I just put together a new PC with a brand new high end
motherboard and 16X DVD-DL writer. The person who assembled
the power cables reversed the 12V and 5V pins on one of them,
so naturally the drive is now fried (magic smoke is gone),
as is the m/b since the 12V went back down the ATA cable and
smoked the highly integrated interface chip.

What really burns is that this is the exact SAME stupidity
that happened to me 10 years ago and that one blew up a $650
SCSI hard drive. Naturally the dealer who sold me the high end
case refused to do anything about their 'unfit' product since
'we didn't make it'. As a result of their poor response
I took over $10k in ongoing corporate business elsewhere.

**** Please learn from my $300+ stupidity. ****
ALWAYS CHECK that EVERY!!! power cable is wired correctly
before applying power. A voltmeter check is probably also a
good idea since it wouldn't surprise me that the meager
wage Taiwan assemblers would mess up the colors at the
power supply too.

I posted this rant to a local users group list, and
have had enough people reply that they have also
had this happen to THEM that I thought I'd warn
a larger audience of this 'unmentioned' problem.
It doesn't seem to matter whether it is low end or high
end power supplies, assemblers ARE making mistakes and
the Q/C people are NOT catching the errors.

Is this a common problem out there, or have I and the
local computer people just had a lot of bad luck?

Robert
Steaming mad at the idiot assembler and myself
for getting burned yet AGAIN! Complacency is COSTLY.


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