TV-OUT on laptop causes major damage, fire / shock

[Jonathan Hutchins]

On Friday 03 December 2004 10:57 am, Brian Densmore wrote:

> I suspect that the guts of the Inspiron 8xxx adaptors
> is quite the same. With perhaps minor variations for
> connectors. 

If they're decent manufacturers, they change the connector when the voltages 
change.

Over the course of four years with a company, I saw six or seven different IBM 
laptop models in use, and all of the power supplies were interchangable.  
Some were larger, some different shapes, some had three prong power cords and 
some two, and some had slightly different current ratings, but they all were 
the same voltage and worked with all the different models.  (There was one 
model that wouldn't work with the oldest of the power supplies because it 
didn't have quite enough capacity to both run the laptop and charge the 
battery.)

I took advantage of this interchangability to make sure all the people who 
actually took their laptops out of the office had a spare power supply so 
they could leave the one at their desk plugged in.

Winbook, on the other hand, has changed the voltage and current requirements 
over the years, and their power supplies are not interchangable; they use 
different size connectors.

As for the recall, frequently recalls are attributed to a bad batch of a 
single component, or a problem in the assembly process, and they frequently 
only cover a certain range of serial numbers.  Recalls due to a design defect 
are much rarer, and would tend to cover a whole model line.