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A question of scents- Do the epoxy-brick Commodore supplies all share the same smell?

GearTechWolf

Experienced Member
Joined
Apr 24, 2015
Messages
264
Location
Washington
I'm asking because the two that I've disassembled so far have both smelled like mildew/old shoe-polish.
This could just be from being stored in damp environments, or it could be some chemical in the epoxy itself that's released when it's fractured.
What findings do you folks report?
 
I did the one and only example I've done back in the early eighties and I can't remember anything specific about the smell of the potting resin. While I may (or may not) have had some strange habits at the time, sniffing power supplies wasn't one of them, unfortunately...
 
That's fair! The smell is somewhat concentrated as I've got the chunks in an old peanut-butter jar, so any time I opened it to remove the transformer (was keeping it in there for safe-keeping) I got a strong whiff!
 
They don't smell like anything at all normally. I would suspect the ones you have smell like whatever environment they've been in for 35+ years.
Most likely! The one with the shoe-polish smell could have been stored around chemicals, as its power-cord has paint-speckles like it was in a room being painted.
 
Whatever an old tech "thing" smells like almost tells a story about its life in a way.
I've found that iMac G3s will pick up the smell of whatever place they were stored in and then waft it all across the room as they run due to the heat rising out the top vents. One of mine smelled of perfume and the other of musty basement. Both smells have faded now.
 
If you've got a halfway-decent sniffer, you can usually tell that a piece of used equipment has spent much of its life in the presence of a smoker. I can sometimes tell that just from a passing car with its windows closed. I don't think that most smokers really understand how much they stink.
 
If you've got a halfway-decent sniffer, you can usually tell that a piece of used equipment has spent much of its life in the presence of a smoker. I can sometimes tell that just from a passing car with its windows closed. I don't think that most smokers really understand how much they stink.
Ugh, yes. It's luckily on happened to me once, but I ordered a replacement speaker for my ThinkPad T30 and it had that smell to it. Unfortunately it then turned out that the speaker issue was with the motherboard so it was all for nothing, ah well. Headphone out works fine on it, internal sound doesn't come out at all.
 
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