Life on mars
My Open Desktop Workstation came the other day, and while unpacking it (so I can geek out over the holidays) I couldn't help but laugh when I saw the sheet attached to the unit. I always wonder how much of it is being proactive, versus an amusing story I'm missing out on.
Posted by drunkenbatmanDecember 21, 2005, at 03:05 AM
Comments (15)
Posted by: Alan Schmitt at December 21, 2005 04:57 AM
A friend of mine who had done an internship got a nice Alpha station and brought it back to France. He eagerly plugged it, and there was a big exploding sound (he had trouble earing for a few minutes afterwards): one high power transistor (I'm not sure it's the correct English name) had exploded.
So I guess it's a smart move to put this sheet in ;-)
Posted by: Ahruman at December 21, 2005 08:22 AM
I saw this in high school (in Sweden). A certain idjit found an interesting switch on the back of a computer and fiddled with it. When it was switched on, there was a high-pitched whine, a *poof* and a puff of smoke. Not the most impressive explosion ever, but an impressive bit of stupidity.
Mac power supplies, on the other hand, are always self-regulating.
Posted by: Martijn Sipkema at December 21, 2005 08:24 AM
My brother once hit the 110/220 V instead of the CGA/Hercules switch—he was going to play decathlon—and the explosion was audible from the other side of the house.
Posted by: mary at December 21, 2005 10:03 AM
Ha! That's awesome. My computers never threaten to explode, but they do sometimes quietly tut-tut at some of the amazing crap I visit on the internet.
Posted by: Pablo Rodrigo at December 21, 2005 10:08 AM
Not all mac power supplies are self-regulating, 1st gen. G5 iMacs had a self regulating power supply only when sold outside the USA (not sure about 2nd abd 3rd gen. though), and PowerPC G3, and G4s had a nice red switch in the back with a yellow sticker written in big friendly letters.
Posted by: Cochrane at December 21, 2005 11:20 AM
Ahruman: Same thing happened to a friend of mine, the whole computer did not work afterwards and had to be replaced (it was due for replacement anyway, so nobody really bothered to have it fixed). It's fun to tease him with this incident.
Posted by: adrien at December 21, 2005 03:51 PM
Unfortunately, I did this with my old 7600. I waited so patiently for it to arrive here, and then celebrated the unpacking and plugging-in, then celebrated the week long wait for repairs, not to mention the bill.
Posted by: adrien at December 21, 2005 03:52 PM
^ (uh, PowerMac 7600)
Posted by: Bruce Hoult at December 21, 2005 05:56 PM
I've done that :-(
A friend brought a PowerMac 7200/90 back to NZ with him from the US and asked me to set it up. Every Mac since the SE (Plus?) has a self-adjusting power supply so I just plugged it in without looking around the back. *poof* Oops. Found switch, put in the right position and took it to a local dealer and said "ug .. computer not go ..." and they fixed it under warranty.
And then there was the batch of Rodime external SCSI disks (around 20 - 60 MB capacity) that all started blowing up after about a year. It turned out that even though the sticker on the case said they were for 240V the insides were actually wired up for 110V. But it took months of use before they went bang.
Posted by: califguy4christ at December 22, 2005 01:33 AM
I was building an OEM machine in shop the other day, and it appears that ASUS is shipping all of it's machines on 220V. Nice thing is they put a sticker over the power cord socket to remind you to switch it.
A hassle, really, but I haven't blown one up yet.
Posted by: at December 22, 2005 09:08 AM
there is a pubic hair on that computer...
Posted by: rexbinary at December 24, 2005 09:38 PM
DB, could you post some pics of that unit or point me to a site that has some? I can't seem to find any good pictures of it anywhere on the web.
Posted by: Peter da Silva at December 28, 2005 01:38 PM
It's not just computers.
We went through several AC-powered transistor radios when I lived in Sydney, either they were set for 110 or they really weren't capable of handling 240 even when set that way.
Posted by: Larry Miller at December 31, 2005 11:23 PM
The ODW is one of the sorriest excuses for a workstation that I have ever seen. I bought one, and the firmware was so flaky and the machine's peripherals so unsupported that I sent it back. Their customer service was no help at all. Tried to blame *KEYBOARDS* for their problem. Who, in the last 10 years, cannot interface to a garden-variety USB or PS2 keyboard?
These were sold as cheap Web servers.
I replaced it with a dual boot Mac Mini and Ubuntu. Happy, happy! Less money and it Just Works.
Don't go for this turkey unless you want a work station where the WORK is getting the STATION to work!
Can't get enough explosions in your life? It's the super-duper-exploding power supply!
You could probably reproduce this in the states by plugging the damn thing into the wall socket where your laundry appliances live.