[time-nuts] Re: HP z3816a DC power supply DIP switches

[ed breya]

Sam, I noticed in your last post that you're planning to use a printer 
type PS. It may work if you luck out, but I suspect that it won't have 
enough juice to get things up and running.

If it's anything like the typical ones I've seen, it's a small SMPS 
brick, built for running ink-jet printers. These tend to be just heavy 
enough for their normal purpose, but not much beyond. Actually, most 
SMPSs don't work well for transient startup conditions like this. In 
this case, you have to charge the big filter cap, and take on the 
negative input R, and the high initial oven heater load. SMPSs tend to 
be very quick in protect-response, and likely will current limit, by 
going into immediate fold-back, tick (chirp), or trip (and manual reset) 
mode. You can of course, try it and see - it shouldn't hurt anything. If 
it immediately faults, you can try letting it do its own soft-start, by 
connecting the load first, then plugging the PS into the line.

I think your best bet is to use a bench linear PS for experimenting - 
one with way more current capability than you apparently need. Then you 
can figure out how it all actually works before deciding on the long 
term solution.

Ed