Just wasted 4 hours on a power supply diagnosis that was totally obvious

I spent all afternoon chasing a weird ripple on a monitor supply, replacing caps and checking diodes, only to find a cracked solder joint on the main transformer pin. Anyone else start with the complicated stuff before checking the simple things first?

4 comments

4 Comments

elliotm572mo ago

Did you also check the fuse last even though it was the first thing you should have eyeballed?

ben_lewis2mo ago

Ngl, sometimes you skip the obvious stuff because you assume a fuse would be too simple of a fix for the problem you're dealing with. @jessica707 is right, those repair blogs always point out the same thing because people do it all the time. It's like your brain jumps straight to the complicated failure and ignores the easy check.

jessica7072mo ago

Read that same thing happens in some repair blogs.

jamie_webb671mo ago

Huh, I used to think checking the fuse was almost too obvious to bother with. You and @jessica707 changed my mind on that, it really is worth a look first.