Nevermind coffee...the smell of melting circuits will keep you up all night

MrBishop

MrBishop

Well-Known Member
Aah...there's nothing quite like it...the distinctive odor of burnt circuitry and melting plastic wafting out of your AT case, propelled by whirring happy fans. Oh joy!

This is what greeted me on Friday night as I upgraded my RAM from 196mb pc100 to 256+128MB pc133. Oh, the joys of seeing your motherboard scorched at the DIMM-slots, the burnt fingertips as you try to extract the super-heated DIMMs from the board, the utter pleasure of seeing your video-card lying wasted in the trash-can, the melodic sound that can only be associated with a power-supply sailing through the air and landing with a weighty thud in the 'round-file'. Aah...the utter symphony!!

What a joy!

*I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Prof for pulling my ass out of the fireplace this weekend. He single-handedly rescued my compi from the depths of circuit-hell. Replaced my power-supply and video-card and passed me a 128 pc100 DIMM making my compi work again.*

MrBishop may not be online on weekends for a bit though. Just telling a nice story for your monday morning. HAve a great day!
 
Decent... Could rival some of my burnt hardware experiences.

How did upgrading your RAM cause it? Did you stick it in wrong or was it just an unexpected phenomenon?
 
fury said:
Decent... Could rival some of my burnt hardware experiences.

How did upgrading your RAM cause it? Did you stick it in wrong or was it just an unexpected phenomenon?
Click to expand...

That's something that prof and I are looking into. The RAM shouldn't fit in backwards because of those nice little slot 'bridges', but these went in lickety-split...clips clicking into place like good little soldiers. That shouldn't happen if they were backwards. The burn marks on the DIMMS indicate that they were backwards though. Now...I don't make mistakes like that usually...I built my machine piecemeal. I should've known better. I'm not convinced that I put them in back-asswards, but...shit happens right?

Why/how they could've fit in and clicked in place that easily in the DIMMslots is a different question entirely. In either case...wasted DIMMS and wasted money....AND I'll have to get a new motherbaord in order to go above 256mb ram ever again. Grrrrr!!
 
I don't know that it would fry a PS and a slot but maybe your computer doesn't like the PC133 chips, only the PC100 chips will work?

I've smelled that too btw, once from a laptop battery that was melting and once when I plugged the wrong power cord into an external HD. Oops! :lloyd:
 
The PS isn't fried, but it overdrew current and scorched a highwattage resistor and the PCB. I'd wanna change that out before I'd ever use it again. And that 128 was your own.

And for the record. If you don't know that you've an ATX case and not an AT, just leave me do your upgrades. Please.
 
Please, don't tell me you have an ATX power supply and you left everything plugged in when you switched the RAM.
 
Odd that...I was sure that I'd replied to this already.

I've been shocked by a capacitor discharge before...now I turn off the machine, unplug it and wait for the capacitors to unload before touching the inside of a compi, much less remove or add anything.
 
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