120 the hard way

voltage, electricity

Back in the day of giant mainframes when solid-state UPS was rare sites often used giant voltage regulating transformers. One large system had a CPU that was failing hourly. Checking 3-phase AC input found one leg was about 150 volts instead of 208. The cause was a control card failure in the regulator transformer. The other mainframe boxes were able to compensate but the one CPU was picky. It took 4 hours to get the reg vendor service guy out to fix it. I saw this same scenario repeated at some other sites. Soon all those regulators were gone after analysis discovered the Mean-Time-Between-Failures of the regulators was one tenth the MBTF of the mainframe systems.

F L U Finator

Had a similar issue once. I was working at Quantico (A military base outside DC) as an IT consultant. Suddenly the power in 1/2 the base blinked out. In the dark some of the workers started to get anxious until I assured them I was an MCSE, which instantly calmed them. Power Outages were on the 70-293 test, you see.

I went to the power box and found 3 of the breaks had tripped. I braced and reached with my right hand (further away from your heart than your left, and if you get shocked greater chance of survival. That's the kind of skills you can expect from an MCSE Yes Man like myself.) and flipped all the breakers back. They immediately sparked and tripped again. I pulled out my flashlight, read where the circuits went to, and went to the scene.

I looked around and in a bathroom and found a hair dryer had accidentally been dropped in a toilet. I pulled it out and unplugged it from the wall.

I went back and had to replace the breakers to get them working again. When the sarg asked me what the issue was.

F L U Finator: "Well Sarg, looks like one of your female officers dropped a hairdryer in a toilet."

Sarg: "What? That's impossible. These women are trained."

"Trained or not they are still liabilities"

[a female officer walked up]

F L U F: "You don't belong in the military."

Female Officer: "EXCUSE ME?"

F L U F: "You heard me. Women in combat? Even a strong warpig would loose in hand to hand combat to a wimpy man."

Female Officer: "YOU SEXIST PIG!!"

F L U F: "Maybe. Or maybe you need to go take a midol."

[Female officer begins fuming]

Sarg: "He's got a good point. You do have alot of baggage, can't fit, and are quite liabilties. If I were in charge, your whole gender would be restricted to the Coast Guard."

F L U F: "But don't worry muffin, if you quit now, you'll be safe. Your whole gender can't be drafted. We can get drafted before we can even buy booze. But hey, that's fair right?"

[F L U F and Sarg give each other a High-5]

Anonymouse Note

Sometime between first and third service techs, fish should have stuck a note on printer saying "Check for proper voltage from wall"

What ever happened to the Electrical Building Code?

Something is VERY WRONG here. The Electical Code requires that the WALL PLATE and OUTLET be different for 110/120 versus 220/240 so it is physically impossible to plug a 240 Volt Printer into a 120 Volt outlet unless you also change the PLUG on the Printer too.

So just what did the electician do to the wall? Change the outlet type per code? If yes, then how did they plug the printer in?

Was a BUILDING Electrician modifying the Printer for IT too? I doubt that was part of the work order. So we are back to the original issue. If the PRINTER had a 120 Volt plug it would never have "worked for years" on a 240 volt wall outlet since it could never have been plugged in. This means that the wall plate must have also been a 240 Wall outlet plate. If the original plug was a 240 Volt plug then this also means that after the the electrician changed the Outlet to 120, the old plug no longer would fit the new outlet so there would be no way to plug it in to test it. I do not see where the MANY DAYS and LOTS of repair people could have missed this glaring difference when they tried to plug it in and saw it was impossible. This means that your story is BOGUS.

The repair man was most likely there to change the wall outlet type since he could have switched just the voltage at the circuit box but no licensed electrician would make that kind of blunder and risk losing his license. If the Original Plug was a 120 Volt plug but a 240 volt power supply then there would have been no need for the Electrician to do anything to the wall and that begs the answer to the question of how did a 240 Volt power supply get a 120 Volt plug on it?

Where is O2BIrish when you need him? He should write something about the flaws in the story!!.