Wayne Stallwood wrote:
Now if we were talking about CRT TV's which I made the assumption hardly anyone is still using...then yes it was very common for them not to have a earth connection because the nature of the most common method of powering the things (i.e shoving mains through a bridge rectifier which has it's negative side tied to Chassis) means that the chassis can sit at what looks roughly on most meters like half mains potential. In fact it is more like half wave AC at roughly -320volts. This is why if you are particularly well grounded you will feel a bite from the antenna socket of many CRT TV sets
Aaaaah! Thanks for describing this, it's answered a long-standing puzzle filed away in the "back in the day" section of my brain. I had several shocks from the antenna socket of various CRT TVs, and having experienced mains shocks could tell that it wasn't static and that it did indeed feel like mains AC, but was always puzzled why this should be the case when the UHF socket in question was a) a supposedly un-powered inbound connection and b) something designed for a few microvolts @ a few hundred MHz. Know I know :-)
Cheers, Simon