On Mon, 14 May 2007 03:40:27 -0500, wrote:


A while back I bought a used 500mhz computer on Ebay. (that was my
big mistake). When I got it, it worked well, except for the floppy
drive. I contacted the seller immediately and he sent me another
floppy drive to replace the bad one. I replaced the drive and turned
it on. It worked fine but since I wanted to add another harddrive (as
soon as I got one), I left the cover off the case. That turned out to
be a good thing, because I was sitting at my desk on the web when I
noticed a hot burnt odor. Then I saw smoke. I looked at the computer
and saw smoke coming off the motherboard. There are these donut
looking things on the board. They look like a white lifesaver candy

Many many motherboards from that era had bad caps. Did you examine the
caps for bulging and/or leaking?