First post, by bbkcs
This is my first topic here, so I may as well tell a little about myself. I'm 34, and I've been into computers since I was 10 years old, but I've only been able to work on them since around age 15 (1999). Before then, I had access to a 386 with a 387 co-processor, but I knew nothing about it beyond the fact that it couldn't play Doom. It wasn't until around June of 2000 that I got myself a Tyan 440BX motherboard, and a slot 1 Celeron 433 when things really started to take off. Anyway, Since then I've always had an affinity for slot 1 and Pentium II/III processors.
Fast forward to today, and I have retro computers ranging from Intel 486 DX2 66 to Pentium III-S 1.4GHz. Unfortunately, this post is about my best Socket 370 system that I had. I woke up one morning smelling something that reminded me of the heating element in my water heater burning itself out again, so I chalked it up to my imagination, because there's no way that a water heater died again after only 6 years. After coming home and deciding to take a quick nap, I woke up to the smell of something that was about to catch fire, and noticed that my Abit ST6-RAID computer with a PIII-S 1.4 and a GeForce FX 5900 Ultra had turned itself on. The fact that nothing was attached to this computer except for the power cord immediately threw up red-flags for the power supply.
I just removed the cover for the power supply and noticed several bulging capacitors and a lot of black charred spots on the circuit board, so I assumed it was simply a failed power supply... I couldn't have been more wrong. I replaced the power supply (Allied model AL-A400ATX with 28A @ 3.3, 40A @ 5, and 17A @ 12) with a known good unit, and the system turned on instantly with the power supply switch and of course it didn't post. I removed everything from the computer, and that's when I noticed that a small chip near the CMOS battery had literally exploded. I didn't think that was too bad... I do have a second Abit ST6-R that just has bad caps, so it could be used as a donor. Then I noticed that the southbridge looked like it had almost become molten plastic...
I have 2 other systems using these Allied power supplies, Should I dismantle them before they all start trying to burn my house down?