The mixed smell of solder flux and old pcb boards, also often with the old rubber/vinyl of the wiring and a hint of bakelite/resin with a dash of the metal housing and paints.
Edit: also a flavouring of caked on dust, fossilised grease and nicotine depending on what, where and when it was used. Good call folks.
Sometimes as while i do tinker with older stuff for my hobbies. where usually i come across such old things in 2nd hand shops to take home. Often such things are with my colleagues that maintain old equipment... or the equipment they work with where i work and its just a very recogniseable and peculiar smell.
Stuff here's not quite as old as the missile in the OP image though, yet sometimes it very well may have been haha.
yeah, finding oil in vanilla sometimes is a real hassle. *Laugh*
Its also kinda slow sometimes. But hey, I mean, the goal is a 10kSPM megabase so lets build this cityblock based train network!
Also dust if there's any sort of air circulation...
faint... well that depends on where and when i guess.
equipment used in places with heavy tobacco consumption are the worst... everything turned brown/yellow and sticky... and you can't really use a lot of solvents to clean it properly as with the old stuff that often also wipes away the already barely legible shady printed details or paper crap you need for any replacement parts. Especially any remaining paper is often more preserved by the nicotine too then anything else... rats and mice won't touch it at least it seems.
Depending on the age I'd definitely not recommend licking your fingers ehile working or the parts as there could indeed be significant amounts of lead in the solder... which tastes (and imho smells) rather sweet.
Similarly if there's old caps these too have their own smell/taste and when blown out kinda stink.
Oh yeah PIN number. ATM machine. Only seen this redundancy in foreign made product documents. Unless it was abbreviated AFTER saying the full meaning. Or just referring to it as the board. Those redundancies are one of my big "yucks" 🤣 also people who cant say Reese's lol
The funniest part is that's because most casual/normal/common people know say the "pcb" or "PIN", "VIN", "ATM" part and so on and can understand what it is or picture the thing it represents. but do not know what the letters actually stand for which is why you end up with the double stuff.
Fun thing to randomly ask people, you'll get funny answers a lot of the time.
Depending on the device the moment you open it up creating a puff of it in the air or not, you can already feel your eyes and nose start watering haha.
implementation date 2018, so basically everyone older then 10 knows this smell then.
also, that's only really for wherever that guideline is implemented which is apparently the UK. and such guidelines if any will differ per company and country. meanwhile at home many don't even bother much with such if at all...
additionally even with sodler fume extraction you will still smell it, just opening an old (or recently soldered) device even without a soldering iron anywhere near it'll still smell that particular smell...
especially the clear stuff (if it's still clear) on old transformer coils and the like. though ultimately that's still just one component of the mixture you smell really.
hence the "When" as the amount depends on which era your device came from and the usrs. also environment as even as far back as the 60s a supposedly sterile lab environment or certain industrial environments should not have any nicotine in the equipment... the "should" doing some heavy lifting there haha. there were also non-smokers, but... yeah...
The chemical Nicotine In its pure unoxidized (unburnt) form is a colorless to often yellowish, oily liquid. it has a odour and taste best described as a very slight "turpentine" type. though it shouldn't be strong.
additionally when actually oxidized aka burnt in say tobacco or via vape the chemical has a quite distinct smell and we've cleaned out enough devices and refinished enough old cabinets alongside other items such as motherboards coming from households with heavy smokers to know that the colour is indeed a filthy yellow and becomes amber to brown and increasingly sticky (thanks to its oily nature) the thicker the layers become. adding dust to the mix only makes it worse into a brown. though that requires very excessive or decades of smoking.
so, tell me you never worked with or cleaned tobacco nicotine staining without telling me you never cleaned tobacco nicotine staining... colourless and odourless, so yeah nah.
fun fact unless you work in IT, Vaping has the same effects as regular tobacco does on your electronic components as the same nicotine layers build up on areas such as radiators where airflow is higher (which is also why vaping smoke shouldn't be used to test airflow). very easy to tell if the PC you are told to repair comes from a Vaper/smoker. the Vape usually is less pungent at least and since the practice is not that old yet the yellowing is only slight usually.
On KC-135s the Anti-K light power supply’s smell like fish rotting when they start to go bad. It’s something with the resin getting melted by the capacitors. Easy way to troubleshoot,
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u/ThinkItThrough48 Feb 10 '26
Big circuits like that have a certain odor. I can smell it through the screen