Computer Shocks

[emanphoto]

I'm glad I found this subforum and will probably have questions here in the future

We've moved into a house needing a lot of work, electrical being one of the items on the list as no outlets are grounded.

In the meantime we live here now and I decided to try to use my Mac Pro tower. I believe the case is made of aluminum as is the keyboard, but not the keys themselves. I've been able to determine whether the Mac Pro is double insulated or not.

I plugged my Belkin surge protector strip into a 3 prong adapter in the wall outlet and then plugged my Mac Pro into the the Belkin.

I switched ON the Belkin and then was reaching over the Mac Pro, the underside of my forearm touching the top of the case, to get the cables for the monitor when I felt a mild shock coming from the case of the Mac Pro. I immediately yanked the Belkin plug from the outlet.

I had some immigration forms I needed access on the machine so I went ahead and plugged in the unit again and I only plugged in 1 monitor, the USB keyboard and mouse, and my bare drive dock w/1 drive in it.

Startup was uneventful, and did some work on the bare drive wiping and reformatting it, sending my forms to my Dropbox, and so on.

I did notice that I was still getting shocked from the case of the MP. I then noticed, while holding down a key on the keyboard continuously, that I was getting a mild shock from the metal that surrounds each key! (Apple keyboard) I then touched the bare drive in the dock and got a shock from that too and said 'F' this and shut it all down and unplugged it. So to sum it up, the computer, and anything plugged into it gives off a mild shock. This is all one handed touching. The bare drive dock has it's own power cord which is 3 prong so the lack of ground in the power could be coming from that.

The electrical here isn't going to be worked on for some time and I will at some point need to use this machine with multiple external drives, 2 monitors etc. So my question is, is there any short term trick I can do to get around this issue till the electrical is dealt with? Someone told me attaching a wire to the Mac and running that outside to a grounding rod driven into the ground might work. I DO NOT know much about electricity at all and any experiences I have with it comes from back in the US. I have been told by a Thai digital artist that it is common to get shocks from computers. =\

Many thanks for any electrical advice!

[Crossy]

It is indeed very common to get tingles from desktop computers here.

It's certainly a grounding issue, since you mention a 3-prong adapter one assumes you have 2 prong outlets (EDIT Re-reading the OP shows this is the case).

You need to get a ground on that tag on the side of the adapter, look here for some ideas http://www.crossy.co.uk/wiring/2pin.html

The tingle is unlikely to be hazardous in itself and many users just put up with it, reversing the 2 prong adapter in the outlet may help, but of course a fault could render your machine lethal

[emanphoto]

Thanks Crossy that gives me a much better idea of what to do from here as is a better answer than the one I'd been given as this method will ground everything plugged into that outlet.

Also I mistyped one statement which should read "I've NOT been able to determine whether the Mac Pro is double insulated or not."

[Crossy]

It's almost certainly NOT double insulated, few if any desktops are.

[emanphoto]

Very good to know that!

It's almost certainly NOT double insulated, few if any desktops are.