The computer was ok, but it was basically a flood of cat pee seeping in into the memory expansion slot underneath.

Tried everything to get rid of the smell. Including perfume. Didn't make it better. Especially when it got hot.

Still today, when I smell cat urine I instantly think of Motorola 68000 assembly.

I did not expect to read that today. Or ever.

Ooops, I forgot to put the paste on the processor

The smell of burnt silicon in the morning is what keeps me waking up everyday.

Yep. The specific smell of the VOCs burning off a new Commodore 64 or 1541 brings back a flood of memories of cold, dark Winter evenings standing in the driveway waiting for the UPS guy.

Walk through a library and a dozen different books can all have distinct smells. Perhaps this book was taken to the beach a few times while that that one used a slightly unusual glue. Based on book age and the publisher involved you can even encounter similar smells looking at different copies of the same book at different libraries.

So yes a computer has a distinct smell the way a library does but that smell doesn’t change based on the knowledge you’re browsing.

HN posts could deliver your favorite fragrance for high points articles or deliver something undesirable for articles, say, about Rust (I kid, I kid).

How come I'm never able to identify where it's coming from?

I'd make a candle out of it if I ever found it

Try to sell it, never sell out of it, I'd probably only sell one

It'd be to my brother, 'cause we have the same nose

Same clothes, homegrown, a stone's throw from a creek we used to roam

But it would remind us of when nothing really mattered

Out of student loans and tree house homes, we all would take the latter