VP6's Blowing thier caps, noooooooo

Blueneko · Post by **Blueneko** » Thu Feb 06, 2003 1:29 pm

InactiveX wrote:I was really asking about the appearance of the caps before they go bad, to see if there is any sort of pattern emerging as to which motherboards are likely to fail. For example, my BP6 which has no sign of failing, has dark green caps with gold markings.

gabumon wrote:did notice buldging caps, were black ones,
Do you mean the caps had turned black, or they had black packaging to start with?

Sorry guys, ive bene so busy, im exhausted and havent had the time to come post replies, and once again, sorry for using up myltiple threads in the godly bp6 forum..

My BP6 has black caps but have not been blown or any signs of exploding *knock on wood*

I Think the green ones with gold lining / letters are a better quality of somewhat?

Blueneko · Post by **Blueneko** » Thu Feb 06, 2003 1:32 pm

O_o OMG @ POSTS

I need more sleep, i thought they were 2 seperate threads

InactiveX · Post by **InactiveX** » Thu Feb 06, 2003 2:04 pm

I think the caps in your brain are blowing.

Thanks for your help with my question. A pattern is starting to emerge...

g0fvt · Post by **g0fvt** » Thu Feb 06, 2003 2:57 pm

I will get round to posting before and after pics of my boards, the capacitors I used are 4,700uF 10v from the ZA series available from Maplin Electronics in the uk.

I bought 100 of them but still have more boards to do... the price in the catalogue is about £0.62 but the online price was closer to £0.07 each, in practice the postage and packing took them to £12 total... enough to do a few boards... I replaced the 100uF with capacitors I already had.

As far as I can casually ascertain the ZA series are Japanese and hence will not have the faulty electrolyte mix...

Good Luck

InactiveX · Post by **InactiveX** » Fri Feb 07, 2003 9:33 am

WOW! The plot thickens...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/29222.html

"According to the source, a scientist stole the formula for an electrolyte from his employer in Japan and began using it himself at the Chinese branch of a Taiwanese electrolyte manufacturer. He or his colleagues then sold the formula to an electrolyte maker in Taiwan, which began producing it for Taiwanese and possibly other capacitor firms. Unfortunately, the formula as sold was incomplete."

hyperspace · Post by **hyperspace** » Fri Feb 07, 2003 10:48 am

This is better than an afternoon Soap Opera!

g0fvt · Post by **g0fvt** » Fri Feb 07, 2003 11:08 am

Seventy Billion duff capacitors...... seems amazing that no-one ever seemed to do any QC on incoming goods...

InactiveX · Post by **InactiveX** » Mon Feb 10, 2003 9:43 am

More info:

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/re ... /ncap.html

This is HUGE!

Post by **Derek** » Mon Feb 10, 2003 10:06 am

InactiveX wrote:More info:

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/re ... /ncap.html

This is HUGE!

Nice find Inactive!

Blueneko · Post by **Blueneko** » Mon Feb 10, 2003 10:52 am

If I was given a penny each time from seeing this problem......
Replace the busted caps with new caps prone to failure?
I never had faulty caps from tyan boards or supermicro.
Now I know why this place exists, if there were no such problem, would the BP6 stand today?

g0fvt · Post by **g0fvt** » Mon Feb 10, 2003 4:46 pm

The plot thickens!

That link was more enlightening than the previous one I looked at.

My BP and VP are happy with their new caps, guess I should look around the house for the next things to fail!

g0fvt · Post by **g0fvt** » Wed Feb 26, 2003 11:59 am

Yes, really 4700uF unfortunately the diameter of the cans was bigger than advertised! So a bit of a squeeze generally.... VP6 is absolutely perfect now, BP has been a wee bit cranky in it's behaviour... nothing new there!

I think the BP will be ok, unfortunately it locked up running Virtual Pc under XP... I forgot I had manually deleted the Linux "virtual machine"

Since then the BP has been a little sh*t..... will post an update when it is behaving again... at the moment it is sitting there defying me... it does not seem to occur to the machine that being that cranky so close to an upstairs window may mean it is heading for a flying lesson......

g0fvt · Post by **g0fvt** » Thu Mar 06, 2003 6:34 pm

Just an update, BP6 is a happy machine now, it seems it was not happy with the order that I refitted the memory, (2 128 pc 100 and 1 256 pc 133).......refitted them in the order they were in originally before pulling the mobo out and it is fine.

