If servers go down but no one hears them, did they really fail? Think about it over lunch Three cheers for Monday! No? Just us? Well, take your mind off the start of the working week with The Register's dose of schadenfreude in the form of our regular Who, Me? Feature. Today's story of unplanned oopsies comes from "Robin", who spent the end of the last century working for a nameless institution in continental …
Especially in the older days. Now many devices (especially portable ones) can adapt automatically to the voltage it finds. A very good design, which probably also saves a bundle for the vendor (same HW works all over the world).
It's easy to design a switchmode PSU to supply relatively low DC voltage & wattage so that it can take a wide input voltage range. Much more difficult to do the same for high wattage elements that usually run directly from the mains supply, such as the heater in the laser printer's fuser unit.
You won't find many universal voltage toasters, kettles or space heaters either, for the same reason.
"Now many devices (especially portable ones) can adapt automatically to the voltage it finds."
There's a trap here in that a device (such as a phone, tablet or laptop) sold in 'rest of world' will typically come with a power supply that can handle 110 or 230/240 volts, but the exact same device in the US market will often come with a purely 110 volt power supply.
"There's a trap here in that a device (such as a phone, tablet or laptop) sold in 'rest of world' will typically come with a power supply that can handle 110 or 230/240 volts, but the exact same device in the US market will often come with a purely 110 volt power supply."
That has not been my experience at all for the cited items. Appliances/networking gear, yes, but not portable tech. I've not seen a 110VAC-only phone, tablet, or laptop in years.
I've not seen a 110VAC-only phone, tablet, or laptop in years.
Agreed. At least for the past 20 years, my US-purchased laptops have come with power supplies that handle 110-240V input. Long ago in our main UK office you could find portable transformers in most rooms to step down voltage for US-sourced equipment; those are long gone.
What's really important, though, is that the charger for my electric shaver is similarly adaptable.
Just a shout out for a British company making (IMHO) the best charger/adaptors that I've come across. The company is nothing to do with me personally although I did meet the owner once and he gave me a couple of samples (we were getting drunk on a train!). Amazing stuff, very compact and they FOLD FLAT, no dodgy pins to wreck screens!
Anyway, you can see there stuff here:
https://www.themu.co.uk
Got one from the big M before they closed.
Compared to a wall wart they are massively expensive.
But to me, the convenience of having a plug that fold flat and you can trust to pull > 2 amps is worth the cost
If I recall correctly, Thailand adds to the fun by using the same 110V plugs sockets, but for 240V. As far as I could tell, there's a roaring trade in those parts that are not even rated for 240V, not to mention that the "original" 110V plugs and sockets suck to start with (no shrouding, weak material that doesn't even keep a plug in place etc etc - it's a looong list).
Scary stuff. The recurring humidity makes adding an RCD a bit of a challenge too, but to be honest I would not be in a place without. I have seen people tap straight into the power feed (as in BEFORE their main fuses) because they needed more power for welding than the fuse would allow..
"From work on a recent project, I learned that Brazil does this as well. Apparently, the sockets are sometimes color coded as to voltage.
Seems like auto switching supplies would be a good idea there."
Usually they are. Here the old 110 or 220v usually belongs to the electric motors: fans, hair dryers, refrigerators...
The rest, usually, is bivolt. It is wise to check, though.
These "EU" plugs (they vary from country to country), at least the German version, stay put so well, you can hardly get the damn things out of the sockets. Unlike the well designed British plug which you can get a full hand "power grip" on, the German plugs only permit a delicate finger grip on them. And the force required is much higher than for a British plug. Often you end up wiggling the thing side to side to get the socket to relinquish its death grip.
What's with plugs and sockets in the EU? Coming from a country that has one type of plug for everything*, it's a constant puzzle.
On my last trip I found that the adapters that had worked previously, only to find that they were all slightly the wrong size. There always seem to be several subtly different flavours of socket in a single hotel room (nothing beats the experience of crawling round the floor trying to find a socket that (a) isn't required to power the fridge or TV and (b) doesn't go off at night when you finally work out how to switch off the lights from the bedside). Maybe there's some difference in the power rating of plugs and whether they're earthed, but it's impenetrably subtle.
* Except shavers. And there used to be a special kind of plug for mains electric clocks. Also, I have two rooms with switched lighting circuits that use 1930s-style 5A sockets.
