A while back, I bought a 5.1 sound set off boffer.co.uk. Although I couldn't use it at the time, it was cheap, at some point I'd connect it to the PC or DVD, and what could possibly etc etc 🙂 So for the past two years, it's lived under the PC desk under the stairs, unopened.

There's more space here, so today it got taken out of its box for the first time. With this one, the mains power goes to the sub-woofer, and there's a fixed wire between that and the control box to give the latter some low DC voltage. Plug that in (there's only one place it will go) and attach the speakers. As it said at the start of an episode of the awful original V series, 'At first, (it) looked normal, but then…'

Immediately it was powered on, the control box started to catch fire. I was initially more concerned about why the speakers were emitting a horrible buzzing noise, but 'Where's that smoke coming from?!' soon crossed my mind (and nose!)

Fortunately, it doesn't look to have damaged anything (the DVD player still works, for example) and I am currently resisting the temptation to see what voltage is coming from the sub-woofer / open the control box to see which component leaked its magic smoke out. Partly this is because I'm waiting to see what Boffer say… It's way out of their advertised warranty, but electrical kit you sell that badly overheats the first time it's switched on is not exactly merchantable quality.

Oh, yes, of course there's a 'QC checked' sticker on the control box.