Insect Conductivity

From: John Lawson <jpl15_at_panix.com>
Date: Mon Jul 26 16:40:57 2004

   I lost the power supply and motherboard of my Mac G4 - while living in
India (where I bought it) - I was away from home for a long weekend;
returning Sunday night I switched the machine on - it ran fine for a few
minutes and then there came a very faint crackling noise - the monitor
began doing subtly evil things as I was trying to figure out what the fsck
was happening - then the nasty, acrid smoke started, followed by a
resounding *crack!* from within, and all went black and expensively quiet.

   Attracted by something, a stream of medium-sized red ants were ascending
the power cord and swarming into the fan grilles on the power supply -
turning it on had blown sufficient quantities of them into the HV side to
cause hymenopterous formicidae ionization and subsequent zapping of
circuits not engineered to tolerate 220V 50Htz - namely the damn
power-contoller / standby / 'sleep' chips...


   The motherboard I bullied the local Apple distributor into replacing -
however, I had to agree to buy another PS... it was genuinely FUBAR.


   Cheers

John 'Backdraft' Lawson
Received on Mon Jul 26 2004 - 16:40:57 BST