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Re: [tlug] Stupid mistake?"




Hi David,


On Tuesday, January 10, 2012 04:19 PM, David J Iannucci wrote:
Have we fried her power supply?  It's lower voltage than the PS is
expecting, but... does that matter?  Is there any other plausible
explanation for this?  If this is the right diagnosis, has there
possibly been damage to internal peripherals?


The voltage difference is slightly different (100 V for Japan versus 120 V USA/Canada) and I'm not sure if I was lucky, but I never had any problems without a transformer. I didn't have a desktop, but things like a Zip drive [this was over 10 years ago :-) ] and a Playstation worked fine.

I asked around and the few "experts" around me said that 20 V was within the tolerance of many appliances. *shrug*

Of course, the difference between these two things and the desktop is that the desktop is more complex and it is always drawing power [1]. Hence, your power supply's green light and LAN lights are always on. Not sure if over the course of a month did it decide to give up...

On the other hand, I just brought a desktop to Hong Kong recently and as Bruno says, blowing the power supply was instantaneous. Because the PC is always drawing power from the 220-240 V outlet, I didn't have to switch it on -- once I plugged it in, I heard a pop and then smoke. And then me saying "*doh*". :-)

It isn't that expensive to change the power supply to find out. *Maybe* everything else is ok -- the power supply blowing is suppose to protect the rest of the computer [2]; indeed, once I changed the power supply, the rest of the computer, including the hard disks, were all fine...

Good luck!

Ray

[1] Incidentally, I was shopping for transformers at Yodobashi Camera and there are these relatively cheap all-in-one transformers. I wanted to get one but if you look in the back, some said that it is meant for things like hair dryers; not for something that is turned on for extended periods of time. So, it would seem duration also has an effect...if someone on this list knows, I'd like to find out the real answer. I ended up getting an expensive one that weighed a tonne...

[2] The tech support for my Dell machine said this. I had to call them because "surprisingly", Dell chose to use a non-standard power supply. I had to pay them to fix it for me.




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