Computer Fire

[pkd_lives]

Well I'm feeling pissed.

I had a lovely little AMD K6 III processor. It ran well, was reliable and did the job I wanted. Unfortunately the cooling fan broke, I didn't notice for a few minutes, then I smelt burning - well I was cooking the dinner like, and I walked into my room to  check the smell, which was around for half an hour. Then I happened to glance at my PC, and there were flames in there.

Now I think the flames were just the dust catching fire, but now my computer will not finish a boot. I think that in order for it to work I'll have to diagnose the working temperature range and then fit a cooling control with a high accuracy sensor in order to keep the sensor in range, but even if I do that there is no guarantee the thing works properly anymore. And I suspect the fail to act properly is due to internal heat, and I can't really control that very well. So it looks like bye bye to my favourite processor.

So now I need a new PC. I want a laptop, because I need the space. Well what I really want to do is get a dogs bollocks Mac Laptop, and a comp that I can use for Linux, BSD, etc. Well time to save.

RIP AMD K6 III.

[voidmain]

Wow, that's scary. Makes one wonder about the possibilities of that happening in the middle of the night combined with the cramped spaces people stuff machines into. Might be a good idea to vacuum out the dust bunnies periodically.

I'm sure the chances of a dust bunny fire inside your case growing into something larger are small as it would likely be a very short flash fire. Anybody heard of a home computer being the cause of a house fire? I don't recall ever hearing of such a thing...

[Master of Reality]

i would think the metal case would suffacate it from growing very large and stop it from productively spreading.

[pkd_lives]

Well heres the thing. My old M/B broke. My new one didn't fit the case. So It has been laid down on top of a cardboard box with the cards stuck in. And the wires run to the HDD and CDROMs. So one side of the case is not used (so it's basically open space, which is probably why the fire went out quickly, causing no real damage to the peripherals. It's been this way for 2 years now, and works just fine.

[voidmain]

I certainly wouldn't run it 24 hours with a cardboard box shoved under the motherboard. Too much fuel for my liking...

[Master of Reality]

there didnt happen to be any gasoline in the box too. did there???

[pkd_lives]

Ha ha ha.

I know, I know, but it had only been on 3 hours. It was just one of those things.

The box had quite good insulative properties, due primarily to the fact it's partially plastic. (i mean it suffered not in the mini fire (in fact the only real suffering was the loss of the processor, and the cleaning effect of all that dust burnt off).

In a fire like that I would be more concerned about the fumes from burning ICs. Trust me that stuff is lethal. I have seen many ICs turn to candles, and I always vent the area well before I even go near the thing for clean up.

[pkd_lives]

Well it's working again.

Checked the board found a few joints dry and basically cleaned the board and started up. Now I don't trust this board or processor anymore, but it means I have time to save for a new laptop.

And I get DSL back this week. Woohoo.

[Crunchy(Cracked)Butter]

I recently bought a laptop to save space, no point in having 2 pc's chugging away in my bedroom, besides i wanted the portability to take a pc to college.

I got a P3 1ghz and for some reason it can loads Unreal Tourny faster than my AMD 1600!!  Anyway point is, when it comes to cooling they are designed right away with cooling in mind because of the limited space and the size of the thing.

My laptop has a desktop processor inside thankfully, i'm slowly thinking i can upgrade it to a P3 1.2 or 1.4, the only problem i can see is the fan might not like the new processor.  If i buy a new one its gotta fit inside the shell of the laptop, if i cannot i'm fuxed!

[sporkme]

use a whole lot of fans like me

and air duster it every so often

i have a big ass room fan as the side of my tower

[Master of Reality]

get soem ABS tubing and pipe cold air from outside directly into your computer. If i had a windows in my room then i would do it.

[pkd_lives]

Well it seemed right to use this thread. Now my computer is dead. It decided to stop seeing the CDROM drives (the DVD collapsed in Linux and Windows would not see either of them). I only found out when I tried to burn an image under Windows (of Peanut Linux).

It burnt an image to the hardrive only. So I removed the CDROM devies from the IDE connection, and what do you know no matter what I do now the Bios sees my Graphics card, registers my memory and then just sits there. I think that what ever controls the IDE connection has failed (whatever I am certain it's motherboard related).

Still this thing worked and was stable (and it lasted me two years longer than I thought it would, when it first broke down seriously (it's a replacement mobo, at least two of the ISA slots don't work anymore, the third one is flaky I suspect, one of the PCI slots has failed, I had to solder on a keybard connection when I first got it, the mouse connection does not bear thinking about, the USB's come out to D-type connectors, one of the COM ports is 25-way D-Type, the option for the 450MHz processor is flaky, and the whole thing sits horizontally halfway in the case), and that is not to mention the Scanner being powered by a professional benchtop power supply (because I refuse to pay 50 bucks for 12v 1.5 amp regulator, the irony being that the power supply costs about $1000 USD (new)), the printer ink dried up and the regulator on that one was starting to spike about (and I think it was starting some internal arcing inside the coils). Oh and the speakers have decided recently to start picking up so much cosmic noise that I can barely hear the music playing underneath. And before I forget the monitor gets this dark orange/brown tinge every so often - with increasing regularity, and I think it's about to go south. Bandaid ain't in it.

Just getting it out of my system. Yeah it's about that time - I need a strong cup of tea right now, and a new computer.  :rolleyes: