ATTN: All Dell 9400/e1705/m1710/m90 owners!!! - Page 12

... And yet another week goes by without word from Dell. Surprising? Naw...

Geez, I stray away for a bit and this thread goes absolutely wacko....

I have chatted with DELL a few times with the same result each time...NO GO AT THIS STATION.

THe personal attacks here do need to stop, There are several people in here with real expertise, knowledge, and experience. We all share in our own way, in our own CONSTRUCTIVE way. @#$@$ storming the thread is not helping anyone of us. Life is too short for this crap people...

WHERE IS THE LOVE???

So true! I'm still puzzeld by this question. How come AC voltage is channeled to the grounding path and thus the screws? I went around the house searching for other products showing stray voltage. So far i haven't found one. Tried my old Compaq notebook with a two prong adapter and nothing. Tried radios. Plasma TV and LCD TV with no result. I still have no problem with my laptop but I'm curious about the answer.

I had 88v on my screws. And i started to get sometimes a ****ed up screen, full of artifacts.
I contacted dell and they wanted to replace my laptop directly. I got my new laptop monday and checked voltage of screws this weekend ... And its still the same problem
Still alot of voltage on screws. Even with Revision 2 of the adaptor.

I don't know what to do anymore, i'll contact dell again ...

But what i saw on my old laptop, is that i NEVER had the screen problem here, but always when i was @ home ... Maby its something other with power @ home, i don't know!

You still need a life.

Yes, Dell should have shipped them. But they didn't. Get over it. If you truely think you deserve one, Buy one. Is that too hard for your pee brain to understand?

Dell is not the only company that has shipped 2 prong adapters for laptops. I have an older Toshiba with 2 prongs on it's adapater. So singleing Dell out on this one is incorrect.

Gauss' law is specifically on eletromagnetic fields and their interaction with electron flow, or current. Power adapters specifically use the results of Gauss' law to produce the lower current needed for your laptop, then a "bridge" is used to make the current DC going to the laptop. Only equal opposing electromagnetic fields cancel each other out. And your analysis of TV antenna cable (coax cable) is not fully correct. The external "net" is actually a ground which carries the current caused by radio interference away, not actually cancelling it out.

OK, once again. It's not an AC voltage. It is a fluctuating DC voltage, at extremely low current. For goodness sake guys, read the previous posts. I'm not sure why the original posters feel they need to obfuscate this, but it's not AC. I have proven it, but they seem hell bent on over-stating the symptoms in order to get... what?

And, again, it's not a real problem. Is it desirable? No! But, it's no where near the problem that has been over-blown here. On those other devices you tested, are the case screws grounded? Probably not. Computing devices tend to have more ground area in the circuitry to help minimize radio interference. It costs more to do that, so you won't find that type of construction on most electronic devices.

In an effort to keep this thread open for people who may need assistance or have questions, I respectfully request that the conversation be redirected. The important thing is that Dell is dealing with this issue - *whatever it is* - and we want to make sure that people who come across this thread can still ask questions.

Deal? PM with questions. Thanks

Sorry Viriguy but u are mistaken. AC is not fluctuating current. AC current changes its polarity on a set time interval based on the sinusoidal wave. In simple words AC current changes the direction of current travel. DC current is one directional current. Fluctuation has nothing to do with it. Here is a link that will explain more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_current

its almost impossible to get DC in and AC out unless the circuitry in the computer is acting as an inverter to convert the current to AC. But circuitry that is not meant to handle AC would fry immediately if AC is applied

Ok, ok, ok... please guys...

As someone who knows these Laptops inside and out. I've repaired several 9400/1710/M90 series laptops and have not encountered any stray current on the system when testing my repair work. My Latitude D820 uses similar construction to the 9400/E1705 and I too received a 2 prong AC Adapter. My D820 has not had any stray current issues nor have any of my customers with several D820's. My college (whom is also on my service route regularly) has a few dozen 9400's for professors and none of them have had this problem either. The only way to definitively say it's Alternating Current is to measure using an Oscilliscope which will show you the wave form. There is definitely the possibility that it could be AC, the backlight on the LCD requires Alternating current to operate. The inverter on the 9400/E1705/1710/M90 is grounded to the metal lid which is in turn screwed to the base. I'd say it's more a case of faulty LCD Inverters if AC is getting to the screws.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, unless it's a Fluke or antique Simpson meter I wouldn't trust a multimeter 100% when measuring AC voltage or amperage. 19-65VAC is will within what you can feel (It'll give you a tingling sensation) the inverter also can't put out enough amperage to harm you.

