Chinese Wiring

[Fareastdriver]

In 2004 I went to do some work in China. Whilst I was there a special offer came up with Acer computers. A deal to good to miss I bought a 2500 Travelmate. It was about £400 or so and apart from having an international keyboard was the same as the UK costing a lot more. It worked fine and the Acer agent whom I had bought it off loaded it with English XP3 without all the Chinese add-ons that the local market would get.

When I got back to the UK I could not plug the charger in as in China you have a similar system to Australia, ie 3 bladed angled pins and I did not have an adapter. To save time I cut off the plug and replace it with a UK 3 pin plug. The wiring was easy: brown is live, blue is neutral and green/yellow is earth. Everything fired up and I was happy.

About a month later the computer started rolling, going to random selections and eventually folded. I took it along to a computer whizzkid but he, or I, could not understand the Chinese setup discs to restore it. £70 later for my own Windows XP disc and we got it going again.

Then I went back to China.. The computer worked fine until the battery went flat. The Uk plug was now in a Chinese adapter and the charger was not working. Plugging it in brought the charger light for a few seconds and then it went out. I went along to the Acer agents with the charger as it was still under guarantee. They did not have a plug for a UK 3 pin so they used there own power cable. The charger lit up and I had these strange looks from them as all the supposed voltages flagged up the correct figures; it was therefore the power cord

I was in what is known as ‘Computer City’ in Shenzhen so there were four floors of stalls and shops selling everything from 12” data tapes to keyboard lettering. I found a cableman and by showing him the Chinese end of my power cord he pulled out a replacement at about £1. I took this home and everything was fine again.

For the next four years this computer trundled backwards and forwards from the UK to China. This time there was an adapter for the UK bit. It needed a new keyboard in China and I tried to get them to put in a UK version but as it was a warranty change (coffee spill, admitted??) they could not do that. After four years the hard drive showed signs of distress so pertinent information was copied and a new 80G replaced the 40G version. The people that did the hard drive set up the computer on a local OEM so it arrived, in English, but smothered in Chinese websites and advertising.

I wanted to install my own copy of XP3 so they gave me a disc that had all the erase and reformat programmes to do this. This I did and soon I was back to what it had been before.

Then I came back to the UK, permanently.

It worked fine. The keyboard was set to English so the UK sourced external keyboard was quite happy. Along came a mega birthday and the kids bought me a baby laptop as they thought the 2500 was too heavy. Two weeks later the 2500 started scrolling and failing to start. I would go through infinite variables from reset to Start in Safe Mode but the whole thing was a disaster. By some inexplicable combination I got the thing started long enough to download all my necessary information from it to a memory stick.

This is where the baby computer came in, a Samsung 130. I had to buy a DVD RWR and upgrade it to Windows 7 Home premium so I could offload the Acer.. After a week or so of trying to get the Acer to behave I started to read the funeral dirge. I then flashed out on a 19" monitor for the Samsung so now everything was happy and glorious. However, being an obstinate sod I had to get this Acer going.

I had lost my Chinese erase and format disc so I download freebees to do the same thing. The best part of a day was spent erasing disc partitions, reformatting and reloading quite a few programmes. Came the end everything was tikkityboo; I had tried ten starts so I put it to bed. Next morning, same thing, failed to start, same procession of faults.

Wiped the whole thing clean again. Reloaded everything again. This time looking at power interruptions whilst loading. Chinese plug into English adapter, not the most secure of connections. Decide to change the plug to UK so as to eliminate.

I cut the Chinese plug off and strip the wires. The coding is simple. as before; brown to live, blue to neutral and yellow green to earth. I wire it up but this time memories of 2004 come up so I check the results with a tester. The live feed is going into the wrong pin in the charger. That cannot be right so I strip the remaining wire on the plug and do a continuity check. The blue wire goes to the right hand lower on the wall plug which is supposed to be the live pin. In other words they have been cross wired against British and EU standards.

I worked in China for some fifteen years and during that time I have used my electrical training to correct some of the horrendous installations in the flats I have lived in. I have always known that the live pin is ALWAYS the lower right in a plug receptacle.

In China I was wrong as the following pictures will show.

A standard UK plug with the polarity lettering.



A Chinese plug with the polarity lettering.



So if you buy anything in China be careful of the polarity. Even more so if you are Australian because the plugs are the same.

[mixture]

In China I was wrong as the following pictures will show.

Got a bit lost reading your rant, did you actually test the plug though ?

Not trying to say anything good/or bad here.... staying strictly neutral... however the first thing that came to mind when seeing that photo is the fact that it might just have been a faulty template on the injection moulding machinery that marked the plastic in the wrong places ?

[Fareastdriver]

Yes I did,

The blue wire goes to the right hand lower on the wall plug

I also would have thought than an original item for Acer computers would have the letters right. The thread was addressed mainly to people buying computers in China and may not be aware that the polarity may be different; especially those from Australia. The apartments I stayed in were always wired the convenional way so I do not know how the locals get on. Probably explains a few flashes and bangs during the night.

[FullOppositeRudder]

So if you buy anything in China be careful of the polarity. Even more so if you are Australian because the plugs are the same.

Thanks for the 'heads up' Fareastdriver. However the Australian/NZ standard wall socket or GPO has the two V pins at the top of the installation and the earth pin at the bottom. It explains why an increasing number of plugpacks I see these days are "upside down" in respect of what is normal in these here parts, and therefore often can't be used in power points mounted on the skirting boards in Australian installations. Frankly from a safety point of view, I think the Chinese standard is to be preferred in some situations. However I don't see us changing any time soon, even if others were to ever be convinced.

Wikipedia has the full story on wiring conventions for power plugs at: AC power plugs and sockets - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As you can see, there are many ideas about which is best. It reminds me of what a friend of mine remarked in another forum on another matter a few days back: "That's the good thing about standards - there are so many to choose from ..."

As always, care is needed when working with these things, and from this example we can see again that it's a good idea to check these things out thoroughly when using strange plugs in a system which is foreign to their place of manufacture or intended usage.

Thanks again for bringing it to our notice.

Regards,
FOR

[Bushfiva]

I can't imagine any notebook adapter would be vulnerable to polarity. Not only can one plug the power cord into the adapter either way around (depending on the adapter socket), but one can plug a 2-pin cord into an outlet either way around.

[spannersatcx]

it might just have been a faulty template on the injection moulding machinery that marked the plastic in the wrong places

I've just had a look at a plug in my hotel room and it is marked the same as the pic, so don't think it's a misprint!

[green granite]

Functionality-wise it doesn't matter, safety-wise it might if there was a single pole on/off switch.

[johngreen]

Chinese Electrickery

Having spent some years working in the poorest countries of this world, there is nothing I begrudge more than the countless hours I have found myself obliged to spend attempting to repair numerous Chinese made technical products of the most utterly miserable quality that are sold taking huge advantage of the gulliblity of those who purchase them in the best of faith.

Sometimes however, one has to smile at the miserable failings of the manufacturers...

I presume this item was intended to be listed as 'Executive Standard' though the description given is undoubtedly far closer to the truth.

[Bushfiva]

'Executive Standard'

The original Chinese was probably zhi xing, which also means "comply" or "implement". So the appropriate translation would have been "complies with".

[Avtrician]

The chinese three pin plug (with angled pins) is wired properly for aust sockets {or at least labeled correctly. MAybe the chinese are using our stadard plugs n sockets cos they are making so many for us...