Kind of a strange question, but can silverfish damage electronics
components? A neighbor of mine said that he saw a silverfish crawl in his
old Goldstar television and later that night there was just a bright line
across the screen like the vertical retrace had failed. Or is this just a
coincidence?

Any insect if it has moisture on its skin, can cause a short in a TV set,
especially with the voltages they use.

This reminds me of an experience I had over 30 years ago. This was back in
the tube days. A customer called us for an unusual service call. He said he
smelled a bad burning smell from the TV, and it made a loud hissing noise
and then went completely black. There was only some sound with a buzzing in
it.

His wife described the smell as something like the combination of electrical
burning with meat or flesh. I was thinking that maybe a component burned
that had oil in it, or something like that. In fact, the place smelled like
she may have badly over-roasted their supper, if I didn't know about the TV
failing.

I opened the set, and saw a charred mouse right on top of the flyback! This
mouse probably felt the flyback as being nice and warm, laid down on top of
it, and then it arched through to his body. The high voltage arced right
through the flyback donaut ( coil ) and the mouse just frazzled on to it.

I had to dispose of one chard mouse, change the flyback, horizontal output,
and damper. After that the set worked very well again.

I just recently had a friend who's wife decided to put a flower pot over the
TV set, because it looked like a nice spot for flowers. Some water spilled
in to the TV set! This was a rather expensive repair. The set needed a lot
of parts.

--

Greetings,

Jerry Greenberg GLG Technologies GLG
=========================================
WebPage http://www.zoom-one.com
Electronics http://www.zoom-one.com/electron.htm
=========================================


"Parker Jefferson Sneeihl" wrote in message
s.com...
Kind of a strange question, but can silverfish damage electronics
components? A neighbor of mine said that he saw a silverfish crawl in his
old Goldstar television and later that night there was just a bright line
across the screen like the vertical retrace had failed. Or is this just a
coincidence?

No B.O. número , de Thu, 18 Mar 2004 20:28:21
-0500, consta que Jerry G. escreveu no sci.electronics.repair :

I opened the set, and saw a charred mouse right on top of the flyback! This
mouse probably felt the flyback as being nice and warm, laid down on top of
it, and then it arched through to his body. The high voltage arced right
through the flyback donaut ( coil ) and the mouse just frazzled on to it.

I had to dispose of one chard mouse, change the flyback, horizontal output,
and damper. After that the set worked very well again.

There are some cases of rats getting into PC's via "holes" in the CPU case.
The rat pi**ed over the processor, memory, etc... thus causing problems that
went from "would randomly give Windows errors" to complete "will not boot".


--
Chaos Master® - Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil
irc.brasnet.org - #xlinuxnews and #poa
marreka.no-ip.com (ainda não pronto)
LRU #327480

"Parker Jefferson Sneeihl" schreef in bericht
s.com...
Kind of a strange question, but can silverfish damage electronics
components? A neighbor of mine said that he saw a silverfish crawl in his
old Goldstar television and later that night there was just a bright line
across the screen like the vertical retrace had failed. Or is this just a
coincidence?



Silverfish are usually found in moisty environments. So although it is
possible, I don't think that particular silverfish to be the cause of the
problem. But moist sure can be.

petrus


---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.618 / Virus Database: 397 - Release Date: 9-3-2004

Chaos Master wrote:
No B.O. número , de Thu, 18 Mar
2004 20:28:21 -0500, consta que Jerry G. escreveu no
sci.electronics.repair :

I opened the set, and saw a charred mouse right on top of the
flyback! This mouse probably felt the flyback as being nice and
warm, laid down on top of it, and then it arched through to his
body. The high voltage arced right through the flyback donaut (
coil ) and the mouse just frazzled on to it.

I had to dispose of one chard mouse, change the flyback, horizontal
output, and damper. After that the set worked very well again.

There are some cases of rats getting into PC's via "holes" in the CPU
case. The rat pi**ed over the processor, memory, etc... thus causing
problems that went from "would randomly give Windows errors" to
complete "will not boot".

Mice, not rats; but I had a PC that was missing only a blank expansion slot
cover and the mice made a playground of it. ****ed all over everything. It
got intermittant, but continued to work until I trashed it.

Funny that they never actually 'nested' in there. It was a massive full
tower AT case. Apparently they just used it for a trysting spot. No
nesting material in there, but what a mess!

I just leave the covers off now--of course, I don't have any mice in the
shop anymore--which helps as well.

jak

In article , jakdedert
writes
Chaos Master wrote:
No B.O. número , de Thu, 18 Mar
2004 20:28:21 -0500, consta que Jerry G. escreveu no
sci.electronics.repair :

I opened the set, and saw a charred mouse right on top of the
flyback! This mouse probably felt the flyback as being nice and
warm, laid down on top of it, and then it arched through to his
body. The high voltage arced right through the flyback donaut (
coil ) and the mouse just frazzled on to it.

I had to dispose of one chard mouse, change the flyback, horizontal
output, and damper. After that the set worked very well again.

There are some cases of rats getting into PC's via "holes" in the CPU
case. The rat pi**ed over the processor, memory, etc... thus causing
problems that went from "would randomly give Windows errors" to
complete "will not boot".

Mice, not rats; but I had a PC that was missing only a blank expansion slot
cover and the mice made a playground of it. ****ed all over everything. It
got intermittant, but continued to work until I trashed it.

Funny that they never actually 'nested' in there. It was a massive full
tower AT case. Apparently they just used it for a trysting spot. No
nesting material in there, but what a mess!

I just leave the covers off now--of course, I don't have any mice in the
shop anymore--which helps as well.

I had a PC which had been in a workshop, one expansion cover missing, a
family of mice had made a nest on top of the soundcard. Did not affect
the operation of the PC at all but the case was quite badly corroded
inside and some of the PCBs were showing corrosion but still working.

(no mice were resident when I opened it, thankfully, but it was still
quite a surprise)
--
Tim Mitchell

On Fri, 19 Mar 2004 00:23:22 GMT, "Parker Jefferson Sneeihl"
wrote:

Kind of a strange question, but can silverfish damage electronics
components? A neighbor of mine said that he saw a silverfish crawl in his
old Goldstar television and later that night there was just a bright line
across the screen like the vertical retrace had failed. Or is this just a
coincidence?


If silverfish to you are the same as they are here in England - that
is, small arthropods of the order Thysanura - then the answer is most
certainly yes. I have encountered short-circuit damage caused by their
carbonised remains on a number of occasions; the problem was not
uncommon in certain households years ago in sets using valves, but is
less so in these transistorised days I believe. Silverfish will seek
warmth. Their bodies have relatively low moisture content and hence
conductivity, but one could certainly have caused your neighbour's
problem.

Silverfish have also been known to sink an Hotel; cf. the novel "A
Torrent of Faces" by James Blish, in which a few of these insects
invading the control computers sink the Barrier Hilthon Hotel.

--
ajb

"If the spirit of the ruler rise up against thee, leave not
thy place; for yielding pacifieth great offences."
(Ecclesiastes 10-4)