It depends on where you go. The Netherlands usually have the round twin-prong plug (with the socket holes at an angle), the Germans often have the round twin-prong plug with the socket holes at 90 degrees (either horizontal or vertical). The Swiss have the old hexagonal twin-prong with *thinner* prongs and possibly an earth prong (and the sockets in a three-sockets-in-one arrangement), and the Italians often have the thinner prongs in either the hexagon (Swiss) or round (North-European) socket/plug. If you have a hexagonal plug with the thinner prongs (Apple uses these as their usual 'Europe' plug), you've got the best of all worlds in Europe because it will inevitably plug into a round socket or a hexagonal one.
Because I travel all over the world often, I have found the SKROSS World Traveller plug/socket adapter to be the perfect accompaniment. It is Swiss-made and is well-engineered. It usually comes with the multi-adapter as well as a 'round socket' adapter that you can use to plug the adapter into (and score a high-power USB adapter in the process). It's around 35 quid, but it is oh so worth every penny! I guard mine jealously... ;-)
The Netherlands usually have the round twin-prong plug (with the socket holes at an angle), the Germans often have the round twin-prong plug with the socket holes at 90 degrees (either horizontal or vertical).
That's strange. In the 3 decades that I've been in both countries I have yet to find a difference in their power sockets. Both the Netherlands and Germany use the Euro plug 5A non-earthed low current plug (which also fits in the Swiss 3 pin sockets) as well as the Schuko 13A edge-earthed medium current plugs. There may be a difference at 380V, I don't know. The fact that these plugs are reversible also means that on/off switches are mandated on BOTH wires feeding an appliance.
The French and, as a consequence, the Belgians use a different earth configuration, a third pin that comes out of the socket. All of that is a decades old hangover of trying to protect a local appliance market (clearly aimed at people not smart enough to change a plug, but I digress). This ensures a fixed polarity, but I never had cause to look up if that resulted in power switched only being on the live wire. Given the amount of miswiring I have come across, I think it's probably safer to stick with dual pole switches anyway.
As for the Swiss 3 pin, if I recall correctly that rates a max of about 10A, which is why the pins are thinner and the sockets connect very well with the non-earthed Euro plug. That's also why Swiss appliances tend to be slightly more economical with power - if you want to hook up something that needs more than approx 2200W of juice you need to find the much rarer thick pinned socket with the higher rated fuse behind it.
Both the Netherlands and Germany indeed use the 'Euro' low-current two-pin (non-earthed) plugs (type C) which has two 4mm pins which are nominally 18mm apart but are usually somewhat flexible so will fit into an earthed outlet as well. They're rated to 2.5A.
The Swiss type 'J' is very similar to this type C but has a middle offset earth pin; the line / neutral pins are 19mm apart, so again due to the type C pins being flexible it will also fit.
There the story does NOT end, however. If you're thinking of gear such as laser printers then you may well be using a higher-current-rated plug and/or using an earthed plug: in the Netherlands and Germany that'll usually be a 'schuko' plug (type 'F') which has 2 pins of 4.8mm diameter and 19mm apart, rated to 16A, with a pair of side earth contact planes. The fun begins with the earthing - because you can take a lead from a unit that needs an earth (e.g. printer, washing machine!) with the correct (earthed) plug and shove it straight into a type C outlet which of course provides no earth contact whatsoever. Be careful when you lean on that server unit especially if you're holding a coffee on the morning after the night before!
These sockets are also fun when it comes to loose cords - No, not your pyjama cords, being called out in the night isn't an excuse for arriving half-dressed! - Since the smaller type C pins (4mm) are sometimes not firmly clamped by the type F sockets they can very easily be tugged loose and pulled out.
In short, it's not only the voltage ratings which must be established, but also the actual power requirements and the kind of outlets that are going to be available where your gear is.
*Incidentally, I speak (a) as an electronics engineer and (b) as the guilty party when powering on my modest home computer set-up in around 1984 which consisted of 2 PDP-8/e minicomputers, 2 Pertec mag-tape drives, a 30 Megabyte exchangeable disk drive, a 128-head drum drive, a VDU and two ASR33 teletypes - all at once by accident... At the time I lived in a corner flat in a 6-storey building, my fuses didn't blow but the block that supplied myself and a few neighbours messed up a bit resulting in their receiving either 160V or less depending on what loads other folk had switched on using different phases... I think I bought a few beers around that time though.
That is true. The norm is NEMA 1-15 without polarization, that is rated for 125V but used for 240. Because of the lack of polarization, if you get shocked while touching an electric appliance, rotate the plus 180 degrees. When grounded (still not everywhere, but becoming more common, I do install proper ground and earth leak breaker wherever I live for a long enough duration), the usage was NEMA 5-15, but the norm is now TIS 166-2549 with three round plugs. But you can also find a lot of CEE 7/4 plug (German) as it seems there is no real obligation to provide equipment with the correct type of plug.
And electric tape is considered as the normal way of making any electric connection, even outside, even permanent.
Light garland are often made using two safety pins inserted in each wire of the main cable and attached to the lamp base.
To make matter worse, where I work has been funded as a collaboration of many countries around the world, so nearly each building comes with a different type of sockets, depending on the standard of the funding country (US, Japan, many EU countries, Australia, etc.)
To make matter worse, where I work has been funded as a collaboration of many countries around the world, so nearly each building comes with a different type of sockets, depending on the standard of the funding country (US, Japan, many EU countries, Australia, etc.)
We got two selection models for that. Equipment is sourced locally, but mobile gear is always required to also support the two pin Euro socket for which our offices always have sockets (or convertors, depending on code allowing us to fit the sockets or not), irrespective of country.
"One should always check the current standards for voltage before plugging in"
Understandable policy, and yet very context-specific. I have always worked in Europe (both UK and mainland Europe) starting in the late 90s. Whatever kit I have ever had to set up, whether for work of my own personal stuff, has always come with the correct plug, which I have unthinkably plugged in every time, always without any issues. I was always vaguely aware that (old) power supplies could be switched between 110 and 220 v but never had to pay attention to it as it was always correctly set up.
In this specific case, if it really as a 'US' printer, then the plug would also have been that nasty 2-flat-pin US plug, and our hero should have paid some attention to that. If on the other hand HP knew they were delivering the printer to Europe and fitted it with a continental 2-round-pin plug, then it's a screw-up from HP's side that they did not also set the power supply to the correct voltage to match the plug.
... the plug would also have been that nasty 2-flat-pin US plug
That's the nasty 'Type A' plug or NEMA 1-15 standard plug.
For a laser printer, it would surely have been the nasty 2-flat-pin+1-round-pin (grounded) plug also known as 'Type B' or NEMA 5-15 standard plug.
In the US the cable usually comes with a very difficult to remove label with a very clear warning about using in the proper sockets without an adaptor.
And if it was an HP printer (the real HP not what it has become) the proper cable would have been in the box.
O.
I live in Scotland, but work for an English company.
Result? I get the day off, but my wife is in as normal (works at the local university).
Of course, this means I can't put my feet up much as I'm sure I'll be asked "what jobs" I've spent all day doing...
Worked for one of the large Edinburgh Assurance companies a few years ago, they were sensible and only the serious Bank Holidays were observed (Christmas, Boxing, New Years Day, Good Friday and Easter Monday).
All the other holidays were added to your floating holiday and the Office was open, book it off if you want that day off.
Made the commute really quiet on those "bank" or "local" holidays :)
Colour me doubious. In most such mixed use spaces the significant part of the noise is the fans. And if everybody is downing work for lunch, the other part of the noise should have ceased. It is a bit hard to believe the fans spinning down wasn't noticeable, unless it was "plug it in and run for lunch" in oblivious mode. Hey, your bread and butter ought to be more priority than one meal.
they said a 1/3 of the servers went down which imply it was a 3 phase room, pretty crappy power set up though if the server racks were not on their own fuse spurs.
I my data centre one of the techies 'might' have been able to bring down a few devices this way but all the critical kit had its own spurs. We did take account of which breaker / phase cabinets were in when we were racking kit to make sure that we were not introducing risk. Something like this build desk would have been on its own breaker with a few 13 amp sockets hanging off it, nothing production would ever have been attached to that spur on pain of dismemberment.
Color me sensitive. I'd notice if a few units were spinning down.
I could hear that one unit was just slightly overworked, when my office was next to the server room...
However, if the lunch truck was passing by, I can see where some people might get distracted ;-}
However, if the lunch truck was passing by, I can see where some people might get distracted ;-}
This is quite some time ago, but we used to get free rolls and baguettes at lunch time. Speed was essential to ensure you got to the trolley early while there was still decent selection available. Nice they were too. They also had a habit of having piss ups paid for by the company few times a year.
