The biggest problem I can see is the the guy is using a big soldering iron,
I just replaced 10 capacitors in a board I really didn't want to retire
Good for you! I like to read a nice success story
Hi John. I'm posting from nz.tech, I know next-to-nothing about electronicsOn Mon, 14 Jun 2004 22:58:29 +1200, "~misfit~"
misfit61nz@yahoomung.co.nz> wrote:
Vogan wrote:
To the original poster -
As others have said if you have no experience of fine electronic
soldering then best to leave it to a pro.
I just replaced 10 capacitors in a board I really didn't want to
retire today. This thread prompted me to give it a go, it's been
sitting on my shelf for a few months. I spoke to a mate who's been
tinkering with electronics and has owned a soldering iron since he
was 10. He said "Why not?" The board would start to boot and then
die after about 20-30 seconds. Ten caps were bulging, none leaking.
I replaced them all with caps taken off other boards. Some weren't
quite the same specs, I used 1000uf 6.3v in some places instead of
10v ones that I removed. Me mate reckons that, PCs only having 12, 5
and 3.3 volt rails, they were obviously not being used on the 12v
rail and the spec on the cap is the max it can handle so the 6.3v
ones should be fine. Three of the caps I replaced were really close
together and the ones I used to replace them were larger diameter so
I could only fit the middle one flush with the mobo, the other two,
on each side, are soldered to short 'legs' I soldered through the
holes and are almost laying on their sides. I used big caps here as
the ones I removed were big (just not *as* big) and they are
situated right between the ATX power connector and the row of
smaller caps by the CPU socket.
I used the cheapest soldering iron from Dick Smith's, it came with a
chisel tip and a pointed tip, I used the pointed tip. Cost about $20
last year.
I finished the project an hour ago, just had a coffee. Took me most
of the day from unsoldering caps from other boards to putting the
covers on the case and downloading the latest anti-virus defs. The
board, an Abit BX133-RAID, is now running a Celeron Coppermine
900Mhz at just over a Gig. (112 FSB). It is rock-solid (touch wood),
I've ran Prime95 error-free for a couple of hours with it sitting on
the table before fitting it in the case and installing all my
programs. I put a copper-based HSF on the CPU off a Barton 2500+ and
it's running at 32°C under full load. (Case 21°C). I also put a
heatsink and fan off a dead GeForce2 on the northbridge, just
because I had it and it's fittings lined up with holes in the mobo
shrug>. It's in a full tower with a couple of fans, one in the
bottom and one out by the CPU. I really wanted to get that board
going as it has the normal BX-based board's ATA33 IDE channels plus
a Promise controller with two ATA100 channels and RAID option. I
have a few HDDs of around 10-20GB and wanted a machine that could
use them all for storage. Now I have it. I can fit up to eight IDE
devices. It's currently playing a Nirvana track, (My mp3 collection
on random, hooked up to the stereo) and is housing the modem for my
home LAN. Just played a DivX on it, looks good.
So, yeah, we'll see how it goes in the longer term. I have high
hopes for it. It'll be running 24/7, also running SETI@home. The
board is a well-designed and built board, it just suffered from that
wide-spread 'crap capacitor' problem that was going around a while
ago. (The board was made in 2000-2001) Most of the caps I soldered
onto it today came off old P1 boards, good quality caps.
Just thought I'd share.
--
~misfit~
Hello misfit,
Good for you! I like to read a nice success story
especially from a chap willing to have a go.
I had a little success myself along similar lines recently also.
A weird fault in an old radio transceiver. When first switched
on, after being off for a day or so, it would crackle and pop
intermittently for about 5 minutes then come good. I could not
pin the source of the crackles and pops down to any one
area. Freezer spray didn't help me, so I checked every electro
and tantalum on the Tx/Rx board of this 20 year old codan
radio (HF4000). About 15 of the twenty or so tantalums
were leaky and about 4 of the 8 or so electros were leaky
also. I used new tantalums and second hand good electros
for the replacements.
The second hand electros were salvaged from junk boards
and were checked on a multimeter for leakage, a digital multi
meter that could check for capacitor value and Bob Parker's
little ESR meter, so I had no concerns about using the tested
second hand caps. They were definitely better than the leaky
ones that were in the radio. No more crackles and pops
when the radio is first switched on in the morning now.
Speaking of crackles and pops there used to be an instrument
called an "Ionisation Tester" Trimax (sp) made in Melbourne.
I remember using one decades ago to check high voltage capacitors.
This instrument had a micro ammeter, kilovolt meter and
a loudspeaker. The loudspeaker would roar with bad capacitors
or make the occasional pop with good capacitors.
Testing my suspect tantalum caps with a multimeter wasn't
really stretching them far voltage wise but I was lucky in this
instance in picking the dodgy caps.
I will have to have a play around sometime with a low voltage
supply, 0 to 35V, a micro ammeter and an audio amp just
like the high voltage ionisation tester to see if noisy caps
can be identified for sure. Nah! I am dreaming, too many
other things to do.
Thanks for sharing your story misfit.
Regards,
John Crighton
Sydney
That is based on the fact that most products nowadays are manufactured
Is that cheap multimeter repairable if it breaks? Will you spend the time
No, the multimeter was bought as a known throw-away if anything goes wrong
I now have several Aus$12.00 meters from any one of a number of cheaps shops
I think you're misunderstanding the economics behind the cheap equipment
DVD players are *occasionally* sub $100, and they achieve that by using
you go. VCR prices are probably as low as they'll go before being made of
These chips typically dropout about 2.5 - 3 volts. To get a reliable