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Old Stock Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor Self-healing



 
 
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  #1  
Old December 26th 19, 11:17 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware
Norm Why[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 114
Default Old Stock Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor Self-healing

This post is a continuation of thread:
"Speaker For PC Internal BIOS Computer Motherboard Mini Onboard Case
Buzzer Board Beep Alarm NEW."

The new title above provides searchable entries.

The service life of electrolytic capacitors is 17 years


Capacitor 'leakage' had got so bad, the system shut down immediately. After
much fiddling, the beep speaker is now giving beep codes, 'Continuous short
beeps: Power error'. This is progress. 'Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor
Self-healing' means maintaining +5 voltage. My NEW PSU does that. I see the
PS/2 mouse glows red.

After 24 hours 'self-healing', it is time to worry about bad caps. One near
the PCIe graphics slot is anomalous. Instead of being bowed-out, its head
has a bowed-in dimple, like it expanded and then contracted. It does not
feel hot to the touch, but touch reveals it is loose. Maybe Electrolytic
Capacitor leakage was so great it melted the solder? Since it looks bad,
maybe it can be removed and tested. What are the consequences? I can work
without PCIe graphics for a while, but I will need it later.


  #2  
Old December 26th 19, 11:53 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware
Norm Why[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 114
Default Old Stock Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor Self-healing

This post is a continuation of thread:
"Speaker For PC Internal BIOS Computer Motherboard Mini Onboard Case
Buzzer Board Beep Alarm NEW."

The new title above provides searchable entries.

The service life of electrolytic capacitors is 17 years


Capacitor 'leakage' had got so bad, the system shut down immediately.
After much fiddling, the beep speaker is now giving beep codes,
'Continuous short beeps: Power error'. This is progress. 'Aluminum
Electrolytic Capacitor Self-healing' means maintaining +5 voltage. My NEW
PSU does that. I see the PS/2 mouse glows red.

After 24 hours 'self-healing', it is time to worry about bad caps. One
near the PCIe graphics slot is anomalous. Instead of being bowed-out, its
head has a bowed-in dimple, like it expanded and then contracted. It does
not feel hot to the touch, but touch reveals it is loose. Maybe
Electrolytic Capacitor leakage was so great it melted the solder? Since it
looks bad, maybe it can be removed and tested. What are the consequences?
I can work without PCIe graphics for a while, but I will need it later.


Suspect capacitor was removed by hand. No change to beep codes, 'Continuous
short beeps: Power error'. We are NOT going backwards! This problem cap may
imply other shorts on MOBO caps. Maybe time will tell; 'Aluminum
Electrolytic Capacitor Self-healing'.

The top of this bad cap is hard to read because of damage. It appears to
have an industry standard purple crescent that implies polarity. From little
that is readable, I can infer it is a '470 uF 16 VDC Aluminum Electrolytic
Capacitor'. There is just enough lead wire left for multimeter measurement.
Resistance is polarity related. Conductivity starts high then drops. Maybe
this predicts behavior of other caps. Maybe 'Self-healing' will eventually
work.

On the other hand, maybe pessimism is logical (Spock?). That would imply
replacement of all caps.

Comments?


  #3  
Old December 27th 19, 12:27 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware
Norm Why[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 114
Default Old Stock Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor Self-healing

[snippage]
The service life of electrolytic capacitors is 17 years


Capacitor 'leakage' had got so bad, the system shut down immediately.
After much fiddling, the beep speaker is now giving beep codes,
'Continuous short beeps: Power error'. This is progress. 'Aluminum
Electrolytic Capacitor Self-healing' means maintaining +5 voltage. My NEW
PSU does that. I see the PS/2 mouse glows red.

After 24 hours 'self-healing', it is time to worry about bad caps. One
near the PCIe graphics slot is anomalous. Instead of being bowed-out, its
head has a bowed-in dimple, like it expanded and then contracted. It does
not feel hot to the touch, but touch reveals it is loose. Maybe
Electrolytic Capacitor leakage was so great it melted the solder? Since
it looks bad, maybe it can be removed and tested. What are the
consequences? I can work without PCIe graphics for a while, but I will
need it later.


Suspect capacitor was removed by hand. No change to beep codes,
'Continuous short beeps: Power error'. We are NOT going backwards! This
problem cap may imply other shorts on MOBO caps. Maybe time will tell;
'Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor Self-healing'.

The top of this bad cap is hard to read because of damage. It appears to
have an industry standard purple crescent that implies polarity. From
little that is readable, I can infer it is a '470 uF 16 VDC Aluminum
Electrolytic Capacitor'. There is just enough lead wire left for
multimeter measurement. Resistance is polarity related. Conductivity
starts high then drops. Maybe this predicts behavior of other caps. Maybe
'Self-healing' will eventually work.

On the other hand, maybe pessimism is logical (Spock?). That would imply
replacement of all caps.

Comments?


The exposed socket shows no +5V, when 'Self-healing'. Maybe solder on
backside of MOBO is damaged?


  #4  
Old December 27th 19, 12:33 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware
Paul[_28_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,467
Default Old Stock Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor Self-healing

Norm Why wrote:
This post is a continuation of thread:
"Speaker For PC Internal BIOS Computer Motherboard Mini Onboard Case
Buzzer Board Beep Alarm NEW."

The new title above provides searchable entries.

