This short post is only intended as an aid to be able to look up quickly if necessary. Over time, each of us will probably accumulate countless power packs and adapters. Some are fixed voltage power supplies, others can be adjusted in the range of the output voltages. The output voltages of these power supplies can be adjusted with slide or rotary switches or with small plugs (jumpers) in which resistors are built-in.
The voltage that is set is always printed on the jumpers. There is a small catch, however. If you have several different power supplies (different in terms of performance and output voltage range), you quickly have a hodgepodge of different resistor jumpers. The problem now is that the jumpers all look the same and are also printed with the same voltage values. If you don’t sort them properly according to the respective power supply units, the mishap happens quickly. An example: A type SPS24-24W power supply unit has a jumper labeled 9V. The jumper has a resistance of approx. 9kOhm. Another power supply of the type SPS12-23W also has a jumper marked 9V – but a resistance of only 1.5kOhm. And so it quickly happened that you (or I) plugged in the jumper from the wrong power supply. In my example I put the 9V jumper with 1.5kOhm into the SPS24-24W power supply. Before I was with the test leads at the cable socket, there was a thud, a well-known cloud of smoke and the associated smell of a burst capacitor (electrolytic capacitor).
What happened? The value of the wrong jumper resistance was smaller than the smallest value of the correct jumper (24V = 2.42kOhm). So the output voltage was significantly higher than 24V and thus also significantly higher than the dielectric strength of the electrolytic capacitor at the output (which had a dielectric strength of 25V at 220µF).
To avoid this in the future, I measured the resistance values to match the power supply models of the SPS series.
Model SPS12-12W-A (unfortunately I don’t have a copy of this model – if someone has one at hand, I would be happy to include the resistance values in the list here)
Voltages:
3V …………. 0.00k
4.5V……….. 0.00k
5V…………… 0.00k
6V………….. 0.00k
7.5V………. 0.00k
9V ………… 0.00k
12V……….. 0.00k
Model SPS12-24W-B
Voltages:
3V …………. 373.0k
4.5V……….. 6.01k
5V…………… 4.51k
6V………….. 3.08k
7.5V………. 2.04k
9V ………… 1.54k
12V……….. 1.02k
Model SPS24-24W-A
Voltages:
9V …………. 9.09k
12V………… 5.75k
13.5V…….. 4.97k
15V………… 4.29k
18V………… 3.39k
20V ……….. 2.98k
24V……….. 2.42k
Model SPS24-48W-B
Voltages:
9V …………. 17.38k
12V………… 8.27k
13.5V…….. 6.78k
15V………… 5.48k
18V………… 4.20k
20V ……….. 3.60k
24V……….. 2.78k
edit 10.52021: Added pictures of the board of the power supply SPS24-24W-A:
