Date   : Fri, 07 Jun 1985 09:41:49-MDT
From   : "William G. Martin" <WMartin@SIMTEL20.ARPA>
Subject: Re: power supply protectors.

For what it's worth, my house had old wiring when I bought it, with fuses
on both the hot and neutral sides of the line. Once, some really strange
situation developed, involving intermittent connections or blown fuses
on the neutral side, which ended up feeding 220 V into some of my 110 V
circuits! The refrigerator and freezer on the affected circuit did NOT
like this :-) (luckily, built-in protection circuits shut them off and
it seemed no lasting harm was done, thank goodness!) -- however, you would 
find it interesting how quickly a 110-volt light bulb burns out on 220 V
(and how brightly it shines! [for a while :-]).

That wiring has since been replaced. Why I post this is to note that
flaky old wiring can sometimes produce other effects than simple
resistance losses. I wouldn't be surprised to measure widely-fluctuating
voltages or spikes or surges at the affected computers' power outlets.
It would be worth running a single isolated newly-wired circuit from
the main power box to the computer site; this can usually be done inexpensively.
Will Martin