Confirmed it was a bad barrel plug with the multimeter. I guess it teaches me to test these things before using them...so sad...not a bad looking paperweight but still
What exactly was wrong with the barrel plug? polarity reversed? intermittent / flaky power? I'm having a hard time imagining what could go wrong with the barrel plug to make it burn out like that...
I really don't know. Here is the series of events:
1. Newly wired PS (IBM 835w to 11 barrel plugs using 16AWG. This is the third one I have made.)
2. Not thinking to test by plugging in one miner at a time (like I did with the first two PS's) I wired up 10 pods to the PS and turned it on.
3. Spark bang smoke
4. Turned off the PS within 5 seconds. Think I was in shocked for a bit
5. Unplugged all the pods. Tried a different connector and PS to the damaged pod..nothing :/
6. Tried the bad barrel plug in another pod...started to spark and smoke but I quickly disconnected it. It still works although you can see some black charring on it. Guess I lucked out on this one.
7. Replaced the barrel plug with another one and plugged it into a working pod....worked!
8. Wired up the remaining 9 pods to the power supply and all are working.
Today at lunch I went home with the multimeter and used a known working PS and tested each barrel plug to see what voltage it was providing..they all came in at around 13-14v. It's a needle type multimeter so hard to say exactly. Unscrewed one of the known good barrel plugs and wired up the bad one. No reading on the connector end. Zero...tried to see if it was reverse polarity but still nothing. Pressed the probes onto the wires and it was good there...also good on the barrel plug screws.
So I'm not sure what the deal is.
Edit: If anyone with the skills to check would like the bad barrel plug to investigate let me know. I will ship it out USPS at my expense as long as your in the states.