Return of the Shiva

view into the power supply unit and how it spilt its contents all over the place
Image of the exploded PSU of my sheeva

Wikipedia says that shiva is the hindu deity known as the "Destroyer". Interesting that GlobalScale choose "sheeva" as the name for their first plug generation. Sounds a bit like a self-fulfilling prophecy… The internet is full of stories and images like the one on the left - "exploded" power supply units cause by… nobody knows for sure. It seems to be that attaching passive usb devices is not a good idea. My harddrive was self-powered but I had also a dvb-t card attached on a non-active usb hub… bad.

As a proper replacement PSU shipped by NewIT would be available only in late February I crafted a replacement together by myself from an unused ac/dc adapter as an external powersupply. I am always a bit scared by hardware-modding but stripping and connecting the wires was easy after finding descriptions like this so my sheeva raised from the death - lets see how long this will last. Next week I will properly shop for an active hub to decrease the PSU risk further. At some point I should also get a real replacement PSU, but at least I can wait and search now for one where the cost isn't doubled (or even more) by shipping costs… (Why is there no German based distributor, who has one available?)