PC Smoke

yep that's the old trick I used to balance the dual SU carburetors on my '59 Triumph

On Tue, 3 May 2016 11:43:52 -0700 "OG" wrote in article

Yes. They are called "smoke detectors" and you probably have several in your house alread!

Check the smoke Detectors in your house. with that much smoke they should have gone off.

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Maurice Helwig 
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AKA as garden hose. Cheaper than a stethoscope.

Best, Wolf K kirkwood40.blogspot.ca

Oh, Wolf, what great big ears you've got!...

Mike.

It's not the quantity of smoke, it's how long the PC continues to smoke that makes household detectors go off. I have a smoke detector in my office and home shop. Neither has ever been triggered by transcient smoke signals. Figure on about 15 minutes for ionization and 3 minutes for photoelectric: Anyway, a smoke detector is useless for finding the source of the smoke, such as a hot component in the PC. For that, you would need a smoke locator such as an IR camera.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Garden hose is too wide, just a small tube will do

Your nose. Might tr some tubing... But that's just an idea.

However, if actually saw smoke there is bound to be a burn mark somewhere.

Know what ? Before taking it apart, try it again with nothing plugged in t o the USBs. It is possible one of them was a dead short. I think alot of th em have fuses nut then i doubt that each and every one does. These companie s cut costs in some of the strangest places sometimes. In fact I saw one la ptop detected USB overcurent in software. That is more prone to fail to pr otect than fuses. Even moreso now that USB ports put out more power than be fore.

Actually if he really SAW smoke that filled the room he has nothing to lose. Now if he only smelled smoke that is a different story. But once it comes billowing out of there, don't worry about it.

He said it did not set off the smoke detectors...

Hmm. I think it would if he really saw a roomful of smoke.

Or if the nearest detector is near the kitchen the battery might have been removed.

The problem with disassembling a laptop is that many "normal" people will not be able to get it back together.

It's a laptop. Ideally it should be fired up on a bench power supply with current limiting - without the battery installed. Most of them take 19 volts. Or fire it up unplugged on the battery alone.

Qnd those brink power supplies have limiting so this problem is almost for sure a shorted USB stick. That means he most likely has a bad five volt regulator, and usually those are separate for the USB ports.

Exploded resistors do not overload other components, at least not in something like this. What happened is all the damage happened at once.

Resistors do not just expode, they explode from overvoltage cauing too much current to flow and it overheats,And sometimes this happend really fast. When that happens you can bet there was overvoltage fed into the unit.

If it is not the USB regulators it is the power brick.

I read that wrong, got it confused with something else. It is a desktop. My bad. Disregard what I wrote.

I read that wrong, got it confused with something else. It is a desktop. My bad. Disregard what I wrote.

I read that wrong, got it confused with something else. It is a desktop. My bad. Disregard what I wrote.

Interesting facts wrong but its ok:) most good smoke detectors like first alert the only brand i use i have the combo detector both ionization and photoelectric hard wired with battery back up unit. But even my battery only ionization unit that is directly over the pc went off once when a test power supply blew a resistor and the smoke set it off before i could even get to the window to open it to vent the smoke out of the room:) how fast they react ALL DEPENDS on 2 Things AGE OF UNIT all units should be replaced EVERY 10 YEARS. in fact in my state and city it's a code requirement. Second is brand of unit if you get the cheap 8 dollar one at the dollar store yes it wont react as good as the brand name first alert that costs you

20 or more dollars. that is a proven fact. But the 8 dollar one will go off if you boil water on the stove the better unit wont:)

We had smoke detectors in the control room at work that would activate the fire alarm when the boss would puff on his pipe. If they did not then they were replaced Those were the days before smoking was banned in all buildings and workp laces.

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Maurice Helwig 
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Nice diplomacy, but they're either facts, or they're wrong. Can't have both.

The combo units are best. The photoelectric detectors are faster but ionization detectors are more sensitive. The combination also decreases false alarms as a real fire will trigger both, but chemical and condensation problems will only trigger one or the other.

Egads. How much smoke did this resistor generate? What physical size resistor? When I get a resistor too hot, it usually makes a small puff of smoke before it blows. Unless it were wrapped in an oily rag or the resistor was unusually large, there's not enough material in a small ( how fast they react ALL DEPENDS on 2 Things AGE OF UNIT all units should be

Yep. However, the problem was not delay time or sensitivity. It was that many battery powered smoke alarms were just sitting there with dead batteries. Replacing the battery once per year was considered a major imposition to many homeowners. To solve that problem, the manufacturers were required to install use a non-replaceable Lithium battery, in trade for requiring the homeowner to buy all new battery operated smoke detectors.

Well, I prefer Kidde brand to First Alert. The main reason is that I wanted a photoelectric detector with built in carbon monoxide detection ability. I also wanted something that would not false on kitchen cooking and my wood burning stove. I picked the Kidde Model P3010K-CO ($40) for the house and shop: Ask me in about 8 years and I'll let you know how well they work. I tested one with a galvanized pail full of newspapers. About 4 minutes for the alarm to sound. So far, no falsing from normal cooking or the woodburner. However, when I accidentally set fire to a yam in the microwave, it set off the alarm in about 1 minute after I removed it from the oven: In both cases, the house was full of smoke before the alarm finally went off.

You might be interested in these stories. The first is from 2007 and is very much out of date. Yet many people still have similar old smoke alarms. Newer alarms are allegedly faster to respond: "Deadly Delay" Notice that the fastest response was 16 minutes. See Part 2 at: Test results Test #1 First Alert dual sensor 18:00 First Alert photoelectric 23:38 First Alert ionization 33:45

Kidde ionization 27:16 Kidde dual sensor 28:50 Kidde photoelectric 29:30

Test #2 First Alert photoelectric 16:21 First Alert dual sensor 16:38 First Alert ionization 42:10

Kidde photoelectric 33:30 Kidde dual sensor 34:30 Kidde ionization 38:39

In 2012, the station continued the smoke detector campaign and testing: The final result AFTER smoke was present: Ionization: 17:00 minutes Photoelectric: 2:48 seconds Much better, methinks.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

At last. All this time I knew something was wrong with me.

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Brian Gregory (in the UK). 
To email me please remove all the letter vee from my email address.

The ionisation type detect smoke particulates, the steam from a venting electrolytic may not trigger it.

The optical smoke detectors respond to anything that stops the IR beam reaching the other device in the sensor.