From time to time, I come across various instances where the magic smoke has escaped from electronics, plus details of a few really nasty products, some of which are just plain lethal, and finally anything else which looked worth adding to the Hall of shame.
Whats Magic Smoke well think about it, everything electronic contains it, and when it escapes things stop working.
Now, while I have heard about the Magic Smoke for decades, I did some digging and so far have not found where this came from, the earliest reference I could find was from the 1960s, and looking at the can image, maybe it comes from IBM.
And yes, during these escapes, there is usually smoke, loud noise and, in some cases, flames and shrapnel.
This section is a collection of examples where the escape of smoke, or the aftermath, has been captured for posterity/amusement. Plus various other examples of really nasty technology.
Yes, nasty technology; these are examples of the sort of thing which no one wants even to get close to, let alone use; some are just plain crappy, others dangerous, and still more fire starters or even potentially lethal.
Apple Power Supply. This one came from a work colleague who took his MacBook Pro on a trip, and following a storm, the Macbook was dead. On his return and buying a new power supply, the Mac was all good; the poor power supply gave its life to save the computer. [read].
Polyester Capacitor Boom. This mess used to be part of a backlight inverter in some sort of wall-mounted media controller. As for the damage, both sides of the board are burned up, the capacitor itself is just gone and the wall had minor burns. [read].
QNAP NAS. This one is very close to home; my QNAP TS-531X NAS had been giving random errors with its network connectivity; it would still work, but it just had dropouts, etc. So, after it was replaced, the autopsy showed some interesting results. [read].
USB Hub Power Supply. This was an interesting one; it was the power supply for an externally powered USB hub, which, following a loud bang, let out the magic smoke when first plugged in. For this one, the smell of dead electronics lasted most of the day. [read].
Nasty Power Supply. A while back, there was a need for a reasonably powerful laser module, which, after some hunting around, was found, and believe it or not, at a realistic price. So it arrived and was unboxed, and all looked good except for the power supply. [read].
RJ45 Nasty. After working in the networking world for decades, from time to time, I come across what I like to call network nasties, which can be terrible quality hardware, corroded connectors, cables from hell, etc. This is an example of one of the worst I have seen [read].