Uniden BCD996XT rec. port burnt out

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Kuddy

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So I was running my Uniden BDC996XT as a live feed through my mac mini for a few months. I had been using the record out port for the audio output. One day all my audio on my computer died and the audio from the scanner through the rec. port was dead. The other ports on the radio are ok, but my sound card on the computer is completely burnt out. I took the scanner apart and I found a small 4 pin SMD chip obviously burnt out. I was wondering if anyone else had this happen to them. Im not sure if my computer killed the scanner or vice versa.
 

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RF23

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Did you have the computer and scanner sharing the same ground (plugged into the same AC circuit) or were they plugged into different AC outlets?
 

Kuddy

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Well both were plugged into the same UPS. Neither the scanner nor the computer have ground wires though. Both are only 2 wire plugs.
 

RF23

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Of course it is possible that one of these two items went bad and took the other one out (like you mentioned) and what I am about to mention may or may not be helpful but they are things to watch out for.

One, check your UPS, it should have a “Fault Red LED” on it somewhere, is it lite? It is NOT supposed to be “lite” unless it has detected a “Fault” in the AC power that is feeding it. Almost every house I have lived in had one or more outlets with this problem.

Also a bad UPS can take out electronic gear so I check my UPS every few months with software that came with the UPS to see how much voltage it is putting out and under what conditions and the quality of that voltage. I also check the battery out to see how it holds up carrying a load.

Two, Radio Shack and other electronic stores sell an AC line tester that plugs into an AC outlet. It has three lights to help you find problems. Since you have a two wire house you will need an adapter and one lug of the adapter should be attached to the center screw of the outlet's faceplate. However, if the center screw is plastic or if the outlet box is plastic and or ungrounded it will compromise the effectiveness of this device.

Three, make sure you do not clip the wider blade (so both blades of the polarized extension cord are the same size) it is important to follow the polarity of the outlet and extension cord when using a polarized outlet and extension cord. If you don’t watch out for this it can cause voltages to appear where you do not want voltage to be.

Hopefully someone with more knowledge than me on such matters will jump in since if there is something you can do to prevent this from happening again we need to try and help you find it.
 

Kuddy

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1. The wiring fault light is not illuminated on my UPS. I am sure that it is properly grounded. The outlet that the UPS is connected to has a ground terminal. We actually updated the wiring in the house. To clarify, when I said that my computer and scanner only have 2 wires plugs I meant that they came from the factory with only 2 wire plugs. There were no ground terminals chopped off or any sketchy stuff like that.

So I just did some testing, with my multimeter, on my UPS and under normal operating conditions it's outputting 122 volts AC, but when its running on the battery alone its outputting about 90 volts AC. And the battery is around 12.4 volts DC during this. To me that seems very low for the AC output, maybe it was my UPS.

2. Like you said if there were a problem with the outlet the wiring fault light would be on. I am fairly certain that I have a good ground, and good power coming in.

3. There are no clipped terminals anywhere on my setup so that shouldn't be an issue.

So dkf435 is running just a standard stereo cable from my scanner to the computer not recommended?
 

dkf435

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To get an accurate reading you will need full RMS meter as the UPS is probably putting out modified sine wave that is why you only see 90V.

My experience with computers and radios and audio has found you can get induced noise and ground loops and strange voltages plus you never know when something goes wrong and not sure why in a case like yours. A transformer here would of kept the problem isolated and may of saved some componets.

David Kb7uns
 

Kuddy

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Aaaah yeah you are right I didn't think about that. The UPS output isn't prefect sine wave duh!
Well thank you all for your help.
 
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