i need piece of mind...plugged or unplugged?

kerri369

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i just had my arcade rewired and put on seperate breakers with thier own switches all plugged into power strips/surge protectors, with a full surge protector on the breaker box! should i still leave them plugged into the outlets? what do you guys do?
 
... seperate breakers with thier own switches ...

If they're on switches, and the switches are off unless you're using them, then you're as safe as safe gets. ;)

(Unless lightning hits your house, or something... :rolleyes: )
 
I leave mine plugged in all the time.
I can't imagine plugging each game in when it's time to play, and then unplugging when we're done. It'd be awful.
 
Each game uses a different amount of amps.
I have 8 Nintendo cabinets on one 20 amp breaker with no issue whatsoever.

You can buy a Kill-A-Watt meter if you want to know exactly what your games are using.
 
Or, you can just keep plugging games in and play a whole new game, "How many until the breaker blows"! Not fun to win that game...
 
the electrician said 4 on each breaker (20 amp breaker) 5 tops.

You're electrician is absolutely wrong.

Depending on the game, 5 games could be as low as 5amps. Your electrician is thinking each game is 3 or 4 amps I bet.

General guide:

19" CGA raster - 1amp to 1.2amps
25" CGA raster - 1.5amp to 2.0amps
19" vector - 2amps
25" vector - 2.5amps

Believe it or not, my 19" medium resolution System 2 cab sucks most of all my vids at 2.6amp I think it was.

If your game has force feedback...it will use more amperage. Pins use as little as 1amp but as much as 3amps depending on what game it is and what is being fired at the time.
 
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I leave all mine unplugged, but I have them connected to surge protectors in zones. That way if I just want to play a couple games, I can plug in one zone instead of the whole thing. I do leave them all unplugged when not in use for peace of mind, except for my MAME cabinet - the PC is always on, and all its parts are easily replaceable.
 
should i still leave them plugged into the outlets? what do you guys do?

I unplug them when not in use. When I got some rewiring done in my basement, I had the electrician put the outlets in at ceiling level. Makes it way easier to plug/unplug them. Then again, probably won't be of much use to the person that ever buys my house should I move.

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i leave mine plugged in on an individually switched power strip. they get unplugged when i'm gone on trips or what not, or if there's a possible lightning storm.
 
Plugged in all the time to a supremely kick-ass surge protector that will stop everything but a direct hit by lightning.

And after that, for convenience, there's a power strip with individual power switches so I can just turn on what I want.

And I also have a whole house surge protector at the breaker box for whatever that's worth.

I just checked -- my 4 games pull about 7-8 amps on a 20 amp circuit. Adding a 5th game should keep me well under the safety limit.
 
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Like the poster above said, if you've got them all on switches, it's really, really, really overkill to unplug them in my opinion. That would be like opening them up and removing the fuses 'just in case'.
 
The only time I ever think about unplugging them is if there is a huge lightning storm coming, even then, I never get all Y2K or anything.
 
The only other thing to add is that I've been told that in the case of extreme surges the electricity can jump right over the space gap in switches, effectively moving through the switch even though it's open.

I'm not too worried about this here with the level of surge protection that I've got. If lightning directly strikes my house then all bets are probably off though.
 
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