WTF happened to kill BH6?

[markedmundb]

Yestrday afternoon, I was trying to get my retired (i.e. Sitting in an ESD Bag with Silica gel packet in a dawer) Wd 1.6Gb HDD to spring back into life. I wanted to install Linux, and have a play with QNX without affecting my Windows setup.

It would boot, but then not Autodetect the Disk. I went into the BIOS, just to check to see if the BIOS would Autodetect from the option within the BIOS After restarting the machine it whirred up all the disk and fans and made a hollow popping noise. The smell of burning electronic components filled the air... BUGGER I thought, frantically trying to switch the PC off.

I swapped the Disk back for my IBM (main disk), fired it up, and it whirred into life (i.e. HDD/FDD spin-up, all fans spinning), but didn't POST. "Oh S***, I've killed me Celery!" methought. Swapped the Celery for my old pII 400. Whirred up and didn't post.

On close inspection of the compos on the board, one of the squre black ceramic squares with silver legs sticking out the side ( The one closest to the rear of the case- # "42" stamped into it, I think) has a small hole with a silver bit sticking out.

My Question to any Electronics Bods are:

What is the black ceramic thing?
What does it do?
Could any other components be damaged by that thing dying.

Questoion to anyone:

What slot 1 board should I get to replace it. Bearing in mind, that I'm after a DDR athlon ssystem later in the year, and I've got very liitle funds to cover a new board.

I've seen an EPOX ep6-VBA2 board for ~£70 (from one of my prefered suppliers). Don't wanna spend more than £75 on a new board.

My old system consisted of:

Abit BH6 (dead, unfortunately) celeron 566 @850 @1.85V, I will Slocket, Alpha Pep66, 2 Sticks 128Mb PC100 RAM, SCSI card, Aureal Sound, GF2 w/64Mb, Diamond Internal PCI Modem IDE DVD, and 14 & 30 Gb IBM HDDs, a SCSI CD toaster, and 2Gb SCSI Barracuda HardDisk.
All this inside an Aopen HX08 Full tower case with 4x 80mm Fans and 2x60mm Above the ATX Plate.

 

[markedmundb]

[4]*UPDATE*[/4]

Attached is a pic of the knackered mobo sub-compo.

I've circled the hole. Now that shouldn't be there, right?
What is the black ceramic thing?
What does it do?
Could any other components be damaged by that thing dying.


Please, please, please reply to the above post!

What cheapo-decento Mobo, also?

The Epox is out of stock at the price I'm willing to pay..

I can see 30 of you have been reading this, but no replies so far. Hope the pic helps (A bit blurry, but then my digicam only does 640x480).

 

[Tim-]

I don't have a BH6 or manual to look at- can you get the number from it? It is an integrated circuit, but what part it plays I have no idea. Typically they only crater like that when they are over-voltaged, or once in a while with driver type devices if the outputs are shorted.

If it got over-voltaged, most other chips on that DC bus COULD have been affected. Some types are more tolerant than others, but transient damage may not show up for some time, even if they did work initially. Anyone who has worked on lightning damaged equipment can attest to that! In some cases, internal devices may become leaky and fail over time due to increased dissipation.

Odds are that it will never be right, and replacement of that IC would be difficult, even if a replacement could be obtained, unless you have access to a hot-air soldering station.

Don't you hate it when that happens?

 

[markedmundb]

View the attachment to see what's on the top of the component.

The Grey circle between the "53" and "25" represents an indent stamped in the plastic/ceramic. The one with the hole in it has the number "42" stamped into it. The other one (without hole) has the number "41" stamped in it.

P.s. Only the two outer 'legs' (grey bits at the bottom) are attached to the mobo.