POS and Power 1

[DTSMAN]

It has been mentioned here and there about not putting your POS system on circuts that have compressors and other high amp devices running. What I have found makes for the most stable POS system are two major power points. One being put a UPS on every terminal and make sure everything is on battery. This will prevent many headaches caused from those quick power losses that do just enough to corrupt everything because the computers rebooted in the middle of sales. The second thing is isolated\dedicated grounds and circuts. This means the computer circut is on its own breaker and utilizes its own ground. How we determine if the ground is dedicated is by putting a tester on the circut, have the electrician lift the ground wire in the panel and see if our tester shows a loss of ground. Supposedly when you see orange outlets this is what they are suppose to be.

Of course many electricians will argue ground is ground, but it isn't. The further back the better, and even having its own grounding rod is best. I have had to do this per NCR installations for their corparate installs that I got subed out to do. They have a spec sheet that I had to check off and fax back to them when done.

Any other suggestions please post. I am sure we could start aother thread on proper network cabling for POS systems.

Bo

Kentucky phone support-
"Mash the Kentrol key and hit scape."

 

[buck2506]

Bospruell,
Check and see but around here the orange/red outlets mean generator or secondary power source. The outlets work like normal but in case of power out they change over to back up power.

 

[DTSMAN]

I think they vary on what they are actally used for from site to site. At all the sites I have done they are used to point out the computer only circut, but the big thing is that they do not bond to the metal junction boxes, the only way they can ground is from their grounding lug. Hence, we tell Electricians to run an insulated grounding wire back to the panel, that way the outlet is on its dedicated ground and not bonded with the junction boxes.

Bo

Kentucky phone support-
"Mash the Kentrol key and hit scape."

 

[suchasynic]

I've had great success with a product called PowerVar. In instances where dedicated power was declined and/or not installed -- these little units plug into the outlets and have 4 outlets to plug the electronic devices into -- similar to a power bar, but very very different in what they do.

The thing I like about having these is that it makes the equipment more portable....you can plug the devices into any electrical oulet using this device because it offers all the protection you need.

 

[MRBRENT]

Dedicated Isolated circuits used to be a requirement for us years ago but the switching power supplies are so much better on the hardware now days. We install a PowerVar power conditioner on everything now and they work very well. I had a customer put ups's on POS terminals and after a year or so the batteries went bad and caused many more problems than they solved. We now are replacing all the ups's with just power conditioning only and fixing their problems. I have been installing POS systems for 20 years now and we won't install without Power Conditioning.

 

[POSJOBS]

The powerVar units are very good, but a little expensive. Look at Smartpower out of Houston. They work just as well and are about 40% less. They even have a power cord with power conditioner built in.