Subj : Magic smoke escaped :(
To   : All
From : Bob Worm
Date : Sat Sep 16 2023 21:14:40

Not terribly exciting but it's pretty quiet on here, so...

I recently powered up a pretty ancient BBC micro that I rescued 20 years ago - disappointingly it "just worked" straight out of the gate, leaving me with no fun repair work. To my further disappointment it turned out to only have 32K of RAM. I don't have any attachment to BBCs and always hated them in school so really a bit of a let down.

Anyway, I popped it back on today and started mooching around the different graphics modes, found out the BBC can also do inline assembly in the middle of a BASIC program like the later Acorns can and got mildly excited at the idea of knocking up a bouncing lines screensaver while I waited for some backups to finish on the other computer. I realised you can get a lot more text on the screen than I thought and ideas of cabling up the serial port entered my head.

Yeah...

Then fssssssssssssss! A plume of smoke came out of the power supply. Turns out one of the Rifa capacitors had become bored with life and decided to self immolate. Man, those things stink when they do that. And now, so does my house. Don't worry, though, I quickly ran out and got a donner kebab to cover up the smell before the wife gets home.

Take it easy - and don't assume just because you've had a 40 year old computer turned on for a few hours that you're safe from paper capacitors!

BobW
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