alternative to unhooking battery before doing work

megagoo · 05-16-2006, 12:08 PM

edit: see image in second post for my question in a nutshell

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i received a new power supply today after shorting out my old one by reversing the power wires from my LCD. i've triple checked this and that wont happen again, but its got me paranoid about taking care of my new power supply..

i am not really familar with the standards, but i'd assume its best to do connections while the power is unhooked. i know the m1-atx faq says never connect the power to the m1atx while the battery is on, so i know the damages that can be done while working with power on..

the way my setup is, is i have a wire coming from the +battery terminal to an amp, then daisy chained to another amp, then daisy chained to my power supply. (only a total of 600 watts between all 3 of those things)..

so i have 3 wires: acc wire, battery+ wire and ground wire. all going to a standard white connector (dont know the name. its what plugs into hard drives/cdroms etc etc.). so i just plug in my computer to that plug and when i need to bring it in the house, just disconnect it and hook it into my power brick that has the same connector on it. so it makes things easy.

what i thought could be an issue is that if everything is live and plugged into the battery, if i plug that 3-pin connector in, if i dont do it evenly at first and just say the battery wire is connected and not the ground, that could pose a problem right? so what i did was cut all 3 wires between the source and the connector and put individual connector tabs. so for example, if i wanted to plug in my carpc, i would: plug in the 3 pin power connector. i made. then connect the ground, acc, then battery. so this way im kind of simulating the battery being disconnected until the final step.

the only difference between the way i have it set up and just disconnecting the battery is the location of the connect obviously. the power is being connected on a little pair of connector tabs on a 16 gauge wire, as opposed to the battery. what im not sure of here is if this makes a difference. i'd rather do it this way, so the only place im disconnecting power from is at the very end of the chain. so i dont have to reset my car clock and etc etc..

hope this made sense and sorry for the legnth. i will draw a diagram if necessairy

eddie

megagoo · 05-16-2006, 03:09 PM

Dylan98R/T · 05-16-2006, 04:03 PM

Both - and + have to be "live" for voltage to exist so yes you can work on the pc by disconnecting just one of these at your 3 way connector. Just make sure ACC is OFF.

megagoo · 05-16-2006, 04:18 PM

thats cool. you mean acc off as in the car turned off, or physically disconnected?

and also, i was thinking more along the lines of damage happening when you plug in the postive line. like i said, the m1-atx faq on here says don't plug in the 12v while its connected to the battery. maybe JUST the connector on the m1-atx sucks, but i just wanted to make sure making the last connection where power flows is ok to do on a cheapo radio shack connector tab connector. as long as the ground is plugged in.

it seems like theres probably a chance of a spark happening at the connector tips when i plug it in. could that be bad? kind of like if you go to plug in a box fan thats already turned on. when you plug it into the wall it sparks a little. i dont want there to be a chance of me blowing up my new 100 dollar power supply

Jahntassa · 05-16-2006, 04:40 PM

Yes that's fine, and you'd get a spark no matter where you plugged it in (potentially). Having the spark further away from the battery is always a good thing.