[Matt]

Hi.

I was fiddling around with my Dual CS 5000 turntable and I touched a piece of wire between the ground wire and this harmless-looking screw, at which point a little thingie (resistor or capacitor or something...one of those small little things soldered to the board) on another section of the board (the one that controls the motor speed and handles the push buttons for the speed selection) gives off a wisp of smoke. Now the turntable has no lights for the buttons and the platter won't start spinning. I assume this is because this "control" board has lost a critical piece in the chain and now cannot even attempt to start the motor running.

The "little thingie" that smoked is orange with stripes (red stripe at top, then a green one, then what looks like some gold ones). Have I just ruined this smoky little thing, or the whole damned table?

- Matt

 

[Mr_Happy]

You just touched a wire? I think you are describing a resistor. Resistors usually look like a small cylinder, usually laid flat on the board, with a wire coming out of each end. They usually have a bunch of stripes printed on them to indicate their resistance. I believe it takes a lot for a resistor to start smoking. Are you sure the smoke came out of it and not something around it? If you have a multimeter, you can check to see if the resistor still has resistance. Are there any other resistors around it that look exactly the same? If there are, you can try checking the value of the one that smoked with the values of the others like it. It might have infinite resistance if its fried. If it's just a messed up resistor you can try soldering a new one in with the right resistance. This is harder if its a surface mount resistor, which usually looks like a small rectangle and is soldered directly onto the board. Hopefully nothing else is broken.

 

[Matt]

...it's a cylinder with two wires out of each end, with stripes on it.

The layout of this board is really simple, like a breadboard. Things are pretty widely spaced, and I'm about 99.99% sure it was this that smoked.

- Matt