From: damiel@netcom.com (Paul Theodoropoulos)
Subject: Re: CBM does it again... 23 watt p.s. for A1200?!?
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Keywords: gimme a break
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 11:16:50 GMT

In <C0KLo3.EC4@news.iastate.edu> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) writes:

>   First, the A1200 and A600 power supplies should be a bit larger than the
>ones used with the A500 for the simple reason that the A1200 and A600 are
>designed to use an internal HD and the A500 wasn't.  Extta power is obviously
>needed to accomodate the HD.  

marc, a 40meg 3.5" scsi harddrive eats about 6 watts. i'd guess (i stress 
guess - unlike marc, i don't state estimates as hard facts) that a 2.5" IDE 
drive would use between 3 and 5 watts. an 80 meg drive? call it six watts.

bottom line, HD is a minor power drain.

>Next, consider any extra power needed by the
>underside expansion port.  In the A1200 especially, cards in the underside
>expansion port will very likely use more power than cards in the underside 
>port of the A500.  

and again, i'd guess there's a rather hard limit on the power drain that one
would need to attach to the expansion port. if it were a scsi interface, it
would eat maybe 3 watts. if its an accelerator, bear in mind that the 030
eats less than 3 watts and the 882 less than 1 watt. add glue and ram and
you've got maybe 6 watts.

>Finally, consider any extra power to accomodate PCMCIA
>peripherals, which are even less likely to have their own power supply than
>peripherals plugged into the A500's side expansion port.

gee, a PCMCIA modem perhaps? five watts, max.

so lets add that up - a loaded 1200:
                             internal  2.5" 80meg IDE HD:       6 watts
                       expansion slot      030/882 accel:       6 watts
                               PCMCIA      V32.bis modem:       5 watts
                                                                -------
                                                               17 watts

these are guesses of course. but that leaves six watts for the motherboard
and floppy etc....not enough you say? don't forget that the onboard CPU 
would be disabled by that accelerator. so the overhead for the motherboard
is proportionally less with an accelerator.

bottom line (guesses again, of course!) is that a fully loaded a1200 would
be okay. and if you want to expand it further - by a 4000 for crying out 
loud!

>might be able to get by with less, but using a power supply with twice the
>wattage would also silence the numerous people who criticized Commodore's
>A500 power supplies.

why would the size of a power supply on a completely different machine
make any difference to those who criticize the a500 power supply? you are
comparing bananas to oranges. and anyway - its how it performs that matters,
not erroneous preconceptions. how about not judging this issue before its a
problem, eh marc?
-- 
paul theodoropoulos     damiel@netcom.com     (hooools@well.sf.ca.us)

"Those who will trade essential liberty for promise of security will have
 neither" - Benjamin Franklin