Brown trousers moments with PSUs...

d_brennen

d_brennen

d_brennen

Soldato
Joined
30 Jan 2009
Posts
17,562
Location
Aquilonem Londinensi
Just had one, plugged in a customers PC and CRACK. Lucky to have my eyebrows :eek: and I may need an emergancy pair of underwear lol

Luckily it didn't damage the machine beyond the dead PSU and only caused a trip here. Had one of those "am I ok" moments though.

Lesson I guess is don't plug a power cable in thats swtiched on at the mains. If I'd done that there would have been a bit of space between my face and the resulting fireball :) Never do it though...

Has anyone one here ever hurt themselves, either literal shock or jumping and hitting your head etc with dodgy PSUs?
 
Last edited:
d_brennen said:
Lesson I guess is don't plug a power cable in thats swtiched on at the mains. If I'd done that there would have been a bit of space between my face and the resulting fireball :) Never do it though...
Click to expand...

Goes without saying really! :D You should never do this with any adaptor/kettle lead.
 
I used to have an old tumble drier that had to be "wound" to set the timer. The plastic dial broke so I used to turn the tumble drier off at the mains and wind using a pair of pliers.

One day I forgot to turn it off at the mains... I'd say it was about as bad as holding on to an electric fence used to keep in cows. :o

Yes I know it's not a PSU!
 
d_brennen said:
Has anyone one here ever hurt themselves, either literal shock or jumping and hitting your head etc with dodgy PSUs?
Click to expand...

I bust open the power supply to an old scalextric set that I once had as I couldn't get the thing working. I plugged it in and decided to pop my head over the power pack to see if I could hear the hum of electricity going through it. My ear touched the thing and the next minute I knew I was lying on the bedroom floor quivering with my ear all black and sooty looking. My ol' fella came in really cheesed off as I had managed to blow everything in the house and he was going to have to spend the next twenty minutes resetting all of the clocks on the videos, clock radios etc. The smell of singed hair took ages to go from my room:D The look on my ol' fellas face was priceless when he came in and asked what the hell I was up to and I replied in a very shakey voice that I was listening for electricity :p:p
 
Not a dodgy PSU, but forgetting about the PSU. Most of the time I just take the side off my case when I need to do any hoking around and leave everything plugged in (but switched off) but I was replacing a graphics card and didn't even think, despite the PSU running away underneath and grabbed the card to pull it out. Queue a zap and that "holy **** I feel weird" buzz you get after electrocution. My arm ached for hours after as well.
 
I once plugged in a plug into the wall, turned it on and touched the fuse.

I was probably about 12 and curious.





Curious and extremely lucky!
 
my friend gamer did a similar thing other week while i was on phone to him but he got a pretty bad shock :eek:but i laughed hard as you do :D he was alright after short while.

had a monitor arc a big lightning type bolt before out back was quite interesting indeed :confused: dont know why it did it.
 
We have some equipment in the maufacturing area that runs on 110v

The fun happens once or twice a year I guess.

Also, they should make kitchen knives out of the insides of old PC cases, I've never had to sharpen one of them.
 
Has anyone actually ever died or had a serious injury from anything like this? I remember having it drilled into me at primary school, but I know of no one who's been injured by touching anything electric in the house.

It's like my mum always telling me not to run across the road because I might trip and get run over. Has that ever happened to anyone, ever? I would've preferred more useful advice.
 
Had a cheapo PSU blow up on me earlier this year - was running Folding@Home on two GTX 260s. I smelled that worrying burning PC parts smell and turned around just in time to see a massive blue flash. Scared the crap out of me as I was only about 2 feet from it!

Had a worrying few days waiting for the new PSU to turn up to see if my computer parts were still alive! :p
 
Russinating said:
Has anyone actually ever died or had a serious injury from anything like this? I remember having it drilled into me at primary school, but I know of no one who's been injured by touching anything electric in the house.

It's like my mum always telling me not to run across the road because I might trip and get run over. Has that ever happened to anyone, ever? I would've preferred more useful advice.
Click to expand...

I know someone who touched a live PSU case and got thrown across the room. I think he has an annual heart check up.
 
Having leaving my computer on over night a few years back a nice BANG - crackle woke me up.

:( meh

Having no laptop or other means to order one online i had to use a local computer shop £100 odd psu from a make i had never heard of.
 
Cybermyk said:
I know someone who touched a live PSU case and got thrown across the room. I think he has an annual heart check up.
Click to expand...

Does that count? Unless he's actually got heart problems, that just sounds like a precaution (probably because all the doctors had the same primary school anti-electricity drilling we did).
 
Of course electrocution can kill you. You only need around 6mA across the heart to stop it. Just about anything at home that uses mains could cause that under the right circumstances.

Even if the electricity isn't what snuffs you out directly, any fall/injury as a result of you flying across a room may well push you off your mortal coil.
 
Not me, but one of the engineers at work did themselves a nasty injury when trying to fix a PC with a dodgy PSU. They got electrocuted, did some nasty damage to their arm, had quite bad burn marks on the side of their face (metal framed specs) and also had some internal bleeding (kidneys I think). Luckily... if you can call them that, they were in a hospital when they did it. Had to stay in the ward for quite a while after that incident! Unsurprisingly they got everyone to reread all the procedures for working with electrical equipment after that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom