Not quite the same since my situation was my fault, but your story reminds me of a $5 garage sale computer that was smoking. It had a non-working hard drive. I unscrewed the hard drive from the case but did not disconnect its cables, and I placed it on top of the power supply unit. I turned the computer back on to run a test, and either the power supply or the hard drive started smoking. Not knowing and not wanting to know if I had fried the power supply, I threw the whole computer away.

Jeanette Isabelle
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I'm not sure whose twisted idea it was to put hundreds of adolescents in underfunded schools run by people whose dreams were crushed years ago, but I admire the sadism. -- Wednesday Adams, Wednesday