The power supply fan is there to keep the power
supply cool. I'm not surprised that it died
catastrophically after being run with no fan.
In our lab at work, though, I once saw a power
supply with a working fan fail this way. Perhaps
not as spectacularly, but it coughed a couple of
sparks out the back before it quit. It was on a
system that was repeatedly power-cycled during
testing, which I am told is rough on the PS.
--Bill
--- Vintage Computer Festival <vcf(a)siconic.com> wrote:
The power supply fan went bad on it a while ago
(over a year, surely
longer) and I never bothered replacing it