I use a five amp unit at the shop, has a built in voltmeter. Quite useful for setting transformers to the voltage needed. You can use it with an isolation transformer in front, don't need a special isolation type if it is more expensive than the two separately.

I am not sure what you mean by "forcing a linear power supply to run" unless you mean to put in a higher than regular line voltage to the linear supply for testing regulation. I have on my Atari orange bench test fixture a simple bridge rectifier and large filter capacitor to provide a variable DC power supply (unregulated).

John :-#)#

At 07:38 PM 10/09/01, you wrote:

Hello all... Just wanted to get thoughts on using a Variac... I wanted to
get one for working on monitors. I would be using it to force linear power
supply to run or hopefully to dial in different AC supply voltages for
vector monitors.

Is is worth finding one with isolation or just run along with a regular
isolation transformer?
Would 5 amps cover most concievable applications for game work, they sure
get expensive fast....