Cheap speakers frying on-board laptop sound?

[tnf]

Anyone ever seen something like this?
Was using a colleagues old cheap altec lansing speakers on my laptop a few days ago and noticed I was getting no sound. Noticed that my work laptop wasn't even recognizing the sound device anymore and nothing was bringing it back. THought nothing of it at the time, certainly didn't suspect these speakers had anything to do with it. Swapped my HDD into another laptop the school had went to use those speakers again (worth noting these are speakers with their own power supply) and when I plugged them in there was a popping noise from my laptop and the thing shut down hard (I had to use a paperclip and push the manual hardware reset button on the thing to get it to turn back on). When there should have been the usual windows chime, there was a bit of crackling and then nothing. Sound device still registers, but no sound. I've been using a pcmcia sound card in the interim, but it looks like these speakers did it both times. must have been discharge that fried something.

I'm just borrowing the PCMCIA card i have now. Any suggestions for a really cheap but effective USB or PCMCIA sound solution? I've seen a bunch online, but want to avoid the hassle of getting a complete POS that looked like a good deal.

[scared?]

no...

[Peenyuh]

Having their own power supply, there's gotta be some kinda short in there if it's frying something. I know, that was simplistic. But, have you put a meter on the connecing wire to see if it's feeding power up the line? I've seen speaker wires carry quite a current before. I don't know why it would be sending enough to fry anything though.

[K-mart Shopper]

tnf, the exact same thing happened to my brother's old Sony laptop. From what I remember, he was using rather large non-powered speakers through the line output and his soundcard burned out. He opened his laptop and it literally was burned.

[+JuggerNaut+]

tnf, the exact same thing happened to my brother's old Sony laptop. From what I remember, he was using rather large non-powered speakers through the line output and his soundcard burned out. He opened his laptop and it literally was burned.

^lol

[AmIdYfReAk]

lol indeed,