Hello Alan, > You said you had looked at various capacitors and diodes, but have you > checked the ones on the secondary side? The problem (spotted by Bob Blick) was on IC supply filtering. A crappy cap was dried up. > The reason that the good supply behaves this way is that it requires a > minimum current draw to be able to regulate the output voltage. With no > load > the voltage rises to a value that causes the control loop to cut out the > drive, and this is the cause of the "squegging" that you observe. I also opened the second PS. While identical to the other in outer shape, inside this one is different and I think it actually needs a load to operate: there's a tag on a side saying "Led on: ok, Flashing: abnormal condition" which I assume stands for "We know it could flash" :-D Many thanks to you too! Cheers! Alessandro -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist