My first computer was a c64. As a teenager in rural Ireland when my power supply failed it was going to take months to get a new one. I opened up the case and saw the whole insides encased in resin. So with a hammer and screwdriver I started to chip away at the resin until I exposed low voltage dc pins and tested which delivered which voltage etc. I next stole the ac transformer for our doorbell which I remembered had a way to reduce the number of turns and therefore the voltage. Then made a simple rectifier to change it to dc and soldered it to the pins.

Turned on the c64, there was a bang, and a small thick cloud of smoke rose from the back of the machine.

But! It worked and I could play Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge again until the new power supply arrived.

Never did figure out what the smoke came from. I guess a blown capacitor.

Woah. I've never before heard of a case of the magic smoke leaving a device and it still working afterwards.

Striking similarities between 80's trucks and 80's PCs.

I couldn't believe it!

Heh. Rural Canada here, growing up. Tried to fix one myself, same reason, hard to get.

Ran into the resin, gave up, but your story made me laugh, and brought back a picture, in my mind, of that resin.

Thanks

Seems like implementation would be pretty hard to validate with the whole lot encased in epoxy!