re: naughty devices

[Roger Miller <rgrmill at rt66_com>]

Folks,

This is related to last month's discussion on problems caused by devices 
leaking noise into household wiring.

I just built the lights for my new tank using 6 55 watt PCs from ahsupply.  
Now I have a naughty device.  I found fairly quickly that running these 
lights on the same household circuit with my computer renders the internal 
modem useless.  Odd.  The rest of the computer seems to be working fine.  I 
can plug the lights into a different circuit without problems, but that 
involves snaking an extension cord to another part of the house, so it isn't 
a permanent solution.

There is audible static in the connection tones.  Dial tone on the line 
sampled through a telephone sounds fine and there are no other telephone 
disturbances that I've found.  There is a little AM radio interference, but 
nothing a strong station doesn't power through.  TV and cell phones are fine. 
 I got a new surge protector with 60 db RFI protection, and that does not 
help.

So this leads me to several questions re naughty devices.

1)  Has anyone else had similar problems, and if so how did they solve it?

2) Any idea what may cause the ballasts to behave badly?  Ahsupply has not 
(yet) responded to my question.  My installation is stock and per their 
instructions except that I wired all three ballasts in parallel on a single 
power cord instead of using three power cords.

3)  Given no solution to 2) is there a device that can be used to isolate the 
lights  and their problems?  I've seen small plug-in devices for isolating 
devices from X10-equipped circuits.  I suspect that I would need something 
similar.


Thanks,

Roger Miller