On Fri, 10 Jun 2005 20:53:38 -0500, Don Hickey wrote:

I believe a more likely candidate than the PC would be the monitor. High
voltage for the screen requires some large electrolytic capacacitors. Have
you taken any steps to isolate the failing unit.... PC, monitor, scanner,
external drives, etc?


wrote in message
oups.com...
I'm not sure where to post this, so I've searched for old msgs. Please
excuse me if I'm in the wrong place.

I bought an IBM ThinkCentre PC a few months ago (well, now Lenovo
Thinkcentre). Since the beginning, I've been getting a bitter taste in
my mouth and watering/burning in my mouth, when the computer is on (so
I keep ventilation up.. which is not always so easy). I thought maybe
some chemicals need to burn off.. but now I'm getting concerned. I
don't smell anything.

I've called IBM, they had me look for leaking electrolyte from
capacitors on the motherboard. I don't SEE any (does that mean I'm free
in that regard)? They have now escalated and will get back to me.

(My Laser printer is OFF... In case you're wondering about Ozone
effects.)

Any other suggestions?



Many years ago, we had a customer bring an Emerson 27" television in
because it had this "bleach" smell when it was left running.

We're thinking "Yeah, right!", but told the lady that owned the TV to go
to bring it in and we'd take a look at. Initially, we couldn't smell
anything when the TV first came in or when we first powered it on while
she was there. She told us that it might take an hour before the smell
started. So, she left it and we let it run.

Our first thoughts were she must have been cleaning with a bleach
solution of some sort and spilled it down the back of the TV through the
ventilation holes. Well, we left it on for just over an hour and it
started to smell like bleach!

We took the back off the set to see if there was any kind of residue -
nothing, the chassis looked clean. Upon further inspection, the flyback's
iron-core lead had a hole the size of a quarter in the printed circuit
board. It had either not been soldered properly or had broken at some
point and was arcing madly from the lead to what was left of the chassis
ground on the PCB. The burning of the PCB was giving off the bleach smell!

A little copper braid and a little board re-work took care of the problem.
One of the weirdest things I'd ever seen... Glad I'm not servicing TV's
any longer.

Randy

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