New system (Fire)

[Enigma]

Hello;
Thank you for taking the time to read this message.
Recently a friend of mine put together his first bare bones system.
Everything was new.
He fired it up, got a post on the screen and then bang.
Smoke started comming out of the case.
He pulled the plug on the system, looked inside and found that the data cable to his floppy drive got fried. It was all burnt up and a small amount of the cable had dripped onto his video card.

When I heard of this I could not believe what I was hearing.
He went back to where he had bought the case and to show them what had happened.
I felt that the new case's power supply may have produced too much current to his motherboard and devices.
He was told where he bought the case that he had put his data ribbon cable in backwards ! - I have been there before with ribbon cables in backwards and all that happened was that that particular device could not be recognized and all I had to do was to reverse the connection and everything was then O.K. - I think a bunch of us at their first time bare bone construction of a system have done the same.
Could anyone give me an explaination of what could have caused this unfortunate mishap ? Also, could you let me know if you feel all within the case is now toasted ?
All information will be appreciated.
Thank you
Enigma :confused:

[rangeral]

That was a lame story on there part, not a reason to start frying parts, I'd return everything. If you paid by credit card then stop payment immediately if they refuse to exchange whole bare system or refund your money. With those parts you don't know whats going to happen down the road if you try to salvage anything, better to return whole thing.

[vibe666]

the current going through a floppy data cable isn't enough to fry it which ever way round it is.

my first thought was maybe a serious earthing problem, but the more i think about it the less sure I am.

like rangeral said, if it was paid for by credit card, then get hold of the company and boycott the payment, at least until you find out for sure what went wrong. that way if it is definately their fault you won't have to fight for the cash later.

mean time try and get someone independant to look at it (another store). tell them waht happened and see if theycan figure it out. it's almost impossible for someone to know what went wrong without the system in front of them.

good luck and keep us posted.

[Imperion1]

I also agree with the above.

Lets see, a bare bones system means that they put the motherboard, cpu, hs/fan into the case. Did they install any standoffs so that the motherboard will not be touching the case? This could cause problems, haven't heard of anything like this though. The motherboard could be bad, refurbished. Repaired by them so they don't have to ship the board back to the manufacturer for repairs, and then they messed the board up. Motherboard could have been cross connected.
Did they plug the power supply into the motherboard? Did they plug it into the motherboard correctly? This could definitely cause voltage problems.
A bad, cheap, no name power supply with voltage problems could cause problems.
What was the floppy drives ribbon cable plugged into? On the mobo, was it connected to the Floppy slot or one of the IDE ports?