Mac Mini - Electroshock Therapy ...

[Exodist]

For the love of everything good in this world.. I hope Apple puts a chassis ground on the next Mac Mini...


I bought mine in the US before moving here to the Philippines. Never had any issues with it wanting to zap me. Not sure whats different here now. When I first moved here we stayed in a apartment until I finished building our house myself. Which took a while. But in the apartment the Mac would shock the mess out of me. Even my PC did. If I plugged up my iPod, Camera or touched anything metal on a USB cable it would let you know it. Then I got my house done, did all the electrical wiring myself to make sure its done write, not the PI way.. I even have dual grounds on my house. Well my PC didn't ever shock me here, and my Mac Mini does not also. iPods and Camera no longer bites me when I touch them. But my Mac Mini still has that warm buzzing feeling to it when you rub your hand down it or even my external hard drives as well.

Well today, I made a short extension cord with a 3 prong (hot, neutral and ground) plug to 2 prong (hot, neutral) plug with a extra wire ran to the ground prong. Plugged my Mac Mini plug into it, plugged it into my APC. Ran a wire from the chassis of my Mac Mini to the ground wire coming off of my 3 prong cable. Bamm! No more shocky shocky.. Or buzzing feeling..

Now I am not telling anyone to do this.. Not because I am wrong, but if you do this and something happens I don't want you pissed at me or this forum.. Just pointing out Apple needs to get over this 2 prong plug mess and include a chassis ground.. Don't care if its proprietary cable. I pay for Mac quality..

Just my two since.. If I ever had any.. LOL

- Joe

 

[pigoo3]

Well today, I made a short extension cord with a 3 prong (hot, neutral and ground) plug to 2 prong (hot, neutral) plug with a extra wire ran to the ground prong. Plugged my Mac Mini plug into it, plugged it into my APC. Ran a wire from the chassis of my Mac Mini to the ground wire coming off of my 3 prong cable. Bamm! No more shocky shocky.. Or buzzing feeling..

We have had this same problem come up from time to time on Mac-Forums. And the first thing I always ask is...are the outlets grounded that the computer is plugged into?

Sounds like your outlets are not grounded...and you did the next best thing.

- Nick

 

[Exodist]

We have had this same problem come up from time to time on Mac-Forums. And the first thing I always ask is...are the outlets grounded that the computer is plugged into?

Sounds like your outlets are not grounded...and you did the next best thing.

- Nick

Actually they are, I wired the house personally myself. I got a double ground rod system. The Neutral is grounded at the light pole and I have a separate ground rod for the common ground.

There are 3 type of shock you can get from a Mac Mini or any of the aluminum chassis computers. Matter of fact this also doesn't apply to Apples but all PCs..
-1st is just plain static shock, common in places prone to dry air or heavy carpeted areas.
-2nd is when the house is missing a grounding rod, this is to common here in the Philippines as people are cheap. Yet they wonder why everything electrical bites the heck out of them.
-3rd is harder to understand. It has to do with stray capacitive coupling of the a/c signal between the primary and secondary sides of the power supply. To fully understand this one has to have knowledge on how a inverter works. While this is not commonly dangerous (at least it should not be), it still gives a slight tingling and/or even a burning sensation to anyone who touches the chassis. This is what is most common with Apple computers, though most laptops have this issue. Its just most users of cheap PCs don't notice this because their systems often have plastic enclosures.

#3 was the issue I was having. It was a simple fix, Just ground the chassis to my houses common ground. Tingling and burning sensation is now gone. Not sure why this is an issue in areas that use 230v a/c. To the best of my knowledge this is not even a issue on 110v in the US.

 

[pigoo3]

I bought mine in the US before moving here to the Philippines.

Just pointing out Apple needs to get over this 2 prong plug mess and include a chassis ground..

After rereading your original post...I'm sort of confused. I don't know what you're talking about with the "2 prong plug mess". Every single Macintosh computer I have ever owned has had a 3-prong plug.

The only time I have ever had to deal with a 2-prong plug with an Apple computer is with Apple laptops when I use the 2-prong "stubby plug" on the power supply. If I use the 6 foot power cord (instead of the stubby plug)...then it has the 3-prong plug.

- Nick

 

[dtravis7]

The early Minis both Power PC and Intel had a Power Brick. Also had a 3-Wire power cord. I know for sure some of the later minis put the power supply inside and from the pics look like a 2-Wire cord meaning no ground. If that is the case this makes sense.

