Spent 2 hours troubleshooting a dead power supply before realizing it wasn't plugged in

I was chasing phantom voltage on a monitor board with my multimeter at a shop in Cleveland, swapping caps and testing diodes, until my coworker walked over and pointed out the power cord was sitting loose under the bench the whole time has anyone else had a moment that stupid that took way too long to catch?

2 comments

2 Comments

ellis.felix28d ago

Oh man, that's brutal but honestly I've done stuff that makes that look almost smart. I once spent a whole afternoon trying to fix a radio that wouldn't power on, swapped out the whole power supply board, checked every connection, even started looking up replacement parts online. Turns out the little plastic switch on the back that says 'on/off' was set to off the whole time. My buddy came over, flipped it, and the thing lit up like nothing was ever wrong. I felt like such a goof I didn't talk to him for a day out of pure embarrassment. It's amazing how we can outsmart ourselves by looking for the hard problem when the simple one is right there.

parker54327d ago

The "little plastic switch on the back" story hits close to home. I once spent a whole Saturday rebuilding a vintage amp, and when I finally plugged it in, nothing. Dead quiet. I tore that thing apart three times checking solder joints before I realized I never turned the volume knob up from zero. The speaker was working fine, I just had it set to silence like a moron. It's always the simplest thing that makes you feel like you should just go back to bed and try again tomorrow.

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