Torx

Whenever we lose power here at the Boggy Thicket, our generator comes on automatically and everything continues to work normally until the lights come back on.  The generator does have a built-in 30 second time delay which means that our DirecTV receiver must go through a lengthy reset procedure, sometimes as much as five minutes, before we can get back to a show.

A few years ago, I bought an unlimited power supply (UPS) and put it on the circuit that feeds the DirecTV receiver.  That should have solved the problem - the TV reception continued without interruption - but the darn thing would beep until the power came back on.  The UPS help desk technician explained that the device was so sensitive that if the generator wasn't putting out electricity at precisely 60 cycles per second the UPS would beep and there was no way to turn it off.

When I decided to open it up and disconnect the little speaker, I discovered that it was held together with tamper-proof screws - little torx head screws that had a post in the middle so a normal torx bit would not work. I just let the UPS lie around for a year or two. Finally, when cleaning up after Harvey, I threw the darn thing away.

That  might have been the end of the story, but recently our little electric heater started getting noisy.  When I went to open it up to clean and lube the fan, I discovered that it had the same sort of tamper-proof screws.

Okay, enough is enough.  I found a whole set of torx bits with holes in them just for this type of screw.

I don't know if I'll be able to fix the heater, but I'll darn sure be able to get in it and find out.