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To: tuliptree76
As far as I know, I'm the only techie to start a fire at my old workplace. The whole building smelled like an electrical fire

Wish I'd had a camera the day I produced a mushroom cloud over my workbench.

Had a little circuit in a breadboard (one of those plastic boards you plugged the ICs, components and wires into -- this was in '76, when everything was 0.1" through-hole), and as far as I can guess the CMOS analog switch suddenly shorted. The circuit wasn't working, so I started probing. Touched the IC and instantly got a rectangular burn. Suddenly a little blister formed on the top of the IC and smoke jetted out from the pins. Then the blister grew and popped, and I had a 15" mushroom cloud.

4,418 posted on 01/08/2005 1:33:26 PM PST by sionnsar († trad-anglican.faithweb.com † || Iran Azadi || www.revotewa.com -- No governor from THIS vote!!)
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To: sionnsar
I never knew that CMOS devices were that sensitive!
4,422 posted on 01/08/2005 1:48:36 PM PST by Irish_Thatcherite (Depopulation is a bigger threat to Humanity than Overpopulation - Everybody Procreate!)
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To: sionnsar
Hehhe... seen that as well. Once the current pulse shorts across the insulating layers within the chip, you get an almost cascade failure type thing.

We still aren't completely sure what Tom did to turn a 510 watt Antec PS into an electric blue flamethower... It was like the open arch from a plasma torch... Just a foot high out through the top fan hole...

4,433 posted on 01/08/2005 3:02:26 PM PST by Dead Corpse (Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.)
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