Gah! I know what I did wrong. I just re-read over my initial post and realised i'd made a horrible mistake...

The machine was switched off IMMEDIATELY after the first smell of burning and was not as excessive as I made it sound, mostly a strong smell and maybe a whisp of smoke before power off. The next test for a SCSI boot was conducted 48 hours afterward.

Conducting such tests on a carpetted floor in a house is indeed foolish. That's why we have an electronics workshop at the high school for such tests, emergency isolators, surge protectors, etc... where this was conducted along with other electronics projects.

Finally, and this is the part I must enforce is that I did not post here looking for cheers of support for what seemed like foolish activity, I did however want to put forward just how strong these really are. I've never had any other motherboard do the same and still work, perhaps I got lucky this one time but I do still find it interesting that it still works and is still usable (albeit with the Heathrow ATA controller removed).

Now if we still have issues with my post afterward, there's clearly no hope and i'll leave you all to your posting.