my cat curled up on top of my (warm) modem :P

https://i.ibb.co/GRnWN7j/coolcat.png

Please don't tell my customers that my [very many cats ...] write all of my software ...

xD

my cat aint that smart.

Funny photo.

Back in the 1970s, I worked as a 'flying doctor' for tvs here. There was a tv called Fergoson here that used 750 watts, and the power supply high up was a favourite haunt of cats. I called to one with a blown psu which smelled weird..

Their story was that the cat was sitting on the tv, all the family were glued to whatever show was on, and the picture went funny. The tv arc'ed inside, the cat stood up a bit, and somebody threw something to get him off, which hit him. He apparently urinated on the mains droppers (at about 300 VDC). Pure water is an insulator, but urine...

The cat took off and wasn't seen for days . I made sure that power supply went back into that tv and nowhere else.

I bet that was an unneutered tom. They can produce small amounts of highly scented urine which they use for marking territory ("This is my perch.") I don't think a cat would actually go to the toilet in a place where it habitually sits.

Incidentally the cat in the picture is gorgeous. What is it? It looks a bit like a Burmese but the white points are something I've never seen before.

its a Devon Rex. English breed
i bought it about 3 years a go.

here is better pic of it.

https://i.ibb.co/WpFZ03G/ss.png

it will be our little secret.

The explanation I received was that it was a portly, aging cat. Having the TV spark was not unheard of (25KV in the back of those) but what really startled it was getting hit by some object. That's when he let fly. They wouldn't specify - beer bottle? Knife or fork? This family was on a lower plane than "the Simpsons", though they were a bit friendlier.

yeah, my uncle was some kind of electrical engineer, and he always said televisions could be dangerous.
he made me a tazer which draw its power from a 9 volt battery, hurt like hell when i tested it on me

it were made from diodes and capacitors and little transformer if i remember it correctly.

Yeah, there's a thing was used in old tvs called a 'tripler' It multiplied the voltage using diodes and capacitors fed by an inductive pulse. The voltage went up, current went down, but it was enough to burn skin. Sounds like your uncle made a homebrew version.

Another trick was to do it with an ignition system. The 12V ignition coil produced about 400V on the primary side in a 1 µF capacitor. So, open the points, and remove the charged capacitor. Go over to your victim, invite him to 'have a look at this' holding the capacitorwith the back of your hand facing him. Guys will put their hands out. Drop it on his palm, & run!

that would be a nasty surprise

Perhaps the secret is in the frequency of the current so that far less is required and fewer burns are produced unless, of course, that was a goal.

There were schematics for quite a few versions floating around for a while. If I recall correctly, around the end of the 1980s Popular Mechanics or similar magazine had some detailed articles about building them, again including the schematics.

Well it was a charge pump driven by pulses, which could be the back-emf from inductors

Let's say you had X Volts power. On the first pulse The first capacitor was charged to X volts; that pulse would pass through the capacitor. On the second pulse, one side would be 2X volts. And it built up. The diodes made it work, and there were losses but you get the idea. Each time you doubled the voltage you halved the current.

Yea, during summer all cats were lying on the floor, now they start remembering that my gaming PC with 450W GPU and like 200W CPU can generate heat.
https://i.imgur.com/7fpzqbA.jpg

that cat looks nice, is it some persian?

my cat likes most my denon receiver.
https://imgur.com/a/64NykAr