Does this thing run on a 220 V power supply? Oh. That puff of smoke suggests not

That's not even the worst part of this story, which features a flood, broken promises, and plenty of panic

Who, Me? The working week has rolled around again, bringing with it the promise of new achievements – and the chance to mess things up in ways that we cover here in "Who, Me?" The Register's reader-contributed column in which you admit to your failures.

This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Arsène" who told us about the time he got his hands on one of the first Sega Dreamcast consoles to make it into Europe. The device was acquired directly from Japan through a gray market reseller and cost well north of $1,000. The buyer ran a computer shop and thought that sum was worth it because the Dreamcast would impress customers.

One of Arsène's friends worked in the shop and, as a reward for selling lots of stuff, was allowed to take it home for a few days on condition nobody else was allowed to touch it.

He quickly broke that promise, and Arsène ended up with the machine. He then went to another friend's house and they enjoyed the console until Arsène had to go to work.

Arsène intended to take the machine with him, but the second friend begged to keep it for the night. Arsène relented.

After his shift, Arsène's phone rang. The friend he'd left the Dreamcast with was on the line and sounded panicked.

"I left the Dreamcast on the floor and went to sleep," he said. "And while I slept, my washing machine broke. Now the floor of my apartment looks like a lake. And the Dreamcast looks like a little island in the sea."

Arsène told his friend to unplug the console, dry it as best he could, then panicked as he tried to imagine how he would explain the situation.

A few hours later, Arsène asked his second friend to inspect the drenched Dreamcast and learned, to his enormous surprise and relief, that it worked. Arsène went to retrieve it, turned it on, and quickly heard a nasty "pop" and saw a cloud of smoke.

Arsène and his friend pried open the console in the hope of finding a fix, but the sight of a scorched and misshapen capacitor suggested the Dreamcast would dream no more.

And then Arsène's second friend noticed something important. He'd used a French power transformer to power the Dreamcast, and it was a 220 V affair. But Japan runs at 110 V. What would happen if he used the power supply that came with the machine?

The answer was: "The Dreamcast would miraculously come back to life, despite the cooked capacitor."

Arsène and his mate enjoyed several hours of gaming before reassembling the machine and returning it to the chap who'd been given custody of it. We presume it eventually made it back to its owner and that nobody was ever the wiser.

Reflecting on the incident, Arsène thinks the Dreamcast was probably built to survive minor accidents – as seems sensible given its intended audience was kids – and that he was the lucky beneficiary of an engineer deciding to idiot-proof the device.

Have you broken kit you swore not to share, or put at risk? The "Who, Me?" mailbag could use a few more stories to keep the column's capacitors charged, so click here to send us an email so we can share your story on a future Monday. ®