Re: Inside power supplies: Where are the shocks?

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

stephen e buggie <buggie@pegasus.unm.edu> wrote:

> I've hacked inside MANY power supplies and have not yet felt a jolt!
> Where are these shocks lurking?

In a normally functioning power supply, everything _should_ discharge
reasonably quickly after the supply is switched off (even then, I'd be
wary of the capacitors).

The serious danger is with a faulty power supply.  I've encountered one
case (a faulty Mac SE/30) where the fault in the power supply was
preventing one of the large capacitors from discharging at all.

Luckily noone got their fingers near it, but we nearly destroyed a
multimeter in the process of detecting the fault.  Manually discharging
that capacitor required some heavy duty resistors!

-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand