[Cube] smoking Cube

[Jan Georgen]

Good  evening. The saga continues. I was ready to start random swaps  
(since I happen to be a random-styled thinker) but heeded Dan's  
advice. For the most part. I pulled the hard drive then plugged in  
the power supply, then observed. Quickly.

The red light/lcd turned on when the power was plugged in (no power  
switch attached).
Very shortly thereafter, there was a popping/crackling sound.  
Followed by smoke emitting from both sides of video card. Followed by  
a pungent, metallic odor.
Then a quick pull-out of the power plug.

then a quasi-systematic take-apart, down to the pulling out of the DC- 
DC board. The gold contacts on the DC board that fit into the slot on  
the motherboard (the slot you have to push the 'ejector' to release  
the DC board) have a sort of gold-ish crust around each point and  
another sniff test yields sharp remnants of that metallic odor. Sort  
of smells like fingernails on a chalkboard sound, if you can switch  
sensory brain parts.

That's where I stopped tonight. Thoughts?

Thanks so much for all the ideas, directions, and warnings.

Jan Georgen

On Jan 28, 2007, at 11:12 AM, Dan Oetting wrote:

>
> On Jan 27, 2007, at 8:53 PM, Jan Georgen wrote:
>
>> I will do further investigating re: source of the burning smell.
>
> If you can smell smoke there is almost always physical evidence of  
> what was smoking. The type of smell can be a clue of what to look  
> for: plastics from wire insulation, epoxy from circuit boards,  
> silicon dioxide from an exploded IC, dielectrics from capacitors  
> etc. all give off unique odors. A visual inspection can spot the  
> charred component, smoke trails or debris field. What you don't  
> want to do is plug it in again or start swapping components from a  
> working system until you've identified the cause.
>
> -- Dan O.
>
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