@stephen Most things are powered by blue smoke. When the blue smoke escapes, things stop working.

@stephen some friends and I may have done just that in our computer club in high school...who knew a random amalgamation of scrabbled together computer parts could go oh so wrong? 😅

We were no longer allowed to meet without teacher supervision and a fire extinguisher going forward.

@stephen #MagicSmoke

@stephen Every machine can be a smoke machine. Once.

@stephen
#inspirational

@stephen CC @SirTux

@stephen @katzenschiff But only once...

@stephen

A lever?

@stephen wrongly 😉

@stephen be aware that Canada has a different voltage from Europe. So if something returns from repairs in Canada, it could be that it becomes a smoking machine if you don’t check the voltage of the power supply.

It was in the 1990s and I’m still a bit traumatized.

@stephen
OMG, the struggle is real

@stephen Dividing by zero does that

@stephen
PCBs are driven by steam. If the steam escapes - the device stopps working.

@stephen i like the more general "special effects machine"

@stephen You’re a tester?

@stephen As I found out the hard way one time by connecting my tower PC to an electrical outlet powered by a gas generator. Do not do this! At the very least, you'll be left w/ a very heavy and large paperweight or doorstop.

@stephen I found this out the hard way last week by installing a motherboard wrong and it shorted out on the case because I'd accidentally scraped off part of the mask in the process.

Fortunately no other components were injured in the process

@stephen well this just made warm coffee come out my nose .
Time to warm it up and start making breakfast .
This was the best laugh

@stephen Ages ago, a colleague of mine took a NAM server to Europe for installation
Prior to turning it on, he jokingly referred to the next step as the « smoke test »
In those days, the power supply had a switch for 110-220v (« convenienly » located at the back)and he had forgotten to activate 220v after arriving
It produced smoke and died.
We had to take a power supply for a similar model and expedite it over to Amsterdam

@stephen When working on hardware projects I had a college professor that would always say "Don't let the smoke out".

@stephen What's pretty funny is that if some Chinese company starts to build your GPLed boards they don't always change things at all. So suddenly thousands of boards are sold with little messages like that 🙂