I do have a funny story though. When I was a kid, around 13-14 years old, I was going through a phase where I was taking everything apart just because I was curious what was inside them. This was back in the early 90's. I would take apart radios, or a lot of times I took apart my old toys because I wanted to see the motors. (Ha, and of course I never could put anything back together right!) Well one time I took apart an old 110 camera. It had a built-in flash. Lol you can probably already tell where this is going. I didn't really understand that much about electronics when I was a kid. So when I saw a big cylinder shaped object in the camera, I assumed it was just some kind of built in rechargeable battery. I didn't know that a camera flash had a high voltage capacitor, and I didn't fully understand how capacitors work. Somehow I accidentally touched the capacitor and ZAP! It gave me a nasty shock, probably a lot worse too because I was a small kid. I was sitting on my bed at the time, I felt it surge up my whole arm and I jumped back and fell off the bed onto the floor. Lol I still remember it to this day! It didn't really do anything to me, but it just hurt and scared the crap out of me. I've been nervous around capacitors ever since then!

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On Wed, Jun 24, 2026 at 7:00 PM, David S via GreenKeys
<greenkeys@mailman.qth.net> wrote:

I got zapped today, fortunately I didn't wound/burn myself, but it did remind me these machines were made in a different era.

When working on my machines, I am very aware that they should be unplugged given the large number of exposed points you could potentially touch. I keep it part of my mental checklist to explicitly check power is disconnected before messing around with anything below the paper feed. On my M28 wall mount, there is fiberboard covering the connections on the LESU, but there are spots here and there that would probably be dangerous. Fortunately, I did have my machine unplugged or my zap would likely be much worse (I assume up to and including the worst).

My motor reset switch keeps randomly tripping from time to time despite replacing the starting capacitor - Model 28 startup motor trouble – Stickelman.net

Thinking I might be able to reach this reset switch from the underside (rather than taking it apart to reach it), I poked around from underneath and must have hit a lead going to a capacitor (likely the starting cap) when I got zapped. I should have known this would be a hazard, but I didn't really think of it until now.

So for those that are new to teletypes be aware they will bite pretty hard even when unplugged if you touch the wrong thing.

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