And I recall one evening back in the very early 70's when I was sitting
at the kitchen table about 11 pm testing an old tube type CB radio that
I was redoing the jumpers in to convert it for 12 volt operation.
Unforch, the one pair of jumpers I missed on the schematic had left the
vibrator (remember those?) and plate transformer still wired for 6
volts. The radio worked great on 12 volts, until one of the filter
cans made a dent about 1/2" deep in the plaster ceiling. The kids,
trying to get some sleep upstairs, thought I was shooting at them.
Messy, took a couple of hours to clean that up. Stinky too. Probably
had over 600 volts on 450 volt rated caps.
I remember once I was repairing a line printer. This was not like the
typical desktop printer of today. It was big, and heavy, and noisy. It
stood on the floor and was about as tall as a person. I was investigating
why one of the hammers was not firing. My memory is unclear about what
happened right before the explosion. People said it sounded like a shotgun
from down the hall. The whole room was filled with horrid tasting smoke.
And one of the large electrolytic capacitors about the size of a can of coke
had pretty much disappeared. Well not exactly. It took me an hour to
vacuum the mess out of the inside of the printer.
