Tonight, at roughly 10:30pm 12/02/04
I proceeded to plug my tvout adapter into my laptop to watch a dvd on my tv. I had just been a video from the cam corder, so the tv ports were ok and so was the rca cable.
When I plugged it in, all I saw was a white flash. 3 of my friends in the room say that the RCA cable melted, the tv smoked inside with lots of white flashing inside of it, and the RCA cable was blown out of the laptop TV-OUT connector. I with a numb arm, awoke laying on the floor.
Looking at the rca cable, I see bare wire sticking out of where it melted about 2 inches melted at each end.
I'm still in a state of panic/shock as to what just happened. I will be researching legal options now, as my laptop warranty ended because the dell wouldn't let me renew because of a mix up, and other things that have built up (like sending it in for fan swap to have it come back not even turning it on), now this.. a laptop I'm totally terrified of even turning on.
Update to the little story, I got a junk VCR that I have, and tried to plug the RCA tv out into it. it also proceeded to fry the vcr, and new rca cable. This is a problem with the laptop.
The thing has worked with the same tv in the past, only thing different is that the laptop and tv were plugged into the same powerstrip this time.
Anyone have any recommendations/experiences?
Your laptop power supply is definitely to blame here. Chances are your television and house wiring is correct. There is a simple test to check:
Wall outlet: make sure the big spade has no voltage to ground (the round hole,) and the little spade has 120 volts to both the big spade and ground.
Television chassis: any exposed metal part should have 0 volts to nuetral (large spade on electrical outlet) and 120 volts to hot (small spade) and ground. The television chassis should be wired to neutral.
There should be NO current from the DC side of the laptop power supply to either hot or neutral at your wall outlet! It should be completely isolated up to thousands of volts. They are isolated and supposed to be "hi pot" tested to determine breakdown voltage.
I repeat: there should be NO current path from your laptop power supply to the AC mains. It shouldn't happen. That means you shouldn't have fireworks in your living room. You shouldn't get shocked when you play with your laptop in the bathtub.
Well, I lied. There will be a stupid 1 megaohm resistor from the DC to AC side to bleed off static electricity. You may be able to feel a slight shock from that under right conditions. This is to prevent static discharges from breaking down the opto isolator inside and eventually smoking the power supply. They should use grounded outlets to prevent this annoying trickle shock.
Unfortunately, UL and CSA don't want to listen to the public unless they are certified in positions of regulating authority. So you might have to talk to a Professional Engineer. Or better, just have your lawyer do all this for you:
https://www.ul.com/auth/regcon.cfm
Sue! Sue! Sue! Someone needs to change the standards so we use grounded outlets and not this annoying resistor design. It would have also prevented the disaster you have just described.
I can check your wiring and verify what happened if you like.
On Fri, 3 Dec 2004, Thomas Bruno wrote:
I thought i might now also add:
I can still plug my old nintendo into the TV's aux jacks, and everything be ok, no explotions or anything, infact, i get a very distorted image, and loud screaching sound. All 3 aux line/channels display the same images. meaning aux channel 3, displays the same thing aux channel 1 displays even though it's plugged into aux 2. So it's obviously not the tv's fault.
On Fri, 2004-12-03 at 07:29 -0600, Thomas Bruno wrote:
Everybody submit this url to slashdot with a short description
http://www.livejournal.com/users/crweb/
On Fri, 2004-12-03 at 08:20 -0600, Dustin Decker wrote:
I wonder why DELL is recalling 4.5 million power adaptors that "may overheat causing fire or electrical shock". That is an awful lot of units to replace with only seven incidents reported to them.
Keith Savasten
Consumer Product Safety Commission
http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml05/05004.html
The dell recall website:
https://www.delladapterprogram.com/Main.aspx
That's the ticket right there! Something overheated and caused the isolation from the mains to short to the DC side. That's your fire and electrical shock.
I have some really good bandwidth at newsguy.com. They haven't enforced the quota for me when getting a really good slashdotting. So if you want to STICK IT TO THE MAN and post some pictures, I would be honored to help!
It disturbs me greatly that Dell would deny all responsibility and blame it on everything else but their own equipment. Weasel bastards. I bet they want you to THANK THEM they would even take your call. Put the customer back in service and make them honor their commitment to their customers.
Pics listing (please don't link, they'll kill me at work only have 128k upload)
http://www.vwords.com/adaptor.jpg http://www.vwords.com/end1.jpg http://www.vwords.com/end2.jpg
On Fri, 2004-12-03 at 09:49 -0600, Duane Attaway wrote:
http://djgoku.com/images/adaptor.jpg http://djgoku.com/images/end1.jpg http://djgoku.com/images/end2.jpg
On Fri, 03 Dec 2004 11:15:59 -0600, Thomas Bruno crweb@vwords.com wrote:
That is really weird, but why would your model of laptop matter it is the ac adaptor not that laptop on the recall. Hope you figure out what went wrong and the problem is fixed.
On Fri, 03 Dec 2004 10:02:50 -0600, Thomas Bruno crweb@vwords.com wrote:
OK, I recreated the laptop video out to television experiment.
The first video was connecting the RCA cable to house current. It was uneventful and promptly blew the 20A house breaker each time. So I started up the generator and was able to use unfused power.
Here is a frame by frame of the video of the outer (ground) conductor of the video cable melting under 120 volts at 7500 VA:
http://dattaway.org/whitewire.jpg
Closeup of melted RCA cable:
http://dattaway.org/whitewire2.jpg
Other side:
http://dattaway.org/whitewire3.jpg
It took about two seconds of short current to melt the wire and break the circuit. It flashed when it broke.
So what does that mean? It takes a lot of current from a 120 volt feed to blow the tiny stranded wires of a RCA video cable. I believe each one of the copper strands alone, seperated in air, should take 5 amps each. I counted 15 strands.
Could a capacitor do it as someone suggested? Well it could, but it would have to be instantaneous. I have some capacitors up to 8KV if you want to see more video and pictures.
I'd say his power supply had a minor meltdown inside, causing the AC to couple with the DC side. This allowed current to flow from the AC mains, through his laptop, and return through the television back into the wall. Televisions are designed with a neutral grounded chassis and this may have allowed a possibly defective power supply to complete a current loop.
-=Duane http://dattaway.org
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djgoku -
Duane Attaway -
Dustin Decker -
Keith Savasten -
Thomas Bruno