Sadly these days everyone is penny pinching and looking for a way to shaft you, rather than spending a few quid and ensuring happy and productive workforce.
The company I worked for had a canteen, and every Wednesday was Curry Day. Their Curry Madras and Rice was to die for. The site was huge, and long lines of workers could be seen pouring out of the various buildings and heading for the canteen, and later, staggering back with full bellies. We also had "Morning Goods", which included Ham Rolls, choccy bars, etc., but they were only on sale between 8 and 8:30, so we office types that didn't start until 8:30 had to place our orders with the shop floor staff the previous afternoon (ie, before they knocked off at 4:30). The canteen closed down as it was deemed to be "unproductive", but then everybody used to gallop off up the "Black Path" to the supermarket's cafeteria, which resulted in much longer dinner breaks, much to the manglements annoyance, but they still didn't reinstate the canteen :-(
I still smile when I think back to one short-lived job I had at an outsourcing hire/fire shop. Having recruited us to ramp up resources based on an expected project win the client then delayed, so said company had us working on a crazy internal project. After a few weeks we'd worked out the best way to do it and decided to clear down the failures and false starts by wiping everything prior to starting over.
Clean-down complete we decided to go to lunch, so we would have the solid afternoon to do the rebuild...except most of us got pulled aside going back to the office to be told we had "failed our probation period" and should not let the door hit us on the way out.
Karma #1: About 2 weeks later the client came back and said "OK, let's start tomorrow", resulting in one of my fellow probation failures going back as a contractor on about 3x the salary.
Karma #2: I moved on to a much better role and had the pleasure a year or so later of walking in to a meeting with a potential outsourcing provider to see the face drop of one of the bosses who had fired me sat over the desk. Still knowing some of the people who worked for said outsourcer I also got to seem him wince every time the sales guy said something like "Oh yes, we have a whole team of XXX people" or "Oh no, we aren't a hire/fire shop, so you'd usually be able to have the same resources who knew your systems come back for later projects", my boss looked at me, and I'd respond with a little shake of the head or raised eyebrow.
I hope you managed to get in a few *cough*cough*bollocks*cough*cough* moments.
No, it is far more satisfactory to let the sales droid gallop himself dead while you sit and just look pointedly at the guy who knows differently. The line, "we will give your presentation the consideration it deserves.", in deadpan, while shaking the hand of the ex-boss, will be payback enough. I love karma.
We usually set English as a standard for software too, as a lot of software we were using was in English only, or anyway not in our language - and what was translated in our language was often done badly. Also there was a time when localized versions and updates came later than English ones.
So having a common language across software was OK.
But hardware? It's most of the time just a way to incur in more issues. I.e. people not knowing how to get letters with diacritics on a US keyboard, and creating both software translations (as our customers did require them) and documents which looked written on a cheap typewriter in the '50s. Moreover when at customers' offices you would usually find a different layout.
It all goes back to the original 7-bit ASCII. The official UK variant of ASCII replaced the comment mark (at 35d/23h in the US variant) with a pound sign. By the time anybody in the UK could afford a computer, British home computer manufacturers such as Acorn and Sinclair were leaving the comment mark at 35 and putting the £ sign at 96d/60h, where it replaced the execution quote `. But the American people were now convinced that # was the British currency symbol.
If you knew what you were doing, it was possible to whip the character ROM out, dump its contents (literally as simple as plugging the chip into your motherboard, if you had a BBC micro), alter them slightly and burn an EPROM (usually a 2764) that would print a pound sign for 96 and a comment mark for 35.
Well, you can set your own locale regardless of the software language. It's also good that now most OS and many application can be switched from one language to another as long as the needed language files are installed.
Yeah, about that : I used to set my location to France, and keep the US English language for the interface, because I prefer doing my computing in the language it was invented in.
The interesting side-effect of that is that all browsers today pay attention to my location and don't give a fig about my language choice : in other words when I go to IBM, Amazon or even on Google, and search for something - the results I get are in French, and that pisses me off.
Um, guys, my language is English. Get with the program.
Everything on the Internet now is about pre-empting the user to deliver "more relevant" results/info - and usually failing badly.
Geolocation is very annoying - it's a lame consumer business fixation brought into environments where it often doesn't make sense.
