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Friday, 7 October 2005

Electrical Questions

So when I plug my computer into my source of power in my bedroom, it starts making a lot of noise, I think from the fan, but I'm not sure (it does not seem to be the hard disk, it might be somewhat from the speakers, i can't tell). When I unplug it from the wall, it reverts to silence. The strange (high pitchy brown noise) is definitely connected to being plugged in to the wall: It's plugged into an ungrounded outlet: a little skinny plug with an adaptor to make it a fake three prong plug, going to an extension cord, to a splitter, to the skinny two prong apple adaptor that could fit into the starting outlet.

  1. Is this bad for my computer?
  2. Will plugging my powered monitor speakers into this same (ungrounded) power source murder them dead or harm them?

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4 comments:

Polly Springhorn said...

I have never tried to plug in a Mac abroad. Sounds like one needs more than just the US to Europe adapter. It's good to be forewarned.

Charles Céleste Hutchins said...

nonono, it's fine in the living room, it's just noisy out of some power outlets.

Crin said...

Is your power supply rated for 220? If not, you should get one that is.

Charles Céleste Hutchins said...

any apple power adaptor will work on any major electrical system in the world, so yeah, it's fine with 220.

good god, wouldn't my disk motor catch fire or something if i had a 110-only adaptor?

My speakers are also rated for 220. the issue isn't that, it's ungroundedness and probably line noise. i bet a ups would take care of many of these problems, but i don't want to think about how much one would cost here.

sorry about the captchas, btw, but i got really sick of the comment spam. but i get the wrong letters about 10% of the time, grrr.

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