Re: Electrolytic Caps in CBM equipment

From: Ruud_at_Baltissen.org
Date: Sat, 08 Sep 2012 16:32:56 +0200
Message-ID: <504B5718.15674.188289D@Ruud.Baltissen.org>
Hallo Gerrit,


> ... System worked, but I only got a b/w picture.

I just happen to have such a C64 laying around with this sympton. 
I'll have a look at this C90.


I don't have that many issues with capacitors, or more precise, 
tantals. The ones I had lately were all the same:
- device doesn't work
- flash, BANG
- holy smoke of death
- device works :)
This happened to several original IBM boards and yesterday to a 
1001 drive.


Another story of bad capacitors: a Chinese company stole a formula 
from an American factory. What the Chinese didn't know was that the 
Americans were aware of the intend and changed the formula. The 
produced capacitors worked fine..... for only a year of three. The 
weird thing: IBM was one of the main buyers of this Chinese 
company. This resulted in whole batches of the PC300 serie that 
started to malfunction. If you used them every day, no problem. But 
hollidays were fatal. The computer started up fine but the moment 
the CPU had to step up, in this case switching to the graphical 
mode, the PC crashed. We had quite a number here at the company and 
we had no idea what was going on. A friend of mine, a real IBM 
freak, found out what was going on and repaired his own system by 
replacing all the caps around the CPU.
I told the company and now they had some legal arguments to settle 
things with IBM. We have a law that not only covers warranty but 
also covers "reasonable life expectancy". The life expectancy of 
the motor os a washing machine is about 5 years. This means that if 
it breaks down after 3 years, the seller has to replace the motor. 
But you still have to pay the extra costs like the repair man.


--
    ___
   / __|__
  / /  |_/     Groetjes, Ruud Baltissen
  \ \__|_\
   \___|       http://Ruud.C64.org







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Received on 2012-09-08 15:00:05

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