Ryan Castellucci (they/them) 

The little 7" LCD I had connected to my router went dark a few months ago. I replaced it with a spare (which, annoyingly, required a VGA-to-HDMI adapter) and put it in a drawer with its power supply.

I came across it today while cleaning and decided I should investigate.

First order of business: does the power supply supply power?

Multimeter said no.

Opened it up.

Well, at least the problem was obvious.

Feb 5 at 9:59amWeb
Show threaddmi šŸ’½ Feb 5

@ryanc Well Hereā€™s Your Problem

but hey! maybe you have a working screen, still!

Show threadRyan Castellucci (they/them) Feb 5
@domi Yes, probably!
Show threadRyan Castellucci (they/them) Feb 5
@domi I have tested the screen, it lives!
Show threaddmi šŸ’½ Feb 5
@ryanc nice! :D
Show threaddakkarFeb 5
@ryanc that's not even a "power" IC, it's a microcontrollerā€¦ quite a few other bits must have gone quite wrong to send enough current to make it explode like that! ouch
Show threadCN=MFA_Everywhere,OU=BLMFeb 5
@ryanc on the bright side, looks like most of thoes through hole components should be REALLY easy to salvage for other fun shenanigans!
Show threadStarkRGFeb 5
@ryanc That's not very typical, I'd like to make that point. There are a lot of these chips being used around the world all the time, and very seldom does anything like this happen. I just donā€™t want people thinking that swtch mode power supplies arenā€™t safe. Iā€™m not saying it wasnā€™t safe, itā€™s just perhaps not quite as safe as some of the other ones. Some of them are built so that the top doesnā€™t fall off at all.
Show threadRyan Castellucci (they/them) Feb 5
@StarkRG To be fair, that one component failing like that didn't damage anything else, and the power supply didn't catch fire. It's also over ten years old.
Show threadStarkRGFeb 5
@ryanc I was referencing the Clarke and Dawes "The front fell off" bit. šŸ˜ https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM
Clarke and Dawe - The Front Fell Off

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Show threadJohn "Dobbymoodge" LambFeb 5

@ryanc rectifier? More like wrecked, on fire!

Also you might want to blur your high resolution handprint partials in the future. šŸ˜¬

Show threadRyan Castellucci (they/them) Feb 5
@dobbymoodge meh
Show threadRyan Castellucci (they/them) Feb 5
@dobbymoodge Rectifier? I barely know 'er!