[XCSSA] Can you break transformers?

[X-otic Computer Systems of San Antonio]

X-otic Computer Systems of San Antonio wrote:
> I'm not sure how I'm doing it but it appears as though I've killed  
> both my C64 PSU and now another 12VAC wall-wart. The thing is, I was  
> able to get inside the wall-wart, and all I found was a transformer.  
> No fuse or anything. However, before I started tinkering with things,  
> my multimeter showed about 15VAC from the thing (I guess 12VAC assumes  
> it's going into some sort of rectification/regulation? Well, my  
> initial tests with my new power board worked great - I was getting the  
> DC voltages I was expecting (namely 12 and 9VDC). Well, I hooked up my  
> PIC board without the PIC itself and got the proper voltages. Then I  
> stuff it with chips and, after that, now my wall-wart reads 3VAC with  
> no load.
>   
Yes, you can break transformers, you are not the only one who have done 
it... ;-)
If you overload them they can short out in the windings which can result 
in either over voltages or under voltages...

It can be tricky to accurately measure AC, if your meter registers 15VAC 
it might be measuring the peak values.
12VAC should have a peak voltage of sqrt(2)x12 which is about 17V and if 
you have rectifier diodes in your meter, they might drop a volt or two 
so 15 is probably the peak values...
> It's just spools of wire! How in the heck am I so good at nuking these  
> things? :P Any thoughts?
>   
Use a fuse and check your wiring, I'm talking from my own experience... ;-)
The fuse should go on the 110V side or whatever side is feeding the 
transformer...
> Good news is that I have other adapters, but they are DC and while  
> it's not a big deal it's likely going to be fantastically noisy for my  
> SIDs :/
>
> Help would be appreciated!
>   
If all you need is 5V and 12 V DC, try the white Commodore PSU that 
already outputs these voltages...
Or do you think that Commodore put the filtering for the SID on the 
actual motherboard ?
> Tim
>
> P.S. Frederick, if I can figure out how to keep my MidiBox SID powered  
> up, I'll go ahead and test your SIDs next :)
>   
No hurry...

You are not the only one breaking things, my Windoze box just crashed 
one of it's hard drives... ;-)
Of course it's the boot drive and I lost the Install CD somewhere so 
it's going to take a while to get it back up and running...
My old Win XP CD don't detect the drives since they are SATA and not IDE...

So I transfered the mail to my Ubuntu Box and 20 minutes later it died 
too... ;-)
The monitor went black but I can hear the hard drives spinning...
So I put in a new graphics card but still nothing so I'm going to see if 
the PSU is OK or not...

So I dusted off a third computer that I haven't used for eight years and 
transferred the mail again...
This one has managed to stay alive for a few hours...

I guess I upset the Apple and Commodore gods with the Appledore...
By the way, the Appledore works now, I found a short when I folded the 
ribbon cable and it has been working fine ever since I fixed it... ;-)

/Fredrik