Josin 3500 is also correct Viriiguy, fluctuating DC |= Alternating current. Hence why I mentioned measuring with an Oscilliscope which can show you the waveform of the current if there is any.

1 page back Mr. Evil....His first reporting was on the second page of the thread near the top. Important stuff is in bold. Not so sure the invertors are nessecarily defective, but if some invertors do cause this stray voltage and some dont, then thats what the 3-prong grounded adapter would be there for, no? The ones the do lose this voltage? Thats what the ground is for i thought, to channel voltage back to ground through a safe channel, and not through a body.<!-- / message --><!-- sig -->

Well... I don't really want to argue the logistics of AC vs. DC current here anymore. My only question at this point would be - We have proposed to Dell that there is an issue with these systems, and they told us that they would look into it. If the answer to our problem was that there is no problem, why is it taking Dell so long to 'investigate' the issue? If there really were no problem here, you would think that Dell would have already come forth with a press release stating that what we have witnessed here is nothing more than normal operating parameters for an electronic device. Why would they leave this thing hovering over their head so long if this was a moot issue? If it were my company, I surely wouldn't want the bad press of a 'potential' problem lingering above my business' bottom line... I would have expected Dell in their infinite wisdom to have come forth with some real answers by now, which they have not. Why the delay?

As for the whole "This should be checked on an scope", there have already been electrical engineers who have ran these tests and found the AC voltage did exist. The_Scotsman also checked it at his workshop, and found the same... Its not a question at this point of whether the voltage exists there - it does. The question is, why is it there and is it correctable? The_Scotsman 'patched' his problem up by getting a grounded AC adapter. Now that may not be positive proof that the problem is fixed for sure, but its a relief knowing the voltage has somewhere to go. As I have reported in previous posts, I don't even need to hook up to a multimeter in my truck to see the voltage... I hear it through my speakers - loudly. The only thing that has worked to eliminate this awful noise is with the grounded AC adapter (I verified this just this last weekend by borrowing my friends i9300 power adapter - guess what, no noise...)

So where are we at now? Well... Dell had promised us answers weeks ago, and have failed to live up to that promise. So what are we to do now? All I want to hear is some straight, no BS answers coming out of Austin Texas. If there isn't a problem, than the least they can do is tell us and not leave us hanging out here. I would at the least expect a report from them on their own internal findings to prove that a problem doesn't exist... As far as any of us go in this forum, there is not a single one of us qualified to say it is or it isn't. It makes no sense to fight over things that we know nothing about. By that, I mean that none of us can provide an answer that would be official... so let's leave that up to Dell. They have the guys working around the clock that get paid to figure this stuff out so we don't have to. Until I hear from them, the arguing here is all for naut.

Lets tone down the aggression here now. All we can do at this point is pressure Dell to give us the answers we need. Viriiguy, have you attempted to contact Mike B. again to see what the delays are about? Also, Mike B., if you are reading this right now (which I would assume you are, that is your job right?) can you give us some insight to whats going on here? It would at the very least ease many people's minds just to know that you haven't blown us off... If we have been blown off here, than your credibility on this forum will be out the window, and you may need a new job down there at Dell

NOTE: I used a x10 Scope probe, so multiply any voltage values on here by 10!

Frequency = 50Hz (same as our mains voltage)

Voltage RMS = 111V

Note the AC voltage....

Hehe... That really got you going didn' it? My guess is that you are between 16 an 20 years of age and haven't got much life experiance your self. Maby you will learn to be a bit more humble when you get older. Anyway.. i will agree with K-pop and Viiriguy. If Dell already has agreed that it is AC voltage and are taking their time to come up with an answer, i guess they agree that its not something to ignore.

Intresting. But why isn't the problem there when the laptop runs on battery? Does the LCD work in the same way then or does it bypass the inverter? I would like to ad that this is the third dell computer i own. We have several dell computers at work. My friends have dell laptops. Calls to the support have been many and everytime they have delivered. Since all my previous problems have been fixed quick and easy i have really nothing to complain about. Even so i would like to see a real answer from dell on this issue.