Smoke in the cabinet is bad, right?

[frolic]

Ugh... my house had a "brown out", all the lights dimmed and buzzed. computers shut down. everything came back, but the electrical panel in my Tron was fried! Look at this!

It was not on, but power does go through here for the service outlet 24/7. The 8A fuse blew. When I replaced it, everything sizzled and it blew again. When I removed the covering this is what I found.

Anyone know the first thing of replacing/fixing this? Thanks.

 

[tkaye]

Damn! That sucks!!

 

[movingpictures]

sorry dude, that is some bad luck.

wish i had more to offer.

i would start by calling stern 1-800-kickers

 

[sylvain]

Well, it looks like your house had a surge, not only a brownout.
The red disk, a varistor, did its job, and shorted to protect the machine from a high voltage spike/surge.
That will also blow the fuse next to it.

If you are lucky, you will only need to replace that red burned varistor and the 8A fuse.

- Sylvain.

 

[DRANO]

Wow. That sucks Chris.
I always worry about leaving my games plugged in, but its not really practical to disconnect them all.
I wonder if there's a solution?
I've heard of whole home surge protection... right at the panel.
I wonder if that's something worth looking into?

 

[g-man]

I would think if you've got tens of thousands of $$$ worth of games in your house, it would be worth looking into some serious surge protection. It's not just lightning storms anymore. You never know when 'the grid' is going to reboot or spike and take out your air conditioner, fridge or ...ack...your games.

If I had anything worth saving, I'd be looking into it.

 

[frolic]

Well, now that I know this can happen, it will be something I will look into. So a "surge protector" power bar does not do anything, I guess? I do have my games plugged into one of those.

I also wonder if the games themselves can be modified to not always be on? Like, for Tron, someone modded their box to disconnect that service port to only turn on their lamp mod when the game was actually turned on. Might that have saved me?

 

[slacker]

Hey Chris sorry to hear you got zapped
Just a FYI a few weeks ago when we had that nasty weather one of the building I take care of for work had the same thing happen.
All the equipment was surge Protected on UPS's (Uninterrupted Power Supply’s) and so on and it still got fried!
We lost a router, switch, 2 PC’s totally smoked and 9 other PC’s had the NIC cards damaged.
My company had Hydro and everyone do a full inspection of the building to see how this could happen and Hydro and Bell basically said Lightning and power surges are unpredictable and do crazy things. I have never seen this in 23 years with the company?
It was random and affected some equipment and not others of the same model on the same circuit?
Looks like you had the same deal since it only affected one machine thankfully. Hope it’s a easy fix.
J..

 

[flyer666]

Well, it looks like your house had a surge, not only a brownout.
The red disk, a varistor, did its job, and shorted to protect the machine from a high voltage spike/surge.
That will also blow the fuse next to it.

If you are lucky, you will only need to replace that red burned varistor and the 8A fuse.

- Sylvain.

The varistor to the resuce.....

 

[ThunderStorm]

My gameroom is being hooked up to a custom plc program and relays this weekend on all 5 circuits to automate everything
And make sure all the hydro is turned off before the games. Should help a bit and also make it really cool. It will have startup and sbutdown sequences with audio.

Eric

 

[frolic]

My varistor has been replaced and Tron is back.

When testing, the game actually ran with it removed completely. Obviously for safety reasons we put a new one back in so it could do the same job again if needed.

It had to be soldered in, just an fyi for anyone dealing with this down the road.

 

[mwong168]

That's good news frolic and glad nothing else on Tron got damaged and your other games are all fine.

 

[REVOLUTION]

That's awesome news, Chris!

 

[superjackpot]

Hey Chris - glad it was an easy fix.

When I upgraded my panel last year in order to put games on different circuits, I had this whole home surge protector installed. Rated at 36000 Amp (per phase) / 1890 Joule this protector required a dedicated double pole 15 amp breaker and space adjacent to the panel to install. CHSPT2MICRO is the base model in the series and while there are beefier versions (same physical size but more amp protection) I figured this was a lot better than nothing.

This will give you an idea of what it takes to install one: http://www.eaton.com/ecm/groups/public/@pub/@electrical/documents/content/ib00414001y.pdf
While I would say this could be a diy type install, don't take my advice :roll: , be smart and call an electrician!!

 

[mwong168]

How much did that cost you Barry?

 

[superjackpot]

How much did that cost you Barry?

To tell you the truth I don't quite remember. I believe around close to $300. The device is worth about $100-$200, and then there is about 30 minutes labour. YMMV as my electrician was already onsite.

Remember it's whole house so it's good for more than your games. There may even be a home insurance discount.... hmm, I should look into that.

 

[Pharoah007]

the amount of pins I see hooked right into the wall and not a power bar blows my mind.

and by power bar I mean a QUALITY surge protected power bar with a "breaker" type switch.....not one from the 1$ store.

With the price of pins....why not.

 

[frolic]

It happened AGAIN!!!!

I was playing my TSPP, Tron wasn't even on, but the lights dimmed, and I heard a "zzzzzzzzzzzzzap" and I could smell smoke. My other games weren't affected.

I think this house just has old shitty wiring. I'm going to have to unplug all my games I guess unless they are in play. can't even be plugged in.

The damage this time was worse, looks like the varistor melted some of the heavy gage wire around it. ugh.

 

[frolic]

Comparing the 2 photos, from today and the original one, I can see that the varistor was not in the same placement as from factory. When it blew the second time it was beside more wiring and took them out with it. so, when replacing varistors, always put them in the same place!!! :FP:

 

[REVOLUTION]

at this point I would definitely say your house wiring is the issue. What kind of circuit protection do you have these on? Might be best to invest in a UPS (usually around $100). It sounds like brown-outs are the problem