ScuzzBlog: Diaries January 2020 Entry 1st January 2019: Post 01: A500 PSU - What's that burning smell. A500 PSU - What's that burning smell. I have quite a stash of busted and broken Amiga PSU units and today I thought I would check out one of my busted heavy bricks for the 500 and see if I could work out what was wrong. First though I opened up a lighter weight PSU to check for fuse suitability. Amiga 500 PSUs are either heavy or light. Not really sure why the heavy ones or 'brick' as I call them work better in powering kit with extra added drives, devices and peripherals. These are the type I use on my A1200s with extra drives. Anyway I opened up a lightweight PSU and discovered a burn mark on the board below. This tracks through to two components above. This was a recent failure which occurred the moment I switched it on. Simply went pop and stopped working. I am guessing a blown component. Interestingly there appears to be a fractured leg to that component. So I salvaged the fuse and moved onto the brick. I have opened the brick before. Note that the screws to the heavy 500 PSU are longer and the case is consequently different. There is no obvious reason for failure though a slight discolouration in the fuse may point to it being blown. So I swapped the fuse out and did what I should never like ever do... test it on a working Amiga. Amazingly the Amiga 600 powered up and so I thought it was job done. Sadly not. I then screwed back the case and quite by mistake switched the power back on at the wall forgetting the PSU was still switched on. Fortunately the A600 wasn't connected. There was a low pitch hum coming from the PSU. I decided to video the noise and then suddenly the noise got louder and there was obvious smoke coming from the PSU. So I switched off. And so I failed and probably dealt a killer blow to any repair on the PSU. I do tend to just leave well alone when it comes to fails like these. Never mind. I cut the plug off it to avoid any further problems. You can watch the video below. A500 PSU - Burning smell. The Heavyweight 500 PSU Left Lightweight - Right Heavy

If you can only see this CONTENT window
then click the image above for the full site

Last updated 1st January 2020

Chandraise Kingdom

Keep the Faith
scuzzscink 2020