90 Montero burnt engine control computer

[chadnyne]

1990 Montero LS 4dr, 3.0 V6, 264K. Was driving home and engine computer under passenger side dash began smoking. Shortly thereafter, the engine died while driving at 55mph. I got it restarted, and the smoking stopped, but the vehicle stopped running again about 3 miles down the road, and would not restart. I removed the engine computer, and noted that the four rectangular, upright mounted black components to the upper left of the computer (if you are facing toward the connector ports) are burnt up. My question is, is this simply a bad engine computer which i will be able to replace and get the vehicle running, or is it more likely that the computer burnt up due to a problem elsewhere in the vehicle? I just bought this little gem (it was cheap at least) so I don't have much for background info on it, other than that it ran fine for about 30 miles prior to this incident. No service lights or other problems that I could tell. Also, is there a way to jumper the diagnostic port to retrieve trouble codes without buying a code scanner?

[chadnyne]

As an update, I installed a replacement engine control computer, and the engine fired right up and ran fine, other than the fact that it is burning copious amounts of oil. The second time i fired it up a couple of days later, the replacement engine control computer began smoking just like the first. Unfortunately, with this strange problem and the massive oil burning problem, i think this poor montero has reached the end of its road. Time to call the wrecker. at 264k, you cant say it didn't lead a long and full life.