The Gospel according to ARD:

From: Tony Duell <ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
Date: Fri Apr 4 18:43:01 2003

> Trust me about getting electrocuted across the arms isnt fun..

I can well believe it. 240V between fingers on one hand isn't _fun_ either...

A true story to show that all of us can be clueless. I spent a weekend at
home repairing a VT100 PSU. This is a switch-mode device. and quite a
bit of the circuitry is not isolated from the power line. I took a lot of
care, and amazingly got it working without electrocuting myself.

Then I went into work. There was a little +/-15V linear PSU that was
malfunctioning, so I decided to have a go a fixing it. A nice, simple,
PSU with almost all the circuitry on the output side of the transformer.
Took it apart, quickly traced the fault, soldered in a new pass
transistor. Seemed to work fine, so I started to put it back together.

What a pity I forgot to uplug it from the mains. As I picked up the rear
panel to put it back in place, my fingers reached round the edge of it
and came into contact with the tags on the mains fuseholder. So I had
mains between said fingers and the rest of my hand holding the grounded
panel. Hurt like hell I can tell you!

-tony
Received on Fri Apr 04 2003 - 18:43:01 BST