 

[dtravis7]

Nick check my post and then look up detailed pics of some of the later minis. Not sure about brand new ones but some had a 2-Wire cord.

 

[dtravis7]

I just checked for pics of the newer flatter minis and found a few on ebay and you can see the 2 pin power plug. Here is a replacement cord on ebay! It sort of shocked me also no ground at the time but I have never heard of a complaint before so I dismissed it.

Apple 2010 2011 2012 Mac Mini 2 Prong AC Power Cord Cable Adapter White | eBay

 

[pigoo3]

The early Minis both Power PC and Intel had a Power Brick. Also had a 3-Wire power cord. I know for sure some of the later minis put the power supply inside and from the pics look like a 2-Wire cord meaning no ground. If that is the case this makes sense.

Yes...if the newer Mini's have only have a 2-prong plug...then that makes sense. Kind of weird how after all these years Apple would switch to a 2-prong plug.

As I mentioned...all of the Apple computers I have owned have had 3-prong plugs. I guess (in the future)...I may eventually own a Mac with a 2-prong plug!

- Nick

 

[JohnCL]

All 2010, 2011, and 2012 models have a 2 prong plug. I have had every year of them and just checked my 2012 and it is confirmed. I have never had any of the issues described in the original post.

Sound to me like the OP knows what he is talking about, but I can't help but think there is some variable in the environment that is causing this issue.

 

[Exodist]

Hey John,
Yea man I never had an issue either until I moved. In the states it never had the issue (110volts a/c 60Htz. But here in the Philippines were power it different (230volts a/c 50Htz) its a real annoyance. Now there is so many variables that could be causing this here. Two that I think would be the dirty electricity here or internal PSU inverter not isolated enough internally. Or little of both.. Tell ya what, when you look at the power and phone lines outside. Its truly amazing anything works at all here.. Some of the power lines look like a ball of string someone left in the laundry.. LOL

But yea I really wished they would go back to 3 prong plugs on the MMs. The systems should not be doing what they are doing, but they are. It was even feeding over onto my external hard drive that has a aluminum enclosure. Right now I have the ground wire just stuck between the bottom cover and the chassis just enough to ground the cover and not were it would touch any of the internals, that would be bad. Just dropped the wire down to the one on the foot long extension grounding cord I made. It effectively neutralizes the voltage from 8-15v to 0v as it should.

 

[Exodist]

The early Minis both Power PC and Intel had a Power Brick. Also had a 3-Wire power cord. I know for sure some of the later minis put the power supply inside and from the pics look like a 2-Wire cord meaning no ground. If that is the case this makes sense.

Really wished they would go back to that. I don't mind a power brick, it would mean a thinner cable plugged to my Mini. Plus then with the new SSD's apple is putting the MBAs and the room saved from removing the PSU. One would hope they could find room for a 2nd Iris Pro video chip.. One can hope anyway.. LOL

 

[chscag]

Things have changed in the Philippines since I was there (US Military). They used to have 110-120 VAC 60 cycles; but like many other Far East countries (I'm thinking of S. Korea) they switched to 240 VAC 50 cycles to save power consumption.

I remember spending a good deal of time in Manila and having to put up with brown outs and revolving power from one part of the city to the next. And yes, the power was dirty.

Being a computer and electronic tech working for the military and then US Govt. we always employed isolation transformers when doing any kind of work there and throughout most of the Far East. And believe or not, we had to do the same when I was working with IBM equipment in Honolulu. (Hawaii's electrical grid at the time was antiquated.)

So how are things over there now? I enjoyed my stay in the Philippines and loved the people.

 

[Exodist]

Things have changed in the Philippines since I was there (US Military). They used to have 110-120 VAC 60 cycles; but like many other Far East countries (I'm thinking of S. Korea) they switched to 240 VAC 50 cycles to save power consumption.

I think up around the old base there still using 110v, but I live down in Mindanao and its like the 1960's version of 220 here.. LOL

So how are things over there now? I enjoyed my stay in the Philippines and loved the people.

Its interesting at times here, hehe.. I really enjoy the weather though. My wife is filipina and I met her while I was in the Navy years ago. After living in the US for about 10 years we thought we would stay here for a time. Things are just so much laid back. Despite what the news reports, there is actually less crime here also..
Just wished my inet provider would get there crap together.. Sometimes the local are little to laid back.. LOL