LOMS Incident

[unixronin]

One of the more drastic things that can happen in a nuclear power plant is what's known as a LOCA, a loss-of-coolant accident.  I like to refer analogously to some of the more drastic things that can happen to electronic equipment as a LOMS incident - Loss Of Magic Smoke.

This is particularly relevant today because that's what just happened to my

Comments

[jhetley]

Definite LOMS incident. Makes trouble-shooting easy . . .

[docstrange]

Hmm. Yeah, I'm another UPS reconditioner/parts scavenger. Mostly older Powerware true-online units (some so old they are labeled AT&T or Lucent). Never had one go up in magic smoke - their common fail mode seems to be to stop being able to charge batteries - which is frustrating because, well, one runs out and gets new batteries and all is well. Until the second extended power outage. My best find so far, though was a new in box Fortress 1400 rackmount with dead batteries that cost me the price of shipping only.

[ithildae]

Makes me kind of wonder what the capacitor was doing in that circuit. Did it get the overvoltage first, or did it fail and overvoltage the triacs? Either way, it sounds like it was impressive, from a distance. I remember talking about the "magic smoke" injectors at the chip foundry. To put the magic smoke in the silicon. It was fun until I realized that a couple of students in my lab actually believed me. I just couldn't do that to someone I was depending on for part of my grade.

[cymrullewes]

His dad created some of the ovens that HP uses to bake in the magic smoke. (well, to solder the chips on to the boards.)

[ithildae]

That is a fun legacy to have. Unfortunately, writing software is a mayfly art. You do cool stuff, and now it is obsolete. I have heard a scientist defined as, an engineer with a job. Someone has to make the breakthroughs work. It is seldom high impact like that process. It is still fun to solve problems.

[mr_spock]

Sorry that it happened to you. Does keep things "interesting" though, doesn't it?

[unixronin]

Well, the good news is that the 2-year extended warranty that I forgot I'd bought on it is covering a replacement unit. They're shipping it out today.

[ithildae]

That is indeed very good news!