Burnout G3... and still alive.

[iMac600]

I always love to fire up old machines and push them to their absolute limit. Last year, when we still had the old forums, I became familiar with XPostFacto as I tried to load 10.3 on my Beige G3.

Recently I gave it another shot to install OS X. Rebooted from disc... installed... DONE! It worked. It was always a little slow to boot and detect drives, so I never thought much of it. I switched it off and came back the next morning. Powered it up.

Instead of the Happy Mac, I got a blank screen, followed by severe head thrashing of the old hard disk and excessive smoke from the motherboard. I shut it down, waited a few moments and restarted it, this time getting the Happy Mac, but no drives to be found. Swapping and switching drives did nothing for it, so i've concluded the ATA Controller has roasted.

The case is now gutted and packed up out in the shed, it no longer serves a purpose. The rest of the machine is still here though, as soon as I find the time i'll give it a shot booting from the Onboard SCSI, which should still work.

Durable things, they are. This thing continued running with a flashing "?" despite the ATA controller pouring smoke and the drives thrashing. Needless to say, the ATA controller is no longer operational and disabled on the logic board... but if it boots from a SCSI disk i'll be very surprised... and somewhat proud I chose Apple hardware.

EDIT: For the risk of this turning up on Google... in the hands of the PC fans, the machine is question was quite old, beaten up and abused over it's years before I picked it up at a computer market for $5.

 

[iMac600]

Active lot, aren't we?

 

[alk]

Cajoling won't get you replies. What on earth made you think it was a good idea to turn on the Mac AFTER it released the magic smoke? For all you know, you could have started a fire or worse.

Peace,

Drew

 

[MultiFinder]

Dude, "excessive smoke"? And you STILL used it?

I'm rather surprised that it would do much after that, but as alk pointed out, you're lucky nothing worse than some smoke happened.

 

[madmax_2069]

i defiantly would not 50% trust it, since it did that. if it still is alive and kicking thats cool that it still works ( but it seems like that can be its last leg) hard to tell what type of damage it caused. i just wouldn't rely on that machine for much of anything that is mission critical ( toying around with it would suit it fine, like games or other stuff).

 

[iMac600]

Did I ever say it was a mission critical machine?

I thought you may find it interesting that such a machine was able to survive the event in which the ATA controller blew. Clearly all you're interested in is trolling though.

I have had machine fires before, I do know how to handle them and if I ever felt the machine would have caused risk resulting in injury or death, I would not have turned it on. Clearly you are assuming i'm incapable of thinking and judging for myself. Hell, even if it had started a fire I would have known how to deal with it.

Unbelievable, you lot.

Then again, the fact the machine now works from the SCSI bus and is no longer a fire risk just proved my judgment was correct, no?

 

[madmax_2069]

No i didn't say you said it was mission critical machine, i just simply stated that i would not use it or trust it with anything missions critical, thats all. i wasn't implying that you was going to do something like that or was using it as such.

the reason i said that is cause it is now a unreliable machine ( even tho you might never have any issues with it again) but also like i said its hard to really say what more damage it has caused (maybe small, maybe large, maybe small and work itself to be large issue) you never can tell once a system has done this

but its good to see that the machine is still kicking.

i have seen some PC fires myself ( i owned a few of them )

 

[iMac600]

No i didn't say you said it was mission critical machine, i just simply stated that i would not use it or trust it with anything missions critical, thats all. i wasn't implying that you was going to do something like that or was using it as such.

Well yeah, I don't intend to use it for any real work, I think if I did then maybe there would be reason argue what I stated. Frankly trusting an ex-burnoff with anything at all is a bad idea.

 

[Mike Richardson]

I wonder why a chip would puff up in smoke like that. It makes no sense.

 

[alk]

What sort of reaction did you expect? Did you expect people to line up and tell you how excellent that decision was and how awesome it is that your Mac works? Sure, it's kinda cool that even after it smoked, the Mac still runs, but...

What you did was foolish. I can only say that I wouldn't have let you do that in my house. But then, you don't live here, so whatever. Live and learn. Or don't...

Peace,

Drew

 

[alk]

I wonder why a chip would puff up in smoke like that. It makes no sense.

There could be a lot of reasons. Whiskers can cause this problem. Some stray dust could cause it. Leaky capacitors could cause it. Metal fragments in the case could cause it.

But ultimately, the cause was that something was short circuited. The short may burn through if it is just a small thing like a whisker or dust. In more severe cases, delicate circuitry susceptible to shorts is protected with a fuse. It could have been a fuse that burned through and not an IC, and the short could still exist (and remain a problem if the fuse failed). In extreme cases, the short may not result in a magical self-fix or a failed fuse and will instead remain shorted ultimately causing significant computer damage and possible household damage including fire.

Electrical fires are not to be trifled with. If you experience the "magic smoke" from a computer, I can only recommend that you forever unplug it and don't trust it in the future. If you absolutely have to power it back up, at least do so in a fireproof environment (an outdoor brick or concrete patio, drive way, or car park would be a good place) on a circuit that is protected by a household fuse or circuit breaker.

Peace,

Drew

 

[Bolle]

my CC released some magic smoke once...

I HAD to turn it on again. It would have been foolish not to do so... why trashing a mac that released some smoke without trying to fix it?

BTW: the CC got its magic back

 

[Unknown_K]

Any smoke coming out of electronics is not good for you. The only thing I ever smoked were a SCSI ZIP drive with the power in backwards (yes it fit, flimsy plastic) and a 486 CPU I put in 90 degrees off (never talk with a freind while working), in both cases I smelled something wrong and turned the units off to inspect there was never a smoke clound. Not too bad since I have been working on computers since 1990 or so.

Once you smoke something you need to find out what it was and why it smoked. I would think outside of a power supply frying, a capacitor cooking off, or moisture grounding a 5V line there should not be that much smoke. Don't be too afraid to replace the broken part and still use the machine. I do recommend not running computers in areas without a smoke detector, or leaving them running when nobody is around. Also keep a fire extinguisher around rated for electronics (less of a mess to clean up) just incase something catches on fire (plastic case or whatever).

Generally the PS is fused, and so are most inputs where a user would plug things into (ADB, USB, VGA, etc). I don't think companies bother fusing other areas where they do not expect trouble (like a case screw shorting out a chip).

 

[iMac600]

Gah! I know what I did wrong. I just re-read over my initial post and realised i'd made a horrible mistake...

The machine was switched off IMMEDIATELY after the first smell of burning and was not as excessive as I made it sound, mostly a strong smell and maybe a whisp of smoke before power off. The next test for a SCSI boot was conducted 48 hours afterward.

Conducting such tests on a carpetted floor in a house is indeed foolish. That's why we have an electronics workshop at the high school for such tests, emergency isolators, surge protectors, etc... where this was conducted along with other electronics projects.

Finally, and this is the part I must enforce is that I did not post here looking for cheers of support for what seemed like foolish activity, I did however want to put forward just how strong these really are. I've never had any other motherboard do the same and still work, perhaps I got lucky this one time but I do still find it interesting that it still works and is still usable (albeit with the Heathrow ATA controller removed).

Now if we still have issues with my post afterward, there's clearly no hope and i'll leave you all to your posting.