Geolocation is very annoying
It's also very stupid when you're working on an office network that spans multiple locations, because it usually locates you at the place where the private network interfaces with the internet. In some cases that's not even on the right continent.
About ten years ago, as the ISPs strted to run low on IP4 addresses, Geolocation went from "reliable to the town level" to "probably the right country".
And then there's those folks who live at the geographic center of various states or nations and get mountains of take-down requests in the mail because "this address is associated with an IP address used by pirates"...
Um, guys, my language is English. Get with the program.
Amen to that, I have the equivalent problem here in the Netherlands. I also experience the same kind of problems when I take my laptop in holiday. German is no problem and if necessary I can get by in Thai, but Vietnamese is a problem. Luckily my wife can translate that when necessary, at least enough to get back to the English version.
You can set your search locale and language, and UI language, in your Google account separate from your current location - which of course it knows. I haven't tested this, but it should address your issue.
For instance, I typed "hello" into British Google, and I was offered a song by Adele and a photo-magazine about celebrities - British versions. I presume that in the U.S. you will see... maybe Lionel Ritchie? Or does that make me awfully, awfully old? How about dear Margarita Pracatan?
So you don't need to care about this, and they don't need to manufacture a different SKU - just ship a different power cord. It is so cheap to do this, I'm surprised when I see something with a 110/220 switch in the back anymore. You know they skimped on something that costs pennies to do, what else did they skimp on?
I get annoyed with the over supply of regional power cords with things now.
You have to hang on to things in case you need to send the whole lot back but invariably end up with a cupboard and multiple drawers full of various european and american ended cables that a manager says you should probably hold on to just in case.
During an annual spring clean they normally find their way to an appropriate waste stream and off site.
I may change my opinion on this soon though as I'm working in a country that uses the British 3 pin and european 2 pin plugs pretty much interchangeably and I never know what kind of plug socket I'm going to encounter next.
We had a client who shipped a bunch of IBM InfoWindow terminals to use their mini with to the UK.
We were forced by them to supply a set of the yellow isolating transformers for them.
I got to check the terminals when they arrived - all fitted with autoranging PSUs...
(They also ordered a line to the US.. and were confused why they couldn't connect the BT kilostream 64K unit's X.25 interface to their mux's internal T1 DSU...)
Its just that old that switching power supplies weren't a thing yet
I need to rebuild my "I, Robot" machine's 1982-3 switching PSU after it went bang a while back. To be fair they cheaped out a bit and wired it slightly differently for 240/110V so not fully auto-ranging and it's bigger than some PCs but they've been around a long time.
I wish.
I have sitting in my spares drawer, a pair of power supplies for a UCS C240. Seems cisco makes no less than four different iterations of power supply modules for the buggers here in the US:
110VAC- 240VAC, autoranging
208V non-autoranging
110VAC non-autoranging
and (for the Telcomms DC nuts) -48VDC telco
We bought a C240 with the expectation that the power supplies were autoranging. imagine our surprise when we took the unit out to one of our sites that was 110 only, and found that it wouldn't light up. (no bangs, no breaker pops, just no lights or music.)
Combine that with a few other slip ups from our VAR, and I quadruple check the quotes I get from them anymore before I pass it on to the boss for approval.
Us Saffers usually cuss the manufacturer out if an item is shipped with an European 2-pin plug, but not a South African 3-pin plug.
Which means a shufty to the IT store to find a suitable cable, and later on, after a quick shufty at the local hardware shop and armed with a screwdriver and pair of pliers, cut off said European plug and affix a new plug to said cable, then toss it into the IT spares cupboard (for later use, when another dimwitted appliance arrives with an equally dimwitted EU plug), and toss the useless European plug bit away (into the proper recycle bin).
As for 110v voltage appliances, never had that issue as everything was set for 240V. Lucky me. Yay.
I thought this was heading towards the issue I came across on one site which had just done a rollout of an new desktop image and were getting user complaints that the keyboards weren’t working right. Some keys had to be pressed twice before they would register, and sometimes the spacebar did odd things. After a bit I found the keys that weren’t working were the ones that were part of accents, like “‘^~ etc. It turned out that in setting up the new build someone’s thought process had gone like this... We use US keyboards - right - and we’re not actually *in* the USA - right - so clearly the correct keyboard layout setting is US-International. Which (as any fule kno) is a special layout setting that changes the default function of some keys (in the US layout) to be in compose mode where the next letter you type gets that accent and if you want the uncomposed symbol you follow the character by pressing space.
