Coming from the hardware side, I was never smart enough to figure out where those chip manufactures found that magic smoke they put in those chips. I was smart enough to figure out that once you let it out they don't work so well.

Jeff

>This weekend I had my first experience with blowing up a printer.
>
>I picked up an Epson FX-880 dot matrix to replace an old one at my brother's newspaper business in Alabama. They still use it for special-format printing needs for their subscription mailing system, and the old printer had lapsed into intermittent beeping, sometimes for up to 10 minutes before printing a few more characters.
>
>Late Saturday night I arrived, opened up the box, and found the packing materials crushed, the tractor feed bent, and the case cracked in several places, with small bits of plastic scattered throughout the box.
>
>But we had a deadline, so I un-bent the tractor feed, verified that the printer head was movable, and saw no apparent problems, other than cosmetic.
>
>I plugged it in, and a few seconds later heard a "snap, crackle, pop" and saw a horrible-smelling puff of smoke come out the back.
>
>It was really pretty cool!
>
>After swapping the printer to a different computer, we managed to coax (not coax) the old printer into one more print job, which it miraculously completed before reverting into a catatonic state of continuous beeping.
>
>Of course, this was the only FX-880 on the shelf at CompUSA, so I'll be back there today demanding that they air-freight an immediate replacement.