PeterLI wrote:Brought an IBM NetVista from the US to NL yesterday. Forgot to switch voltage: blew up the PSU and probably the MOBO and so on. 😢
I hope IBM included some overvoltage+overcurrent protection in their PSUs.
Brazil is a mess regarding voltage standards. Parts of the country use 110V, other parts use two 127V rails with a 60° phase between them, creating a 220V voltage from rail-to-rail (thus you can have both 220V and 127V outlets on the same house), and some other parts have a single 220V phase. Burning things, in Brazil, is a VERY real problem. I have the habit of always switching stuff to 220V/230V regardless of the outlet they were plugged into when storing, just so there is no risk to burn them if someone else plugs the equipment without looking.
This things was further worsened when our government decided to change the wall sockets to a brazilian-only standard. We used the sockets shown as 2 and 4, and then the one labeled as 6 for high current applications. This allowed an unnoficial standard in many workplaces: use socket 4 for 110V/127V outlets and 2 for 220V ones. Since most of what you'd wanna plug in a 110V outlet would have the third pin (expensive imported stuff, some computers, printers, etc.), this prevented people from accidentally exploding equipment. Now we only have one standard (the one under the green arrow), and EVERYTHING that has a third pin needs an adapter: new equipment with the third pin won't plug on old outlets (those without will plug into outlets 2 and 4 just fine), and old equipment that used american-style plugs can't go on the new outlets. Now it is absurdly common to get adapters without the ground pin, which will suddenly allow 110V equipment to be plugged in the wrong outlets.

A few months ago I was building a Pentium Dual Core machine at our lab in the university from spare parts as we needed a machine that would no nothing but control a 3D printer. The only spare power cord I found used the new standard, and I just handled the plug to a friend (that was nearer the outlets) and asked him to plug it in. I had then already switched the PSU for 110V (as every PC in the lab is plugged to 110V outlets, and I was going to plug it in one as well) and he just plugged it into the wrong outlet. Magic smoke appeared, and the circuit breaker for the room interrupted our power (so a nasty short must have occurred). Luckly the PSU was the only thing to go.