carlsson
July 3rd, 2008, 06:40 AM
This afternoon with a mostly empty office, I noticed half our IP telephones all signaled an error. Our local network is built up on a couple of switches with a rather intricate wiring due to how the previous inhabitors had wired up their network.
Therefore I went to look at a cheap 16-port switch, and recycled its power. Oops! White smoke came pouring out of the switch. A lot of it too. I pulled the power cable and felt if the AC adapter was hot. Maybe a little, hard to tell. I inserted the power cable again, heard a faint pop and some more white smoke. My best bet is that the AC adapter has failed, outputting perhaps 12V instead of 9V (or the horror.. 220V but then I believe the power cable would be on fire).
Not much to write about, I'm unsure if there is any warranty on these items but in any case we'll have to shopping for another switch. This one worked fine for a little over one year.
So apparently it isn't just old (vintage) electronics with dried up capacitors and stuff that without reason suddenly will let out the "magic smoke". Of course modern electronics are easy (although not always cheap) to replace while anything older may be close to irreplaceable unless you are a very good repairman.
Therefore I went to look at a cheap 16-port switch, and recycled its power. Oops! White smoke came pouring out of the switch. A lot of it too. I pulled the power cable and felt if the AC adapter was hot. Maybe a little, hard to tell. I inserted the power cable again, heard a faint pop and some more white smoke. My best bet is that the AC adapter has failed, outputting perhaps 12V instead of 9V (or the horror.. 220V but then I believe the power cable would be on fire).
Not much to write about, I'm unsure if there is any warranty on these items but in any case we'll have to shopping for another switch. This one worked fine for a little over one year.
So apparently it isn't just old (vintage) electronics with dried up capacitors and stuff that without reason suddenly will let out the "magic smoke". Of course modern electronics are easy (although not always cheap) to replace while anything older may be close to irreplaceable unless you are a very good repairman.