[Moru]

I plugged my old Atari into an outlet in the old basement in a different building. The HDD-cable started burning.

Electric company plugged in some device to measure power over time. Turns out the power was slightly below normal but within tollerances. The OEM power supply that was powering my Atari wasn't up to standards. If I remember right, badly designed PSU's can feed too high current if the voltage is too low. Or something like that, was a very long time ago...

[ajb]

Many switch mode power supplies will increase the current draw if the voltage drops, that's why many of them will work on both 120 and 248V, while old school power supplies need a manual switch. I had a brownout once and thought my washing machine was broken because that was the only thing that stopped working (Until evening when I switched on the lights. That was back in the days of incandescents, oddly though led lights still dim with lower power, I don't know how they do voltage conversion).

We have so many cheap power supplies in our houses that it would not surprise me if at least some become unsafe if the source voltage drops too low. Being unsafe with only a slight drop is weird though.