That time when a component exploded... our stories
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D.8080



Joined: 03 Apr 2006
Posts: 1474
Location: Italy

PostPosted: Fri Apr 03, 2020 6:53 pm    Post subject: That time when a component exploded... our stories Reply with quote

I have time, thanks to Mr. Covid, to test my motherboards.

Some are dead (but I'll investigate in a future time), most got a Bios flash, others had some component die.

Just tonight I had 3 caps exploding. Nice!! SmileSmile

One just went "poof", but the board kept going. I pulled the plug.
Another had 2 caps explode in sequence like geysers: WOW!
The last one got me perplexed as it made a noise, saw some liquid boil on top of the cap and that was it.


Tell you stories now!!! Boredom looms and the end ain't nigh...
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CPUShack



Joined: 16 Jun 2003
Posts: 34259
Location: State of Jefferson, USA

PostPosted: Fri Apr 03, 2020 6:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Motherboard testing is where xsecrets ATX2AT adapter is really good!

http://www.cpu-world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=30688

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D.8080



Joined: 03 Apr 2006
Posts: 1474
Location: Italy

PostPosted: Fri Apr 03, 2020 7:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

CPUShack wrote:
Motherboard testing is where xsecrets ATX2AT adapter is really good!

http://www.cpu-world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=30688


"And I thought I had it hard..." has meaning now. Smile Smile

I really hope more stories come in.

One time I fried a mobo inverting P8/P9, black wire at the corners Sad Late at night never again.
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cuttingedgecs



Joined: 08 Oct 2017
Posts: 1764
Location: Australia

PostPosted: Fri Apr 03, 2020 9:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Back in the day when CD-ROM manufacturers were racing to have the highest "x" rating on their drives - even at the cost of real performance, my boss decided to order in some no-name brand 80x drives so we could have "faster" dirves than the 52-68x ones sold by our competitors.

It wasn't long before we started getting faulty units back, but not for the usual reasons. You see, these drives spun so fast, that even a tiny sticker in the disk would cause them to become unbalanced, warp, and shatter inside the drive. And I don't mean crack - they would break into 20+ small sharp pieces. It was a slot loading drive, and we once had a disk shatter in a machine I was testing in the store.

It broke with a mighty bang, and fortunately I'd left it to install something and gone to do something else because when I got back I found pieces of polycarbonate had flown out the slot and across the room.

After that, the boss switched exclusively to 52x drives.
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Wasmachineman_NL



Joined: 04 Jul 2019
Posts: 988
Location: Netherlands

PostPosted: Sat Apr 04, 2020 3:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I had a Precision M6500 motherboard burn out on me, not spectularly though.

Another turbo retarded thing I did: I sold a EpoX Socket A board and I fucked it up five minutes after receiving the money for it by inserting a RAM module the wrong way in, blowing up one of the memory VRMs. Ended up giving the buyer part of the money back and gave him the board because he wanted it anyway, if he ever fixed it: idk!
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D.8080



Joined: 03 Apr 2006
Posts: 1474
Location: Italy

PostPosted: Sat Apr 04, 2020 5:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Forgot to mention my 486.

Inserted the wrong way (orientation), powered on, heard a bang.
Removed the cpu, one pin broke but the cpu was still working and works to this day.

I never checked if the pin has a significant role or is just another ground pin.
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crazybubba64



Joined: 03 Jul 2018
Posts: 1371
Location: WI, USA

PostPosted: Sat Apr 04, 2020 10:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I had a 5.25" IBM ESDI hard drive go up in flames.
I kept the board since it had some nice ceramic Intel EEPROMs on it.

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svmlegacy



Joined: 15 Jun 2016
Posts: 551
Location: Canada

PostPosted: Sat Apr 04, 2020 4:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Maybe not vintage... but I blew up an HP XW6600's PSU once. I got 1 post out of a dual CPU setup (Another one had a bad PSU, but no bang). Dusted it out... and next time I plugged it in, it went BANG. Tore it down, and sure enough, a big black mark on one of the PCB's.

So if you have one of these towers... think hard about a new PSU.
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Glory_Cloud



Joined: 24 Jul 2010
Posts: 2942

PostPosted: Sun Apr 05, 2020 11:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Back in the day, I did a lot of work dealing with POS
(point of sale) systems. They were all normally SFF
(small form factor) and Tier 1 manufactured products.
One in particular stands out to me very distinctly as
I am certain that the testing of them has shortened
my life span considerably.

The infamous HP DC5000 SFF PC. I had a large customer
base that used these PC's in their POS platforms. They
had exploding (and I mean exploding) power supplies
that when plugged in, the defective ones when turned
on would give off a LOUD BANG and start smoking. Scared
the dickens out of me on more than one occasion. Especially
when you had an order to deliver a 100 of them at a time.
You never know how many would explode when turned on. Shocked

I finally learned to use a long extension cord to mitigate
the fear factor when pushing the power on button while standing
in front of these wretched PC's. I would plug up the PC to
be tested to an extension cord and then turn on the power
remotely from across the room. Cool
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Mixeur



Joined: 06 Jan 2005
Posts: 4038
Location: Sochaux, France

PostPosted: Mon Apr 06, 2020 9:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Heard nothing, but I broke some days ago my Chinese LGA1156 motherboard when trying to test a Q1KY...
Completely forgot that itwas a LGA1160 chip...
It was switching on for 2 sec then off for 2-3 sec then on...etc. Until I cut the power. After that, I've never managed to switch it on again... Pity is that it was not the latest chip to test...

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bccwchan



Joined: 20 Sep 2004
Posts: 2585
Location: Hong Kong

PostPosted: Mon Apr 06, 2020 9:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have a interesting idea to share some special cpus on my collection using the ebay listing(so many people can see it hopefully LOL).

https://www.ebay.com/itm/264690325358
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D.8080



Joined: 03 Apr 2006
Posts: 1474
Location: Italy

PostPosted: Thu Apr 09, 2020 7:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mixeur wrote:
Heard nothing, but I broke some days ago my Chinese LGA1156 motherboard when trying to test a Q1KY...
Completely forgot that itwas a LGA1160 chip...
It was switching on for 2 sec then off for 2-3 sec then on...etc. Until I cut the power. After that, I've never managed to switch it on again... Pity is that it was not the latest chip to test...


As a rule of thumb I stopped testing things when I'm tired because of the many "incidents" I had.

I so feel your pain Smile
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D.8080



Joined: 03 Apr 2006
Posts: 1474
Location: Italy

PostPosted: Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Another couple of caps went "pffffffff" on me.
Motherboard still works though.

I know I'm going to leave a whole bunch of money buying new caps.
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Marcin



Joined: 02 Jan 2005
Posts: 8519
Location: Poland

PostPosted: Mon Apr 13, 2020 2:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

D.8080 wrote:
I know I'm going to leave a whole bunch of money buying new caps.

For my vintage motherboards I use used caps desoldered from other dead motherboards very often. Of course before I solder them I check in capacity meter. There are many old solid caps are everlasting Smile
New ones for modern hardware and for other people I use new ones purchased for example on Aliexpress.

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Wasmachineman_NL



Joined: 04 Jul 2019
Posts: 988
Location: Netherlands

PostPosted: Mon Apr 13, 2020 3:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I still need to recap that A8N-SLI but I can't be arsed to spend €30 in caps+soldering on a computer I paid €10 for.
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