In a previous life I worked for a service department tied to a regional electricity board. It was not that unusual to see problems caused by cable faults and cable maintenance causing several properties to be affected and of course we had to fix or report as write off all the various items. It sometimes got abused with obviously otherwise faulty stuff being claimed to have been damaged. Old style mechanical VCR's with bent piano keys... well it was alright before 
Yeah, my wife’s cello lost it‘s tune, too, now that you mention it!
🤣
🤣
This is the problem. There is a faulty neutral connection somewhere. It may be in the service box but more likely is that the fault is in an outlet or overhead lighting box.
A faulty neutral will allow the branch circuit voltages to vary with load. If you have say a microwave on one phase and a lamp on another, they will be in series with 230 volts across the load. The lamp will have around 200 volts across it and the microwave around 30 volts. When the microwave switches off then the lamp will have 20-30 volts across it.
It's very common for this fault to damage appliances and flash fry light bulbs. It's also a very dangerous situation reuiring immediate attention. If you don't know exactly what you're doing, hire a pro.
OK I see you fixed it. (You know I have problems with my eyesight and using the computer.)
A faulty neutral wire can give you a lethal shock. I hope you turned the offending circuits off before monkeying with it.
Your service box looks very antiquated. The wires are in poor condition too. A modern service box has neutral busses in it, where at least 20 or so neutral wires can be connected to it. Attaching all the neutrals to one spot is just asking for failure.
A faulty neutral wire can give you a lethal shock. I hope you turned the offending circuits off before monkeying with it.
Your service box looks very antiquated. The wires are in poor condition too. A modern service box has neutral busses in it, where at least 20 or so neutral wires can be connected to it. Attaching all the neutrals to one spot is just asking for failure.
I didn‘t touch anything „installation“. Even switching on that reading lamp was, ahem, daring 😬.
The electrician just couldn‘t stop shaking his head and make naughty jokes about that guy who built it (it was from the same company)… and yes that stuff is rather old!
The electrician just couldn‘t stop shaking his head and make naughty jokes about that guy who built it (it was from the same company)… and yes that stuff is rather old!
If you are lucky, the only things that have burned in your radio are the overvoltage protection (MOV) of the power supply and the fusible resistor before it. They release a bit of smoke but they are easy and cheap to fix. Low-cost electronics usually dont'have this protection, but your Sony may have it.
Once I had a roommate who was a house electrician by that time. He told me so many stories of burnt-down flats and houses because of mains power wires that had come loose.
Since then i have a ritual when moving to a new flat. When the flat is still empty I take out all mains fuses and measure every power outlet to make sure there is really no voltage on the outlet. Then I take off the covers of the outlet and check every wire connection. In all of my last rooms and flats (I moved alot in the past 15 years) I found about 30% of the outlets had loose screws on the wire connectors.
Once I even found a power outlet that wasn't connected to our electricity meter, but that's a completely different story 😃
Since then i have a ritual when moving to a new flat. When the flat is still empty I take out all mains fuses and measure every power outlet to make sure there is really no voltage on the outlet. Then I take off the covers of the outlet and check every wire connection. In all of my last rooms and flats (I moved alot in the past 15 years) I found about 30% of the outlets had loose screws on the wire connectors.
Once I even found a power outlet that wasn't connected to our electricity meter, but that's a completely different story 😃
30% is frightening!
Here, every few years an electrician passes by and, sort of, controls every outlet etc… around one or two years ago this installation was officially re-approved.
Ah, yes, something to try to het fixed! Yess!
(Self-ironic, but I'll surely look into it)
In my profession I see this kind of errors more than I like. The devices I work with are 3 phase and inserted in installations. When they are connected with cable chances are smaller that things go wrong. It starts statistically when connectors are used. When N is disrupted damage to electronics is often severe. I would not trust that radio anymore and even if it will be repaired I would not to leave it connected unattended. If you are lucky it has a transformer but it is more likely it has an SMPS and the over voltage got distributed over all circuits.
