I was sitting here working when all of a sudden I heard this hissing, crackling sound come from the monitor, and then sparks started flying out of it. Before I could react, it had gone dead, but now the whole room smells like smoke.
This has never happened to me before.
MrWhatsit’s first response, of course, was, “Damn, woman, you’re hot,” and then told me that perhaps this is my computer’s way of telling me I’m working too hard.
I’m just glad it happened while someone was home.
This happened to my SIL and BIL…turns out they had ladybugs nesting in their computer! :eek:
Happened to me about 10 years ago in my office. My CRT started smoking and then was dead. It was only about 3 years old. It was not covered under warranty and back then they still cost about $500 each. I was shocked that such a thing could happen, but I now understand that they operate under extremely high voltage. It couldn’t be fixed, either.
The only time I ever had a computer catch fire in front of me was at work. We had an industrial grade computer cpu that overheated and caught fire. The funny thing was that it kept running even though flames were literally shooting out the front of it. I doubt it would have run much longer, but at that point we just yanked the CPU out of the chassis without bothering to power it down first (this is an industrial computer where the CPU board slid into a backplane, not like a typical PC where the CPU board is the backplane) and threw the burning board into a nearby sink. As soon as we turned on the water the CPU cracked in half from the thermal stresses.
Another time, also at work, we had a rack that wasn’t getting proper air flow through it (because someone had shoved too much stuff inside it and then closed the door on it when they shouldn’t have) and the computer inside overheated. We were all like “hmm… do you smell something burning?” then we opened the door to the rack and popped open the little door on the front of the computer. It wasn’t burning initially, but as soon as the air rushed in it went FOOF and looked just like a gas grill starting up.
You must have had a good firewall.
Heeehehehee!
I worked in the Network Operations Center (NOC) at AOL for a while. The NOC had tons of computers and monitors. Each desk had four computers/monitors. There were 20 desks. There was also a wall of computers that shared monitors, the computers tested access numbers. Anyway, there were a ton of computers in the room. The room was cooled really well (read freezing) to keep all that hardware cold.
One day someone smelled something burning. Much running around, opening cabinets and sniffing ensued until the monitor that was producing the smell was found. It was a rather tame little monitor fire but with all the equipment, finding it was a bitch. As a side note, we found out later that if the fire alarm was tripped, after a certain amount of time the doors to the room would lock and they would pump in gas to smother the fire. If the fire alarm went off you had to exit the room immediately or risk getting locked in and suffocating to death. Fun stuff.
Another time I was working for Intuit. I was talking to a customer on the phone and noticed that the guys computer at the desk behind mine was on fire. My desk and his shared a back wall. At the time I did not know which desk was on fire. I told the customer I was speaking with that my desk was on fire and needed to disconnect. The customer started saying ‘Wait! Wait! I need to get this fixed’ and did not want to hang up. I finally had to hang up on the customer I was speaking with because he did not seem to care that my DESK WAS ON FIRE. “Oh, what was that, your desk is on fire. I can’t hang up I NEED THIS FIXED NOW”. Apparently, for this guy, the possiblity of me buring to death was of secondary importance compared to his GPF.
Slee
Yeah that Halon is bad stuff, it takes all the oxygen out of the air. I watched a test Halon release at an old computer operator job I had, all the loose stuff and papers in the room get blown around.
Now you’ve got me spooked. All Monday and part of Tuesday morning I’ve been smelling a smokey smell near my computer and printer. At first I assumed someone in the office had been camping on the weekend and brought in campfire smell on their jacket, but I decided Tuesday morning that something was amiss and sent an e-mail to IT to come and check it out. Of course, the smokey smell went away about five minutes before they arrived and it has not returned, which made me look like a big dweeb.
All these fire stories are making me nervous, though. I’m going to check my computer, printer and monitor again. What the hell could it be?
I can’t remember going more than 6 months without something releasing the magic smoke.
Once we got a new company to send us their just released analyzer - they were so proud to demo their product to us, it had flames shooting out the top within 5 minutes of plugging it in.
We’re still using the replacement.
Not as big a dweeb as this guy (not slee, the guy he was on the phone with):
That guy is now following me- I’m sure he was at my last job, and I’ve got a few lusers like that now, too.
One thing abut electronics overheating is that once you know the smell, nothing else will fool you. I recognise overheating circuits at a faint wiff and don’t halt looking until I find the source. I’ve seen the high voltage arcing in a live monitor once. I walked up to someones desk and I could see a blue arcing through the vent. I don’t know how they missed it.
I’ve had that happen ot me twice. Once was an old Sun microsystems 20" monitor. It was the envy of everyone in the office, until it left a dark stain on the wall one day.
The other time, it was my alarm clock. At precisely 7:20 on a school morning, instead of the usual buzzer sound, it emitted a series of sparks and a nice plume of smoke.
Gee, the cat puked on my old CRT(right across the vents), and it never caught fire. It went monochrome a year later, though.
Man, I’m still using an old Trinitron monitor I bought with a Dell desktop in 1997. Great old box. My dad still has the computer it came from, and it still runs fine too.
I don’t know why, but the idea of waking up to this has me laughing my ass off.
You just know you’re going to have one of those days when…