When a power supply dies

I have heard stories about dying power supplies in PCs, and the weirdness that comes when one is ready to go. This morning the power supply in the PC on my desk died, and it tried to give me some indication, but only when it finally quit did I understand.

I powered on the system and waited for it to come up. It turned itself off again. I tried to power it on again and it did it again. Thinking perhaps the power cord was loose, I adjusted it and turned it back on. This time it came on and stayed up when I logged in. However, about 15 minutes after I logged in, there was an enormous POP like a gunshot, and the screen went black. There was the smell of burning chemicals as well, and I immediately unplugged the PC.

I removed the old power supply and dropped in a spare. It came up immediately. I decided to take apart the old power supply, and what I found was that a capacitor inside had exploded.

This was a new one on me.

iPod Weirdness

When I plug my iPod into the computer, sometimes it shows up as an external hard drive to which I can write and retrieve files. At other times, it is on there as a device that interats with iTunes only and does not appear as a storage device.

This does not bother me, but it puzzles me. Why is it sometimes appearing in the drive list, and other times not?