It's an Orange Pi PC with the Armbian Linux kernel. Now my main server SBC (actually my main server since it's the fastest).
Honestly, since it was more inconvenient than expensive (both dongles were from my spares box) I honestly laughed until my sides ached. At least I did when my finger stopped hurting from the burn!
Here are a couple of pictures of the corpse.
- He's dead Jim!
- I wish my girlfriend was this hot!
The other one was less spectacular (just stopped working).
Back in the day when I built electronics (i.e. when computers still filled large rooms) some transistors had a form of thermal runaway. In other words, when they got to a certain temperature, their design characteristics cause them to draw even more current and get hotter (and then draw more current and so on.)
I don't know if this is the case here though since I can't be sure which part overheated. I assume it's the RF amplifier since but I'm really not qualified to take more than a fairly uneducated guess.
All I can say is that they were not connected to my machines at the time.
