My Linux Machine Started Smoking - which has to be unhealthy!

[buster]

Never seen this before. Need some help on understanding it.

What happened: The old box has 3 hard drives, Mint, Win7 and an NTFS old laptop drive for storage. I pressed the start button, hit F12 and selected what  I thought was the Win7 hd. Got the Storage hd instead, and after complaints hit the reboot button. Was tapping happily on the F12 key when I smelled something like burning plastic! And smoke started to fill the room. Like really fill the room. Pulled wall plugs. Put the box on its side and examined it and touched stuff.

No hot spots. Nothing looked burned, though it does have hidden corners where the led lights and start button are.

Retest: So I had it open on its side and I rebooted it and let it go to the default Mint. Perfect. No bad smells. No smoke. Used the computer for awhile. No problems. Rebooted to Win7 and it worked.

Equipment:

Box is 17 years old and has been home to 3 waves of hardware and a couple of power boxes.
Motherboard, cpu, video card  and memory about 6 years old, good quality stuff at the time.
HD about 4 years old, with a laptop hd from destroyed machine, and another laptop drive from an old vista machine.

Would really appreciate insight. Would a new box solve this? Google hasn't helped so far.

[cod3poet]

Do not trust that box.

The smoke / smell probably a capacitor on the board, or at worst in the power supply.

If it's the latter you run a fire hazard with the machine on. If it's the motherboard it will run like magic till it dies like every other piece of hardware.

Keep it off till you do a full teardown would be my recommendation.

[Jason]

I agree with cod3poet here. Being a lot of smoke, I think it's likely it's the power supply (bigger capacitors) but I wouldn't trust that machine until you've taken it apart or at least been able to look everything over. Something met it's maker and has to be replaced. If the case isn't too big, bring it to one of the MUGs and we can all give it a look over.

[ssfc72]

I would think you should be able to smell whatever component was creating the smoke. Have you tried sniffing the different components, motherboard , hard drives, power supply etc?

[buster]

Thanks to the three of you. Hope to find time today to inspect and maybe disassemble piece by piece. It's not going to be plugged in til the culprit is found. So far can't see any damaged parts.

[buster]

I believe I have found the cause of the incredible amounts of smoke. It appears to be the insulation on the wires that run from the motherboard to the hard drive. I hope this is the problem. Not sure why such low amperage would burn that stuff right off, although there was another wire that had a bit of bare wire near it. So the juice might have been more than usual. In the second picture you can see a burn mark on the other wire. The wires are 17 years old. Any comments? Safe to reuse?

[Jason]

The burnt wire looks like there are multiple wires in there. Are more than one of them exposed? If not, tape it using scotch tape or masking tape and it should be fine. I presume you're not going to try to use the the wire that is burnt through?

In any case, make sure you hang around the computer the first few days just to make sure nothing else was affected and nothing else will start cooking.

I'm guessing you had a short because of some exposed wire within the wire itself. That will definitely get super hot! Even a lemon can make steel wool hot enough to start a fire, I believe, though I haven't tried it.

[buster]

Just the one wire to the speaker was totally fried. The other had a scorch mark on it which I wrapped with electrical tape. Am unplugging the machine from the wall when I'm not beside it. Seems to be solved, but it doesn't hurt to be careful for awhile.

[Jason]

That's a good plan.

[ssfc72]

I am thinking that the insulation on all the wiring, in that 17 year old box may have deteriorated and would be a fire hazard, if all the wiring is not replaced.

May be time to send the box to heaven.

I certainly would unplug the box when not being used.

[Jason]

If you need replacement wiring, Bob might be able to help. But Bill makes a good point. May be time to bury it in the backyard, have a funeral and say a few words and then let it go. Every computer has it's time, Harry. Take the hard drives out or start it up long enough to get any data off it you need and then remove them.

[buster]

The rest of the wiring looks pretty good. Of course most of the wires in the box are relatively new. Only the start button, and the red and green light wires are original. They look OK.

So---------

my wire for the computer speaker is fried, and I'm looking for a replacement. Has anyone salvaged a speaker, its wire and the motherboard plugin, or have an old case that doesn't care anymore whether it has one or not?

Worth at least a coffee.

[ssfc72]

If you have Scott's email address, he might be able to come up with what you need.

[William Park]

The rest of the wiring looks pretty good. Of course most of the wires in the box are relatively new. Only the start button, and the red and green light wires are original. They look OK.

So---------

my wire for the computer speaker is fried, and I'm looking for a replacement. Has anyone salvaged a speaker, its wire and the motherboard plugin, or have an old case that doesn't care anymore whether it has one or not?

Worth at least a coffee.

If it's urgent, Newegg has https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812201032&cm_re=motherboard_speaker_cable-_-12-201-032-_-Product.  It's way cheaper than me coming over there. 

If it's not urgent, then I'll check my garage.

[Jason]

If it's urgent, Newegg has https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812201032&cm_re=motherboard_speaker_cable-_-12-201-032-_-Product.  It's way cheaper than me coming over there. 

Wow, that's a tiny speaker! I'm not sure if it'd be loud enough for Buster but I guess it depends on what you're looking for Buster, do you just need to hear beeps when something is wrong or do you want to listen to music or something through it?