Reviving elderly BBC Micros

That's a bit over-the-top. But more or less accurate. ;-) The explosion in question is the result of the power supply's mains filter capacitors suffering from perished plastic after 30-odd years. If you run an old BBC for a while without replacing them, you'll eventually get a quiet "pop" and a cloud of evil-smelling smoke. The machine will actually continue to work just fine, but the EMC performance is presumably somewhat degraded, and you'll want to scrape all the bits of exploded capacitor out to get rid of the smell. Sprow's BBC repair FAQ has a section on replacing these, which is quite straightforward -- it's awkward enough to get into the power supply that you may as well replace the other parts he suggests (all available from CPC or a similar electronics supplier) at the same time: http://www.sprow.co.uk/bbc/howto.htm#powersupply Note that the same power supply board is used in some BBC Micro disk drives; I've got a Watford dual drive which had exactly the same problem. Other than that, I've found BBCs to be extremely reliable; I've cleaned up several for friends over the last few years and only found one that didn't boot first time (because somebody had stolen the disk controller chip and not adjusted the jumpers to suit). Don't forget to check your machines to see if they've got any interesting sideways ROMs in!