Posts Tagged ‘PC’

BIG BANG – PC Workstation power supply!

Monday, September 5th, 2011

And on occasion, I have to deal with the physical world of computing, when the power supply in PC Workstation No.2 decided to go bang, and then tripped the circuit breaker for the sockets in the house! (the computer was not even powered up, but it has a smart power supply, Wake on LAN, low power etc so although plugged into AC, it’s “on”.)

I’ve been disassembling the PC Workstation No.2, little service vacuum out the dust from heatsinks, fans, hard drives, and replacing the PSU with a new working supply from the spares cupboard.

Checking the broken power supply to check which side of the power supply decided to go bang, (AC or DC) fuse had not blown inside the power supply, but here are the photographs from the broken power supply. I think you’ll see the fault immediately.

Capacitor cap blown-out

Capacitor cap blown-out

But this has some good news, because I managed to salvage a 3300uF 16v Capacitor from this broken power supply to repair the power supply in my Humax FoxSAT-HD STB! (but that’s another blog!)

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In the beginning …

Friday, July 30th, 2010

On driving to the bakers at lunchtime today to get a pasty and sandwich for my lunch, I was struck down by severe stabbing chest pain, so severe that I had to emergency brake and stop the car at silly speed. (the car following me, had a surprise) – I thought I was having a heart attack it came on so quick and was terribly painful, and my immediate thoughts were to stop the car quickly for safety, on getting out of the car, I immediately took off my t-shirt, to check for insects and I found five small puncture wounds and swellings under my left nipple (the owner of the car behind got out to start having a swearing competition with me – but backed down – when I mentioned I’d been stung by an insect – and showed him my left breast!).

I was rather relieved that I’d been stung, but still a little concerned that I couldn’t find anything that had caused it, about 5 minutes later, when leaving the car in the car park, I found a dying young Wasp in the handbrake console, I must have damaged/squashed it when I grasped my chest in the car. The wasp must have flown in through the window or pinged on the wing mirror into my clothing, couldn’t get out, so stung me five times around the nipple!

I was going to call this post Heart Attack, but I thought that would be too alarmist! I could have taken a picture of the dead wasp for the post, but I didn’t think that was very exciting,

so I’ve called it In the beginning …

no reference to the Bible, God or Jesus Christ but to the IBM PC XT! to which I personally owe an awful lot – Thanks IBM!

IBM XT Personal Computer Model 5160

IBM Personal Computer XT Model 5160

IBM XT Personal Computer Model 5160 Made in Scotland

IBM Personal Computer XT Model 5160 Made in Scotland

For those of you, who know your computing history, you’ll know, that I’m not correct, as the 5150 came before this – the original IBM Personal Computer (PC), and was released in 1981, the 5160 (IBM PC XT) was released 2 years later in 1983. But I don’t have a 5150 to photograph!

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