sadly it can take very, very little. when most plastics burn strong halogen acids are produced (because most plastics have chlorine or other halogens in them) which are very, very corrosive. my brother had a portable stereo he gave me after it was in a fire in his apartment, the power supply board was damaged, i completely removed the old solder twice and resoldered it before giving up, other than that and the tape deck it worked fine, i just had to do the power supply differently. it could also have gotten into the drives which would be very sensitive (and it probably did if they were close to the fire or just got radiated heat from the fire and then cooled, since on cooling they'd inhale a deep breath of smoke). you might be able to salvage them, i'd suggest a thorough disassembly and soaking the logic boards and everything but the drives in water with baking soda, probably overnight, use an excess of baking soda. they use baking soda on each page to save books that have been in fires, they let it sit there for awhile and then vacuum it off (my aunt and uncle had that done with some of their more valuable books after a very, very small fire in their house).
any floppies that have any residue on the outside or under the door are toast and will ruin other equipment, same with video tapes, i.e. open the door and wipe both sides of the tape with a q-tip, if anything comes off trash them quickly (otherwise they are fine). after the baking soda soak, rinse all the baking soda off with warm/hot water, and let things dry (you'll probably have to repeat this, and be very, very careful if you wash the power supply that it is absolutely dry before plugging it in lest you get more smoke and flames). you might need to use a contact cleaner on everything, but gold plated contacts should have survived fairly well. sadly plastic smoke is extremely destructive because of the acids formed. wish i had better news for you. if it wasn't a fire, what kind of smoke was it? i wouldn't think a little smoke from a wood fire etc. would cause many problems other than possibly(maybe) with the drives. if you have more details, i may be able to give you some other ideas. i was in fire protection for awhile so i know a little about it, and fortunately it's also let me get a clean agent extinguisher i keep by the computer, just in case anything in the room catches fire, but unfortunately these have become very expensive due to environmental problems (and the ordinary dry chemical is also corrosive if not removed quickly). James Elliott wrote: > > I'm sorry if this is the wrong place for this, but it directly > involves a machine that was a hard drive away from running OS X. > It's also the only Mac list that I'm on. > A bit of smoke made its way into the room where I had a bunch of my > computers for testing, and it seems to have destroyed a couple of ---------- -- Philip Stortz-- John Ashcroft is a far greater threat to the American people and the nation than any terrorist group, he may not have liked Hitler, but he loves SS tactics. If we don't stand up today we won't be able to stand up tomorrow. < http://publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=502&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&L4=0&L5=0 >< http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=11817&c=206&MX=717&H=0> -- Unsupported OS X is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> Unsupported OS X list info <http://lowendmac.com/lists/unsupported.html> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive <http://www.mail-archive.com/unsupportedosx%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
