One to avoid

[Chris Bishop]

the male plug for my laptop and firewire HDD are the same, except the HDD is 240v AC and the laptop is 12-15v DC
Yep connected the laptop lead to the HDD and cooked it
Smelled really good!!!
Lst HDD and contents but not the HDD shell so can use it with other drives just lost all on the cooked one.
Ends have now been taped in different colours, but what colour is what?
If I'd done it the other way round bye bye laptop?
Chris

[mrdonb]

The magic smoke is put in at the factory when the device is manufactured. Unfortunately, however, it sometimes can come out under such catastrophic circumstances as high voltages or excessive current being fed to the part. The proof of the theory is, of course, that once the magic smoke has been seen to leave the component, it no longer works, thus demonstrating that it must have been the smoke that made it work in the first place.

[Spyder]

:lol:
Nice one, both the reply and the sig!

[Jodi Frye]

Oh boy, I don't think Chris finds this amuzing. Sorry Chris, I don't own a laptop...yet so not sure what to tell you. I don't want to recommend that you have it serviced considering it is probably something you could either fix on your own or basically not worth the cost of fixing.

[GaryK]

Chris

So sorry.
When I read that I was hoping that maybe just the HDD controller got fried, and that you could still get at the info...guess not.

Gary.

[drummermom]

OUCH! That sounds like a HUGE design flaw to me.

Take a permanent pen and write which is which on the cord itself. That's saved me a lot of grief.

In my perfect world, everything would be wireless. I'm so sorry that happened to you - -hope you have it backed up somewhere!

[Patricia Heere]

Chris,

Same thing happened to me last year only it was my camera and scanner that had the same plug. Fried the camera. Thank God it was still under warranty and they repaired it for me. I have since marked the plugs with a silver permanent marker and also put red tape on the camera plug.

My husband, who is an engineer, says this sort of thing is not uncommon with electronic stuff and the manufacturers sort of expect it and don't complain if the system is still under warranty.

Pat