As I remember it this required a lot of desktop visits to undo.... They weren’t the last to try out this interesting layout either.
Icon should be obvious
so a super CIVision system deployed in same vein, english-us the main validated control PC died, psu burnout after approx 4 years (surprise surprise)
cue panic stations when they realised we didnt carry spares for such old crap (that and they forgot to inform IT it even existed) with a non-standard PSU.
so we dutifully ordered a new system form the Us vendor.
On arrival i offered to set it up, facilities engineer was like, "son i was deploying PCs before you were an itch in your daddys pants....."
me: "Oh ok then, well just remember and check if the psu is a manual switchover to 240v"
engineer: Daggers and "im not fricking stupid!"
5 minutes later, a tannoy call put out for me to head to ECA.
I entered the lab and stated "WTF is that smell?"
cue facilities engineer on floor, head in hands with ringing in his ears.
yup, you guessed it!
The daft old fuckwitt forgot to check and blew the PSU, which also took out main motherboard and disk along the way, cue another 8 week delay while another was ordered from US vendor, all the while having that line down was costing £22k lost profit a day.
Funnily enough Ops director handed job to IT :) facilities guy didn't last much longer.
anon due to still being there :)
Good thing that 'facilities' bloke was given the elbow. Still, you're lucky - there's still plenty of places where he'd still be in the job, with no blame attached, and you'd be the one tossed out on the street for 'not providing proper information' or 'making a faulty order' or some such excuse. Especially in some Gov't places or in unionised set-ups, they're the worst.
In places like that you just cover your ass with all necessary documentation about giving the necessary info. Wait to be tossed out for something like this and sue for wrongful dismissal (or whatever the legal phrase is in your jurisdiction). It will cost them.
in 1979 I was a mainframe operator in training. it was my 1st weekend on the job - saturday morning. my boss was walking me through some startup / shutdown procedures.
in those days, the power wasn't stable and minor fluctuations would glitch the mainframe, so the power was cycled through an enormous and expensive device known as a motor generator set - basically a dynamo that used unstable mains power to generate stable conditioned power.
it was not a UPS - it just kept power stable during brief drops.
so we made our way to the motor generator room, just outside the computer room.
"when you are ready to power off the motor generator set, you press this button" my boss said, gesturing towards a big red STOP switch.
"this button?" i replied, gesturing towards same
"yes that button.... NO!!!" he exclaimed as I jabbed it, suddenly rendering everything silent. Oops.
The systems programmer came running into the motor generator room exclaiming "what happened?!?!"
An 18 hour database restore came to a sudden halt as the system console, CPU, tape and disk drives all had completely powered off without warning.
Needless to say, I also got some unscheduled training on IPL and startup procedures, as well as database intialization batch job restart recovery.
Then there was the time with boss twice removed who decided to try and cheap out on everything, including getting switches from the grey market and expecting Cisco to warranty them when they (inevitably) failed. That worked out about as well as you'd expect.
It was a fun time trying to RMA a power supply when cisco says it's supposed to be married to a switch with an entirely different serial number, in an entirely different country. and the switch it came out of was from yet an entirely different country then the power supply, or the 10GB port expansion module that was labeled as 'non-functional, scrap only' (I never did figure out what happened to that- I think it got shipped back to the var we bought it from with a "you get to deal with this, please quote us genuine white market parts for cisco in the future" worded note attached to it....)
Is usually found in power cords, but I digress. Usually the outlet corresponds to the voltage delivery system. At least you hope that that is the way it is. Back in my 3rd form days (a LONG while ago), the place I was schooled at we VERY "british" for being in the USA. A couple of older buildings were actually wired for 240 volts (yes, they were VERY old). Since everyone knew what to expect, transformers abounded for such mundane things as record players, and refrigerators (very big transformer). We didn't have much other stuff, as this was decades before PC's. I was tasked to make a recording with a nice reel-to-reel tape recorder in a place that I didn't know was a 240 volt building (ooops!), and promptly blew the fuse. The outlets were the same as the 120 volt power elsewhere, so I didn't know. My clue was that the light bulbs were 240 volt, so I quickly got another tape recorder and did my work. I suppose someone else changed the fuse.
Ah, youth. Yes, it was over 50 years ago.
In my garage, I do have a nice 240 volt outlet, and it has the proper NEMA 6-15 socket that has the horizontal blades, not the vertical ones for a 5-15 outlet normally used. Yes, it is labeled 240 volts as well!
