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smoking hard drive

shine

Member
Joined
Feb 10, 2020
Messages
21
Location
Between Barcelona and Bilbao, Spain
Hello!

I have 2 IBM 5160, one that has two floppys and runs fine and the other with one floppy and a 20Mb HD that doesn't turns on, so I thought that i could install the HD on the working one and use it, took the Xebec and the HD and plugged everything in the unit.

As I started the computer, puffff, it turns off and the HD was smoking, I took the card and the HD out and the computer still runs fine :).

But I can't see nothing wrong on the HD. Repair or buy another?

:(

Here some pics.

Sorry for my english and my newbieness.

Best regards,

1.jpeg2.jpeg3.jpeg4.jpeg5.jpeg6.jpeg7.jpeg8.jpeg9.jpeg
 
Is that black stuff foam that is disintegrating? Maybe the foam was used to prevent the circuitry on that daughterboard from shorting out against the metal of the hard drive housing or computer case, so with the foam disintegrating, it is causing a short-circuit.
 
As I started the computer, puffff, it turns off and the HD was smoking, I took the card and the HD out and the computer still runs fine :).
But I can't see nothing wrong on the HD.
If you put your nose to the board, you may be able to home in on the component that emitted the smoke.
 
If you put your nose to the board, you may be able to home in on the component that emitted the smoke.

Good point!

The component that smells like bbq is this I5D2 chip. I am logging into ebay to search for a replacement. But i cant understand why it smoked on first place. I pluged the HD with connector p11. I did wrong?

Thanks!

Btw the black stuff does not smell but I will replace that nasty thing.

Cheers
 
When I got a head crash on our 80mb CMD disk drives, the room used to fill with smoke !

Where was the smoke coming from ?
 
I was given a hard drive from an old NAS. I plugged it into a computer to see if it was any good, and a black blob near the power socket went up in smoke. I guess the hard drive had slightly different connections to standard, to prevent its use in a computer (although it's just a guess). Anyway it was now clearly dead, so in the bin it went.
 
Hello!

I have 2 IBM 5160, one that has two floppys and runs fine and the other with one floppy and a 20Mb HD that doesn't turns on, so I thought that i could install the HD on the working one and use it, took the Xebec and the HD and plugged everything in the unit.

As I started the computer, puffff, it turns off and the HD was smoking, I took the card and the HD out and the computer still runs fine :).

But I can't see nothing wrong on the HD. Repair or buy another?

:(

Here some pics.

Sorry for my english and my newbieness.

Best regards,

View attachment 59525View attachment 59526View attachment 59527View attachment 59528View attachment 59529View attachment 59530View attachment 59531View attachment 59532View attachment 59533

My suspicion is that the computer power supply shut down in order to protect itself from an over-current situation, as the result of the hard drive drawing too much current. That might happen if the hard drive were trying to move one of its motors but was unable to do so because corrosion, which is evident in your photos, had frozen it in place. When a motor is running it draws relatively little current. When it is frozen it acts like a dead short, and when that happens you either melt the fuse, the motor winding or the power supply. If you're lucky it's the fuse.

The heat from the over-current would melt the plastic, but I'm not sure the plastic is causing a short. If it's that nasty black foam they used in the 1980s and '90s that now turns to goo when you touch it, you can remove it with alcohol.

First of all: Does the hard drive spin up when power is applied? You can determine that before you mount it in the chassis: Take one of the power supply's dual voltage Molex plugs and attach it to the drive. If it spins / whirrs when you apply power that's a positive sign. If it doesn't, find another drive.

HTH

-CH-
 
Bring the HD when you come to Barcelona, we can have a look together.
 
It was more likely a tantalum capacitor.
I see that the motor has a brake. Do not attempt to spin the motor by hand. The brake means that i has one of the older head styles. If you rotate the motor backwards, it will cut into the media surface and ruin the drive. The heads had a sharp edge in the back side and are expected to only rotate the one way.
Dwight
 
There is evident corrosion in the HD so it won't spin at al, I think clh333 is right.

Luckily the power supply still works fine but i'm scared of pluggin it in again, haha

Bring the HD when you come to Barcelona, we can have a look together.

This is very nice of you, we can met next week and have a look at it :)

Thanks to all of you!
 
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