The VP6 has been perfect too... all 1000 and 1500uF capacitors now 4700uF....

locomo10 · Post by **locomo10** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 11:04 am

When or where are those pics of the caps you replaced on your BP6?
Thanx,
locomo0

johnli · Post by **johnli** » Thu Apr 17, 2003 7:52 pm

IIRC the colourings of caps are representative of tollerence and (maybe?) voltage rating, BUT it depends on the manufacturer. I have a feeling the green/gold ones are somewhat higher quality than the more common blue/black ones (they look it to me).

As said previously the most common sign of aging is buldging at the sides and top, though they are unlikely to do anything like violently exploding - I've spent numerous electronics lessons causing casings to fly accross the lab and the only way I've found is to reverse bias them (connect +ve to -ve and vice versa) and drop about 30V accross them, then pop

managed to make a mixer (audio) of mine billow white smoke from a capacitor by miswiring the power connector (oops).

So, moral is that noone is likely to have exploding cap problems and you get what you pay for, even with caps.

Blueneko · Post by **Blueneko** » Fri Apr 18, 2003 8:44 am

Id pay to see a cap explode

johnli · Post by **johnli** » Fri Apr 18, 2003 6:28 pm

Well if you fly to london, I'll be happy to demonstrate, quite a fee for something that costs about $1 to do yourself

The only problem is the smell is quite repulsive, especially in a badly ventilated small lab.
The only trouble is its very much hit and miss, the lower value electrolytic caps (around the 10µF mark) are much more spectacular than the larger ones, though I think thats more due to the supply voltage/current than anything else.

Blueneko · Post by **Blueneko** » Sat Apr 19, 2003 8:14 pm

My sisters friends kid spilled soda on thier playstation 2, and the thing woulcnt turn on anymore, (it was the power supply)
the fuse blew, and i wondered why, so i used aluminum foil to complete the circuit, and there was the soda syrup in the coils of the small built in power supply.
well we realized there was soda in it after we turned it on and cooked the two coils on it, smoldering plastic and white thick smoke, it wasnt my playstation but I busted out laughing. was repaired with $10 for new part.
Trial and error, I live by it.

Smoke those parts!

Post by **Derek** » Sat Apr 19, 2003 8:15 pm

gabumon wrote:My sisters friends kid spilled soda on thier playstation 2, and the thing woulcnt turn on anymore, (it was the power supply)
the fuse blew, and i wondered why, so i used aluminum foil to complete the circuit, and there was the soda syrup in the coils of the small built in power supply.
well we realized there was soda in it after we turned it on and cooked the two coils on it, smoldering plastic and white thick smoke, it wasnt my playstation but I busted out laughing. was repaired with $10 for new part.
Trial and error, I live by it.

Smoke those parts!

I love the smell of burning hardware in the mornin'!

InactiveX · Post by **InactiveX** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 8:11 am

The story made it to yesterday's Independent (major UK broadsheet daily newspaper).

They said that the electrolyte formula was originally stolen in 2001. I've had my BP6 since before then, and all caps seem to be OK, although I'm not sure how accurate the report was, having heard lots of conflicting information about the issue.

Post by **Derek** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 9:20 am

InactiveX wrote:The story made it to yesterday's Independent (major UK broadsheet daily newspaper).

They said that the electrolyte formula was originally stolen in 2001. I've had my BP6 since before then, and all caps seem to be OK, although I'm not sure how accurate the report was, having heard lots of conflicting information about the issue.

Can you scan in the article and post it for us? Or maybe it's already online somewhere.

InactiveX · Post by **InactiveX** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 10:24 am

http://news.independent.co.uk/digital/n ... ory=411005

Aren't search engines great?

hyperspace · Post by **hyperspace** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 10:43 am

If you get MaximumPC. Look on page 20 of the June 2003 issue. They posted their initial report in May 2003 issue.

BP6.Com

VP6's Blowing thier caps, noooooooo

Hey g0fvt,