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.....call from the production line came in - one of the Sparc's had gone up in smoke.

Attending the location I was informed there had been a nasty puff of smoke just as it stopped.

Opening it up - yup - there was a deep-friend motherboard with a strange brown/burnt stain in the centre of the motherboard. Now on these babies the power supply was actually locked into the top-half of the case and came off with the case when you opened them up - so the initial thoughts were that something nasty had leaked out of the power supply.....

Anyway, replaced the whole machine and took the dead one back for diagnostics. Curiosity caused us to plug it in - and the power supply came online... no issues..... thats strange. Motherboard was dead. Buts what caused that stain/burn mark?

Later that day walking through the production line I see the same guy drinking a can of coke. Seeing me, he puts it down on a nice flat surface... yup... the lid of the Sparc (which has vents in the top).... uhmm.... a bit of questioning and he admitted that he had spilt a can earlier - but he mopped up the top of the computer so was sure it wasnt that that caused the problem.......