Many years ago I was asked to take a look at a hifi system that no longer worked. This system had been transported from the US to New Zealand (along with a lot of other 110 volt home appliances) by a a couple who had moved to NZ so the husband could take up a position at our local university.
For some reason this couple were under the impression that they wouldn't be able to get normal household appliances here so they brought everything with them - anyhoo, checking the amplifier I found that most of the transistors were stuffed. It wasn't until sometime later that my ex revealed that the lady of the house had plugged the amp in to 240 volts using a stack of adaptors that supposedly not only matched up the plug and socket, but would drop the 240V to 110V as well - guess which bit she forgot to use.
I had some friends return to Australia (240V) from the USA (110V) and they gave me a large CRT monitor for the computer.
Silly me went and immediately plugged it in (in the garage fortunately), and was rewarded with a very large plume of white acrid smoke, with a scent of melted plastic. It didn't trip anything, but I immediately unplugged it. The garage stank for weeks afterwards. I later found the helpful 110V sticker on the back, and there was no 240V switch.
I spent time on the British island of Tortola in the 80s. At the time, the island generation systems were near the end of their useful life.
AC power was supposed to be 60 cycles per second, but the power authority's current varied from 50 to 70 cycles depending on load, capacity and the weather.
This had some interesting effects on electric clocks - they could never keep in proper synch with Greenwich, adding a whole new dimension to the term "island time".
The other notable evidence was the way compressors of freezers and refrigerators in local food shops would furiously hum and overpump, then gradually dwindle and slow down before violently shuddering to a near-halt, only to rev up seconds later and begin the cycle of boom and bust all over again, repeatedly, until the equipment suffered total failure.
And, fluorescent lights would dim and brighten in sympathy with the freezers.
If you didn't have a Tripp Lite connected between the wall and your computer, it would last maybe a week before failing permanently.
Old school hardware used to have those nice round cartridge fuses we remember... You know, with the little protruding knob you turn to pull out the offending blown fuse and battle short with a bit of copper wire...
When wired properly the tip is hot and the ring ends close to your fingers is the contact the fuse closes.
Found one on a rack that was not kwite right, and the ring was hot. It me up with 240V when I pulled the cartridge without due care. I was sweating in the hot air blast between the rack and wall and got a good, solid hit. Bounced between the rack and wall, slicing my arm in the process. I atoned through a blood offering to the UPS.
. . . . .but the blame is purely on the manufacturer. They shall remain nameless, but it was a top-of-the-line LaserJet 5. We checked that it could handle 220, spec said it was 110/220.
What PrintZilla ***didn't*** say was, the 110V was one stock number, and the 220V was a separate stock number. And you couldn't buy the 220 version in North America, where we sourced everything else (all of which was dead easy to change over, flip the switch on the back of the Power Supply, and locally source the power cords to match local outlet configuration. . .)
We had to re-pack and ship the 110 version back to the States.
But the story does not end there. We were doing the install at HQ NATO. So, we called *(redacted)* Belgium, asked who their local resellers were. They named a company whose nearest office was in Antwerp, and another whose office was, conveniently, right next store to the US Support Activity. And we even had an account with them.
Or so we thought. I make a call, half in English and the rest in French, for an appointment the next morning. I get there. . . and they hand me an application form to become a customer. I was told to fill it out, and they'd get back to us in 4-6 weeks. I told them, that I needed to buy a printer now, and pulled out a wad of cash, ~180,000 Belgian Francs. Got told they didn't accept cash payments. Pointed out we already had an account in .us. Was informed that the .us was a different organization, and we needed to be an approved customer of **theirs**. I walked out.
Grabbed the Pages Jeune, and started calling companies that had HP logos in their ads. About a third, 10 or so, had the printer we wanted in stock. I got a name, a voice number, and a fax number.
Got a list of vendors, made a standard bid request. Model XYZ printer, with accessories A and B, for cash, delivered to HQ NATO C/o my employer's Company and the US Mission. Best price, taxes and delivery included, reply by fax with bid NLT 1400, Friday (this was a Tuesday afternoon).
Got one bid on Wednesday, after lunch. And then nothing. Called the outfit that bid on Friday at 1410, and we arranged delivery and payment for Monday morning. Easy peasy, installed as per the book, no circuits popping. Up and running by COB.
