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  • A First For Me

    So I had this happen yesterday.

    User calls in and says her workstation "blew up."

    Normally, this is what people say when their computer locks up, or crashes, or whatever. I'm used to that.

    Then she says, "I heard a 'poof,' and then I smelled something burning."

    "Oh," was all I could say, "so it literally blew up."

    Fortunately, she'd already unplugged it and was calling it in so it could get replaced or whatever.

    But that was a first for me.
    PWNADE(TM) - Serve up a glass today! | PWNZER - An act of pwnage so awesome, it's like the victim got hit by a tank.

    There are only Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse because I choose to walk!

  • #2
    Yeah...that would be bad o_O

    I did have a client's system fall victim to a Burner virus* once before -- while I was present -- blue smoke and everything~! Dude was running a comic shop; lost his main drive with all of his computerized financial and inventory records on it. He had been thinking of shutting the place down anyway due to slow sales, and this was the final nail.

    This was back in the 90s/early aughties. I've not seen any of these since that time.

    *Burners, in short, disable the throttle control on optical and/or hard drives. They tend to hang out doing nothing for a set amount of time (days or weeks), and then they activate, presumably fiddling with the drive's hardware BIOS. The next time you use that particular drive, it spins up, steadily increasing in speed (presumably because it doesn't receive the notification that the required speed has been reached) and then never slows down. Sooner or later -- generally just a few minutes, if you don't forcibly shut everything down -- the drive catches fire. Nasty things.
    "For a musician, the SNES sound engine is like using Crayola Crayons. Nobuo Uematsu used Crayola Crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel." - Jeremy Jahns (re: "Dancing Mad")
    "The difference between an amateur and a master is that the master has failed way more times." - JoCat
    "Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!" ~ Carl Jung
    "There's burning bridges, and then there's the lake just to fill it with gasoline." - Wiccy, reddit
    "Retail is a cruel master, and could very well be the most educational time of many people's lives, in its own twisted way." - me
    "Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home." - Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, "Serenity" (2005)
    Acts of Gord – Read it, Learn it, Love it!
    "Our psychic powers only work if the customer has a mind to read." - me

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    • #3
      Years ago, one of my techs was building up a systems. When he powered it up, he could smell that "electrical burning" smell. He powered it off and did a visual inspection. Could not find anything. When he powered it back up, he could smell it again. He called myself and another senior member over to take a look. All three of us were standing there with our faces in the system trying to figure out where the smell was coming from, when the capacitor blew.

      I wasn't present in the data center when this happened. I got a notice that five of my Unix systems were down. All in the same cabinet. Called up the data center. One of the two power supplies in a system had gone out quite dramatically. Threw a small fireball out the back of the cabinet. Of course the failure tripped the circuit breaker on the power strip that it was plugged into. It also caused a problem in the other power supply tripping the circuit breaker in the other power strip. So much for redundancy...
      Life is too short to not eat popcorn.
      Save the Ales!
      Toys for Tots at Rooster's Cafe

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      • #4
        Intel board, build date circa 2000AD?

        Several of their boards from that time period were known for having bad capacitors. I had a client lose a computer (this was in 2010 or so; they were planning on upgrading anyway) that lost a system this way -- just more suddenly. As in *pop* *fzzzt* *spark*
        "For a musician, the SNES sound engine is like using Crayola Crayons. Nobuo Uematsu used Crayola Crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel." - Jeremy Jahns (re: "Dancing Mad")
        "The difference between an amateur and a master is that the master has failed way more times." - JoCat
        "Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!" ~ Carl Jung
        "There's burning bridges, and then there's the lake just to fill it with gasoline." - Wiccy, reddit
        "Retail is a cruel master, and could very well be the most educational time of many people's lives, in its own twisted way." - me
        "Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home." - Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, "Serenity" (2005)
        Acts of Gord – Read it, Learn it, Love it!
        "Our psychic powers only work if the customer has a mind to read." - me

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        • #5
          Intelligent I/O controller, add-on board. Only one I ever saw fail.
          Life is too short to not eat popcorn.
          Save the Ales!
          Toys for Tots at Rooster's Cafe

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          • #6
            I suspect this RWBY clip is appropriate.


            www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRjygcFMKeA]

            PS: I may have forgotten how to embed a YouTube video.
            I might be crazy, but I'm not Insane.

