walt writes:
> On 07/28/2011 01:14 PM, Dale wrote:
>> walt wrote:
>>> Ah, that explains the names 'fireball' and 'smoker'?
>>
>> Smoker is my first machine. It was smokin for its day. Since this
>> machine is a LOT faster, I had to come up with something good for it
>> too. Fireball is it. I guess lightening will be next. Maybe it
>> will be 10 cores at 8Ghz with 128Gbs of ram or some supped up crap
>> like that. lol
>
> Oops, I got it completely wrong, then. Amongst hardware geeks there is
> an old (maybe obsolete?) expression "it's time for the smoke-test!" which
> means: plug it in and turn it on -- and then note carefully where the
> plume of smoke is coming from :)
I still have my first PC, a 12-MHz 286. The last time I turned it on,
the casing being opened, something exploded and a huge flame burst out
between the card slots. Now THAT was a real smoker!
After the dust had settled, I clipped the capacitor that was burnt.
Turned the thing on, and it was runing just fine. And I could play the
ancient spacewars game once again.
I wouldn't expect today's hardware to survive this.
Wonko
