[time-nuts] Wavecrest DTS 2070

Ed Palmer ed_palmer at sasktel.net
Mon Sep 9 19:32:40 EDT 2013


I used to work for a telephone company.  Our big sites had power plants 
that put out -48V at a few thousand amps.  If you dropped a wrench 
across the buss bars, the wrench disappeared in a puff of smoke and a 
helluva bang.

We were also warned about wearing rings or watches when working on the 
equipment.  You could grab the buss bar with your bare hands and not 
feel a thing.  48V isn't high enough to be dangerous.  But if your ring 
shorted between battery and ground, the ring would burn your finger off 
and cauterize the wound.

I decided that I would accept these stories on faith rather than test 
them for myself.  :)

Ed

On 9/9/2013 3:51 PM, Pete Lancashire wrote:
> Lethal was dropping a conductor across the buss bars. If it was not the -2V
> it
> was -5.2V. I can't remember but it was at least 75A more like 100A.
>
> The power supplies were in the bottom of the cabinets and tin plated copper
> buss bars would run up the side of the back planes.
>
> The back planes where wire wrapped and we were suppose to shut the power off
> when making a change.  A bit of 30 gauge wire didn't matter but a manual
> wire wrap
> tool made some pretty interesting sparks. That caused a fault.
>
> Another had metal framed glasses. Did not even cause a hiccup to the test
> program
> that was running.
>
> Ah the good days of CML, Current Mode Logic. at Burroughs.
>
> -pete
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 2:21 PM, Mark C. Stephens <marks at non-stop.com.au>wrote:
>
>> Is 200 amperes @ 2v not lethal?
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: time-nuts-bounces at febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-bounces at febo.com] On
>> Behalf Of Pete Lancashire
>> Sent: Tuesday, 10 September 2013 6:58 AM
>> To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
>> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Wavecrest DTS 2070
>>
>> -2V is a common terminator voltage for ECL
>>
>> In my days before gray hair I worked on a machine that for each rack had a
>> 200A -2V power supply, a fully configured system had over 20 racks.
>>


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