            What? You don't play with flamethrowers on the weekends? You are strange.

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            • #7
              I had a VT300-series terminal do that. Something went pop, buzzed a bit, and The Magic Smoke came out the top. I unplugged it ASAP and ran down to our IT people.
              “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.
              One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.
              The other, of course, involves orcs." -- John Rogers

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              • #8
                Had a power supply for my computer blow, and due to the exhaust fan still spinning, had a very true-to-cartoon-life puff of smoke rose from behind the computer. Scary experience for a 15 year old as it took out the RCD aswell

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                • #9
                  Thankfully, this never happened to me. I may run my computers into the ground, but I have not once set any of them on fire!
                  cindybubbles (👧 ❤️ 🎂 )

                  Enter Cindyland here!

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                  • #10
                    Ah yes, I had a fire in a monitor once, in my living room at home. I was on IRC at the time, and I had time to type 'My monitor just caught on fire! Gotta go!' before I shut everything down.
                    It was funny at the time.

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                    • #11
                      Bad cap on a motherboard, magic smoke was just oozing out of all the vents. And yes smoke from electrical devices looks like it is oozing out of stuff.

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                      • #12
                        No worries, Gihelmi -- We'd actually prefer that y'all just use a text link to anything off-site, for copyright/possible paranoia reasons. A notable exception would be for pics on imgur/PB/etc that you took and uploaded to begin with.
                        "For a musician, the SNES sound engine is like using Crayola Crayons. Nobuo Uematsu used Crayola Crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel." - Jeremy Jahns (re: "Dancing Mad")
                        "The difference between an amateur and a master is that the master has failed way more times." - JoCat
                        "Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!" ~ Carl Jung
                        "There's burning bridges, and then there's the lake just to fill it with gasoline." - Wiccy, reddit
                        "Retail is a cruel master, and could very well be the most educational time of many people's lives, in its own twisted way." - me
                        "Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home." - Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, "Serenity" (2005)
                        Acts of Gord – Read it, Learn it, Love it!
                        "Our psychic powers only work if the customer has a mind to read." - me

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Quoth cindybubbles View Post
                          Thankfully, this never happened to me. I may run my computers into the ground, but I have not once set any of them on fire!
                          Though I did have a phone battery inflate like a balloon once. I think I already told you about it, but the sales clerks were so stunned when I showed it to them, asking for them to help me close the phone's battery door.
                          cindybubbles (👧 ❤️ 🎂 )

                          Enter Cindyland here!

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                          • #14
                            The battery in my parents' 1981 Citation did the "sides bulging" thing. It stalled on the Oakland Bay Bridge in the San Francisco area; fortunately my mom was in the right lane when it stopped. She said when the people who towed it off the bridge told her she was fortunate that it hadn't exploded. She said she got my sister and her dog out of the car, and they all hiked to one of the "call the Highway Patrol" stations that used to dot the bridge, and the tow truck was out there in just a few minutes.

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                            • #15
                              Quoth cindybubbles View Post
                              Though I did have a phone battery inflate like a balloon once. I think I already told you about it, but the sales clerks were so stunned when I showed it to them, asking for them to help me close the phone's battery door.
                              I've had that happen with several extended batteries, between my phone and DH's. Protip: don't buy Hyperion batteries. Anker have been doing much better.
                              "Crazy may always be open for business, but on the full moon, it has buy one get one free specials." - WishfulSpirit

                              "Sometimes customers remind me of zombies, but I'm pretty sure that zombies are smarter." - MelindaJoy77

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