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skaven · 11-11-2004, 08:36 AM

Ah ok I took a second, closer look at the pictures and saw the broken foil and oozing electrolyte on top of the caps. Suppose that's what I get for making a post at 2:20am!!

As for the massive failure I described before, luckily I wasn't on the business end; it was a workstation that I was repairing at work. I have definitely seen some strange stuff before when fixing computers though.

Back at my first job at a computer repair shop a woman brought in an old 486 that she said she was trying to get working again. I took the computer into the back and plugged it in, and turned it on. PSU powered up, but nothing else. Another customer came in, so I went out front to talk to them, only to come back a couple seconds later and see, to my horror, that a perfect cylinder of black, acrid smoke was shooting out the back of the 486. I immediately turned the system off and after the smoke cleared, opened the chassis up. Apparently the woman had absolutely no clue what she was doing; she had hooked the 2-pin 5v lead from the PSU (the one that you used to have to plug in to the 7-seg display on the front of the chassis so it would display the CPU speed...remember those?) into one of front panel LED headers on the motherboard. I presume the doubled current fused some traces on the board, which caused the 5V rail in the PSU to go haywire. Every power cable in the box had gotten so hot that the insulation had caught fire, causing the smoke. Needless to say, I had to call the woman and tell her the system was toast.

Another great broken computer story was from the same shop; guy brings in a P3 that he says locks up all the time. First thing I assume is clogged heatsink or a bad fan, so I plug the system in, power it up, and it seems to be working fine. The heatsink stays cool to the touch, there's not much dust in it, the fan works, etc. Indeed, the system does lock up and occasionally power down at random times. After swapping out a few parts to no avail, I started to adjust some BIOS settings (clocking down the memory/CPU in particular). While in the BIOS I scrolled past the "Hardware Monitor" window and saw that the CPU was running at a toasty 195 degrees!! I immediately shut down the computer and checked the heatsink. Still warm (not hot) to the touch! I pop off the heatsink and had one of the best guffaws of my life. The plastic film covering the "goo" on the back of the heatsink was still attached! The CPU had melted into the plastic, fusing them permanently. Frankly I'm suprised the system ran at all! When I showed the guy his error, he laughed and said he "thought the plastic looked like it was supposed to come off, but left it on just in case". I sold him a new CPU and heatsink and sent him on his way.

11-11-2004, 08:36 AM	#5 (permalink)
skaven Insane Location: Austin, TX	Ah ok I took a second, closer look at the pictures and saw the broken foil and oozing electrolyte on top of the caps. Suppose that's what I get for making a post at 2:20am!! As for the massive failure I described before, luckily I wasn't on the business end; it was a workstation that I was repairing at work. I have definitely seen some strange stuff before when fixing computers though. Back at my first job at a computer repair shop a woman brought in an old 486 that she said she was trying to get working again. I took the computer into the back and plugged it in, and turned it on. PSU powered up, but nothing else. Another customer came in, so I went out front to talk to them, only to come back a couple seconds later and see, to my horror, that a perfect cylinder of black, acrid smoke was shooting out the back of the 486. I immediately turned the system off and after the smoke cleared, opened the chassis up. Apparently the woman had absolutely no clue what she was doing; she had hooked the 2-pin 5v lead from the PSU (the one that you used to have to plug in to the 7-seg display on the front of the chassis so it would display the CPU speed...remember those?) into one of front panel LED headers on the motherboard. I presume the doubled current fused some traces on the board, which caused the 5V rail in the PSU to go haywire. Every power cable in the box had gotten so hot that the insulation had caught fire, causing the smoke. Needless to say, I had to call the woman and tell her the system was toast. Another great broken computer story was from the same shop; guy brings in a P3 that he says locks up all the time. First thing I assume is clogged heatsink or a bad fan, so I plug the system in, power it up, and it seems to be working fine. The heatsink stays cool to the touch, there's not much dust in it, the fan works, etc. Indeed, the system does lock up and occasionally power down at random times. After swapping out a few parts to no avail, I started to adjust some BIOS settings (clocking down the memory/CPU in particular). While in the BIOS I scrolled past the "Hardware Monitor" window and saw that the CPU was running at a toasty 195 degrees!! I immediately shut down the computer and checked the heatsink. Still warm (not hot) to the touch! I pop off the heatsink and had one of the best guffaws of my life. The plastic film covering the "goo" on the back of the heatsink was still attached! The CPU had melted into the plastic, fusing them permanently. Frankly I'm suprised the system ran at all! When I showed the guy his error, he laughed and said he "thought the plastic looked like it was supposed to come off, but left it on just in case". I sold him a new CPU and heatsink and sent him on his way.