vassilip(a)dsl.cis.upenn.edu wrote:
So when the BBC + Torch arrived, the genious who
was responsible for
assembling the kit, promptly added a mains plug to the power cable
and plugged it in, feeding 240V AC to the +5 and +12V rails.
Same thing happened at my Uni when one of the Prime operators took
home a BBC for the holidays. She had an external disk drive for it,
that plugged into the BBC's power underneath the machine (not at
all obvious). So, she went ahead and fitted a mains plug to the
three-core cable that fed the drive. Usual release of magic smoke...
SOmewhat off-topic, but I once had to repair an IR spectrophotometer that
used a Bulgin 5A connector (conventionally a mains connector) for the
chart recorder signal output. Of course the obvious happened, somebody
plugged a mains lead in there.
Fortunately, the amplifier/control unit was almost entirely valved, and
the chart recorder signal came from a cathode follower. The only thing to
get cooked was the cathode resistor...
I am told that some Pye hi-fi amplifiers (mono, of course, and possibly
based on the Williamson design) used _identical_ Bulgin connectors for
the mains and speaker connections. Cross those over, and you blew fuses
and the output transformer...
-tony