able to power the laptop....just.

The problem though is not the batteries. The problem is with the power converter. And no, we're not going...



The issue is the conversion of DC voltage to DV voltage. The converter takes the 15V supply and boosts it to 19V. I beg forgiveness from anyone who actually knows electronics...

To convert the voltage it takes a junk of power at 15V into a capacitor, disconnects the capacitor from the batteries and then draws that power off at 19 volts. All well and good.

The problem is that this means that it's not drawing power at a constant rate. Instead you get a highly varied power draw from the batteries - between 0 and 10 amps, as far as I can tell.

Right now I can just about power it if I cheat - boot it up on laptop battery and AA bank, remove the laptop battery - and it will run. Until the laptop hard drive kicks in.

At this point the erratic draw rate can no longer keep up, and the whole thing powers down. I can fix this though - a few more batteries and a legion of winged monkeys at command, and I WILL RULE!

--

Oh yes, the other problem. I'm hearing things.

Music, to be exact.

Playing in my mind is the star wars theme...I know it's in my mind, because I can hear the fridge over it - and bonnie isn't hiding under the chair.

The problem is I don't want to hear it. It's distracting. It's unscrolling away like a relentless timer slowly counting down. I can't hurry it, or change it or just listen to something else.

It's there.

And there's not enough space in my head for an orchestra AND thought.

You couldn't fit a violin!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

martin i think maybe your mind has decided to take a vacation when it decides to come back the star wars music should go away

Anonymous said...

Maybe it's hold Music. "All operators are busy in this Brain, please hold the line and Sanity will be with you as soon as possible. Thank you."