Don't ya just hate it when...

Some piece of electronic equipment in a room full of the stuff starts to make a smell, and you can't identify which it is?

Something, somewhere in my home office has blown a capacitor. As I type this, my nostrils are flaring at the horrid pungent smell that electrolytic capacitors give out.

What is really frustrating is that I can *only* smell it when I am sitting at a typing position. If I stick my nose close to any of the equipment, I cannot smell it. As far as I can tell, it's not the server, the monitor, the PC, the other monitor, either of the laptops, the empeg, either of the UPSs, any of the PC speakers, the network switch, the KVM, either of the printers, any of the wall-warts, the cable modem or the (unplugged) Nortel Contivity box.

Where the fsck is it coming from. It's driving me nuts. If anyone knows, please tell me.

Well Dave just blew up a prototype board in the office here. It smells pretty bad. Maybe it's got as far as you?

It's unlikely but it could be the keyboard itself? They've usually got a couple of discrete components in there with the microcontroller.

- Trevor

Hmm.... good idea, but no dice. I checked the mice too

HeHe...maybe.

Of course, that does raise a question....prototype for What?

Sniffing mouse balls? That's sick!

Over there ---->

Of course, that does raise a question....prototype for What?

I'll be asking him the same question next week

well it WAS a prototype. It's not very much anymore. Maybe if he told you he'd have to kill you.

maybe it is a prototype combined mp3 player/cooker of some sort

No, it just eat a diode in the PSU circuit. It still works, with a bigger diode in there instead. The whole PSU in the first prototypes is being binned anyway and replaced with a more efficient one.

Of course, I'm still not telling anyone what the prototype is of - apart from it's very, very cute.

Hugo

very very cute

this can mean only one thing you are developing a hard disc based MP3 playing furby

Stop teasing


Anyway, the burning device made itself known. As I had quietly suspected, it was my server's PSU. Over time it had gotten overloaded, I noticed about 3 months ago, but neglected to replace it. (Why fix something that is still working?) Why it would work solidly for days after blowing the cap and then die quietly last night is beyond me. I can't complain though - 2.5 years of 24x7 service on it's original fan, at least the last 3 months of that being overloaded. Wherever it is that well-behaved PSUs go to when they die, this one deserves to get there.

Off to CompUSA...

Oh, ricin, you were correct.

Oh, ricin, you were correct.

ROFL

LOL. You know, for some reason I've had good luck with that.