Just looked and here it is: https://www.ebay.de/itm/36325369637...GblMz|ampid:PL_CLK|clp:2047675&epid=200817201
Just looked and here it is: https://www.ebay.de/itm/36325369637...GblMz|ampid:PL_CLK|clp:2047675&epid=200817201
Jean-Paul
You recommend me to not touch it anymore and send me the link to a replacement PSU.
Now that's good advice, all options, isn’t it! 🤩
Thank you!
You recommend me to not touch it anymore and send me the link to a replacement PSU.
Now that's good advice, all options, isn’t it! 🤩
Thank you!
Did I? I pointed to the probability of an SMPS and found out it is an SMPS so high chance that everything has had overvoltage. That was the point. Reading is an art it seems. I haven't advised to replace it yourself. If one does not have the knowledge it is best not to touch stuff at all.
Nono, I‘m confident I understood what you were saying. I found it very openminded to read „it’s probably toast“ with the link to the part possibly in question in the same sentence.
My interpretation of this was „prob'ly toast, but try if you must, good luck 🙂“
I didn’t feel offended and didn’t mean to offend, quite the contrary!
(And yes you‘re right I often read thing not in the artful way…)
My interpretation of this was „prob'ly toast, but try if you must, good luck 🙂“
I didn’t feel offended and didn’t mean to offend, quite the contrary!
(And yes you‘re right I often read thing not in the artful way…)
„prob'ly toast, but try if you must, good luck 🙂“ -> correct
BTW some of the white goods that had 400V are likely to fail in a few weeks/months from now if they have electronic control boards. A tad more extreme: I had lightning strikes kilometers away that caused only a single fuel tank display unit to fail. In a few months time we had to replace Building Monitoring System stuff, fan/temp controllers and whatnot. This despite having overvoltage/lightning protection stuff in abundance.
BTW some of the white goods that had 400V are likely to fail in a few weeks/months from now if they have electronic control boards. A tad more extreme: I had lightning strikes kilometers away that caused only a single fuel tank display unit to fail. In a few months time we had to replace Building Monitoring System stuff, fan/temp controllers and whatnot. This despite having overvoltage/lightning protection stuff in abundance.
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Uh-oh! Let’s hope things won’t be that bad. As we have as many tranformers from all those lamps etc. permanently plugged in, and some of them were switch open… 🙏
Reading this thread, I'm glad we use split phase to the home here... If the neutral floats, typically 240V stuff still works, 120V stuff goes dark. Nothing blows up per se.
Most 3PH power here is delta so no neutral. Rarely you'll find old wye connected stuff.
Most 3PH power here is delta so no neutral. Rarely you'll find old wye connected stuff.
That linked power supply has an MOV and a fuse in it.
Try connecting an old style light bulb across the wired in fuse and see what happens.
If the unit works again replace the fuse and MOV and it should be safe again.
The cost of a new MOV will be about the same as the wired in fuse.
Try connecting an old style light bulb across the wired in fuse and see what happens.
If the unit works again replace the fuse and MOV and it should be safe again.
The cost of a new MOV will be about the same as the wired in fuse.
That’s what we started with at CFTnet back in the early 90’s. We ran a server farm out of an old house in the middle of a bad neighborhood - utility company Didn’t Give A **** when someone reported problems. The open neutral on the pole persisted for three years. When the UPS’es weren’t big enough, I installed a pad mounted 240 to 120/240 trafo in the server room. Got it from Skycraft for a song. Not a glitch in the system, even when the lights in the rest the house were flashing like crazy. Then we could go to regular standby UPS’s and off load the non critical things like the monitors and lighting.
I was developing some high power audio stuff in the room right next to the server farm, and the power issues did teach me a bit about conservative design. Still have a couple of the totally bulletproof amplifiers from those days. Wish I had those back in the early 80’s during the DJ wars….
I didn‘t realize it was that common of a way to sabotage someone’s sound system. Our DJ wars took a similar turn back in the 80’s resulting in two blown Flame Linears and a fire.