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Power Supply: Before and After

M

mbbrutman

Associate Cat Herder
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May 3, 2003
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I adopted another PC this past week - the source will remain nameless. :) This one was a rescue and needed a bit of cleaning. The inside of the machine looked decent for it's age. I took apart the full height Tandon drives and gave them a thorough cleaning and lubrication.

Powering up was uneventful, except for a nasty noise from the power supply. It was the kind of fluttering noise you get from a fan when the blades are loaded with something. It was loud and not happy sounding. Peering into it I decided that I needed to get at the fan for a good cleaning. This is what I found:

2008_0606_201142_power_supply_dirty.jpg


Ugh ..

This is what it looks like now:

2008_0606_203232_power_supply_clean.jpg


And of course, it's so quiet now that you have to put your hand on the exhaust vent to feel for the airflow. :)

(For anybody else tempted to try this - I don't normally open power supplies. I'm scared of big fat capacitors. You should be too.)

The rest of the PC was fairly normal. Oct 1982 BIOS, two full height Tandon drives, monochrome adapter, 5151 display, and an AST multi-function card to bring the memory up to 640. The only change will be to put an Ethernet adapter in it.
 
Nice!

Nice!

Nice find & clean-up mbbrutman!

One of these days I would like to acquire a "real" IBM PC. Never had one, never used one either, but always thought they were cool.
 
It was Erik's find actually ... this was the PC that was on the marketplace for the past two months. It keep looking at me. I waited for a while so that somebody else would have a chance, and finally i cracked and bought it.

Erik needed the space back in his garage. Trust me ... :)
 
I've found the same sooty dirt inside PC power supplies. I think it's from cigarette smoke. The tar in the smoke sticks to the components inside the power supply, and then dust sticks to the tar.

I remember buying a new 360K floppy drive way back around 1991 or so, to replace the worn-out one in my IBM Portable PC. The workers in the factory must have been chain smokers, because when I first took it out of its original sealed static-proof bag, it reeked of cigarette smoke.
 
mbbrutman said:
It was Erik's find actually ... this was the PC that was on the marketplace for the past two months. It keep looking at me. I waited for a while so that somebody else would have a chance, and finally i cracked and bought it.

Erik needed the space back in his garage. Trust me ... :)
Click to expand...

Hehe. I do indeed need the space.

That's one heck of a cleanup!

Glad it got there in one piece!
 
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