Rest of the network install continued over the next two weeks. But two weeks after we sent out the bid, a second company responded, with a much higher price, and delivery in 20-30 days. Ignored it. Next morning, the guy called, and asked when we could work payment for his bid.
I pointed out that bidding had closed ~10 days prior, someone had been selected, the printer paid for AND INSTALLED for a week-plus.
Guy flips out, did we not know who he was, he would complain to NATO, I pointed out that NATO wasn't buying it, a private US company was, supporting an activity based in the Pentagon. He said he would complain to the Ambassador. I gave him the Embassy switchboard number and wished him luck. . (turns out he had done this before, the Embassy had him on their "cranks" list. . .). The next day, the team flew back to .us.
2-3 weeks after this, we get a call from the US Mission. Seems that the original reseller had approved us to be a customer, and they wanted to discuss when we could take delivery of the printer. . . .Apparently, they weren't amused when I emailed them, and told them that it was overcome by events. And in any case, their proffered price was about 10% higher than what we paid. . . .
We were once lent, by one of our major clients, a piece of equipment with which I was tasked to do some interoperability testing with our equipment. This single piece of kit was worth in the high 5 figures.
Naturally I plugged it in.. there was a tiny pop and then nothing. Looking at the back I realised in horror it was 110V only.
Half an hour later, armed with a screwdriver and having removed various 'no user-serviceable parts inside' plates, I found the fuse and replaced it. Thankfully that's all it was. I kept schtum about that one.
First, plug in a 110volt printer to a 240 supply and if it doesn't have a switch mode powersupply, one of 2 things happens - 1) something goes bang in the printer 2) something gets toasted 3) you blow a protective fuse in the printer
Unless the printer had a serious electrical fault from the factory (or something got spilled on it bridging between line and neutral or line and earth), then the breaker shouldn't have tripped, and if it was a USA printer then it would have come with a NEMA 5-15 plug and NEMA plugs don't fit into any european sockets and that for starters should have set alarm bells ringing in any techies head for starters - wrong plug supplied, ok better check the rating plate to make sure the voltage matches whats coming out of the wall socket (though I do that with anything as I've seen stuff supplied by the manufacturer to the wrong market but with the right cables)
Sounds like an urban legend or "a little knowledge being a dangerous thing" - assuming that it was the voltage difference that caused the issue, when its more likely that the printer had a fault from new, the breaker was overloaded already and thus switching the printer on was enough to cause it to trip via the thermal method, someone spilled something on the printer or server, wiped up the visible evidence and then legged it or something else developed a fault and took everthing out on that circuit with it when the breaker tripped.
Mines the grubby one with a copy of BS7671 in the pocket and the VDE screwdrivers poking out of the pocket (ex sparky)
Unless the printer had a serious electrical fault from the factory (or something got spilled on it bridging between line and neutral or line and earth), then the breaker shouldn't have tripped,
Actually, I have myself caused a breaker to trip by plugging 110V stuff into 240V mains (last one was a customer's computer that, at some stage during the lifting and so forth one of us accidentally must have flipped the vs switch - thankfully a new PSU was all it needed (and I'd had the foresight to make sure each work bench had it's own breakers, so tripping one only took down what was on that bench). I've also seen others do it more than a few times with computers, TV's and other electronic devices.
Most printers I've used came with a standard IEC (aka "jug" or "kettle") socket. Our benches already had the leads fitted permanently (like, you know, any normal shop would do!) so it was always just a matter of grabbing the lead, plugging it into the device, plugging in any other necessary cables (lan, m/kb, video) and turning the power on. A few printers came with a "banana plug" aka "figure 8' (commonly used on smaller stereo units), and one fax/printer with a permawire (ie hardwired).
Quite believable as I've been through the experience myself more times than I care to remember/admit.
Sounds like ... "a little knowledge being a dangerous thing"
Yes....
Oh, I feel for this poor guy. Reminds me of the time I was tasked with running an extension cable out to power a ghetto blaster for an outdoor festival in Belgium. There was some switch on the socket box I naturally assumed was... for switching the sockets on and off, as you would. Three dead ghetto blasters later, I had a closer look. Naturally, this being Belgium, they not only had three-phase 415V sockets in the temple bathrooms (to power industrial washing machines, obviously); the extension cable technology (you guessed it), had the option of supplying 415V to the two-pin shaver-style power socket. Handy.
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