The service life of electrolytic capacitors is 17 years

Capacitor 'leakage' had got so bad, the system shut down immediately.
After much fiddling, the beep speaker is now giving beep codes,
'Continuous short beeps: Power error'. This is progress. 'Aluminum
Electrolytic Capacitor Self-healing' means maintaining +5 voltage. My NEW
PSU does that. I see the PS/2 mouse glows red.

After 24 hours 'self-healing', it is time to worry about bad caps. One
near the PCIe graphics slot is anomalous. Instead of being bowed-out, its
head has a bowed-in dimple, like it expanded and then contracted. It does
not feel hot to the touch, but touch reveals it is loose. Maybe
Electrolytic Capacitor leakage was so great it melted the solder? Since it
looks bad, maybe it can be removed and tested. What are the consequences?
I can work without PCIe graphics for a while, but I will need it later.


Suspect capacitor was removed by hand. No change to beep codes, 'Continuous
short beeps: Power error'. We are NOT going backwards! This problem cap may
imply other shorts on MOBO caps. Maybe time will tell; 'Aluminum
Electrolytic Capacitor Self-healing'.

The top of this bad cap is hard to read because of damage. It appears to
have an industry standard purple crescent that implies polarity. From little
that is readable, I can infer it is a '470 uF 16 VDC Aluminum Electrolytic
Capacitor'. There is just enough lead wire left for multimeter measurement.
Resistance is polarity related. Conductivity starts high then drops. Maybe
this predicts behavior of other caps. Maybe 'Self-healing' will eventually
work.

On the other hand, maybe pessimism is logical (Spock?). That would imply
replacement of all caps.

Comments?


The motherboard will not survive your attempts to bodge it.

The problem is, there are two kinds of holes drilled for capacitors.

1) Generous hole diameter used, pick and place machine
bends and forms the legs of each capacitor during insertion,
so capacitor does not fall out of hole during wave or
reflow soldering.

Benefit: Easy to remove capacitor with solder-sucker and soldering iron.
These are a treat to rework.

2) Hole diameter selected for "interference fit". The hole
is only about 0.005 larger than the diameter of the capacitor
leg. The cap is jammed in by the pick and place.

Benefit: Good for manufacturing line, bad for home repair experts.
Interference fit capacitors are almost impossible to remove,
even with vacuum desoldering tool. (I know, I tried at work
with our very nice vacuum station. I spent *two hours* with
nothing but damage to show for my efforts.)

Not many companies do it the (1) way.

My oldest employer was a (1), the newer one was a (2).
The (2) people are "winning".

*Don't* get into a capacitor-damaging spree, unless
your plan is to ruin the board and write it off.

The 470uf 16V is likely a bulk decoupling capacitor
on some rail. The ATX power supply can drive up to
5000uF of those, before the control loop becomes
unstable. Every supply design has a spec for that,
but the value is not prominently displayed anywhere.

Your motherboard can have multiple of those, sprinkled
around. They don't have to be polymer caps, because the
ripple current flowing in them is small. Whereas the
two "banks" of caps (input side and output side) on
VCore, those are high-ripple-current banks, and the
capacitors must be good quality. (By putting a bunch
of caps in parallel, the ripple current is shared.) And
while the odd person will suggest "replace with OSCons",
that's a mistake. The design is "centered" on the availability
of commodity capacitors for the VCore. The manufacturer
specifically did not intend the usage of OSCons.

See the article here, in particular "Series-equivalent circuit",
where the ESR and ESL are mentioned. When they design
the VCore controller, it is designed for "loose"
ESR and ESL. If you replace the caps with OSCONs, you
have to redo the calcs and change some of the other
components. You can't just replace OSCONs based
on a single parameter printed on the side of the sleeve.
There is more to it than that. Pages of calcs to do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolytic_capacitor

Whereas bulk bypass caps (largish caps not near the
VCore ones), those have no special properties. They don't
typically have good frequency response ("invisible"
above 1-2MHz or so). They provide bulk power storage
for short term "spike" loads from plugged in cards.
They reduce the impedance of long PSU cabling effects.

*******

At this point, you really need someone to help you.
Someone with a bit of test equipment, perhaps a spare
E4700 or E7500 to test with.

Paul
  #5  
Old December 27th 19, 12:50 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware
Norm Why[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 114
Default Old Stock Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor Self-healing

[snippage]
The service life of electrolytic capacitors is 17 years
Capacitor 'leakage' had got so bad, the system shut down immediately.
After much fiddling, the beep speaker is now giving beep codes,
'Continuous short beeps: Power error'. This is progress. 'Aluminum
Electrolytic Capacitor Self-healing' means maintaining +5 voltage. My
NEW PSU does that. I see the PS/2 mouse glows red.

After 24 hours 'self-healing', it is time to worry about bad caps. One
near the PCIe graphics slot is anomalous. Instead of being bowed-out,
its head has a bowed-in dimple, like it expanded and then contracted. It
does not feel hot to the touch, but touch reveals it is loose. Maybe
Electrolytic Capacitor leakage was so great it melted the solder? Since
it looks bad, maybe it can be removed and tested. What are the
consequences? I can work without PCIe graphics for a while, but I will
need it later.


Suspect capacitor was removed by hand. No change to beep codes,
'Continuous short beeps: Power error'. We are NOT going backwards! This
problem cap may imply other shorts on MOBO caps. Maybe time will tell;
'Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor Self-healing'.

The top of this bad cap is hard to read because of damage. It appears to
have an industry standard purple crescent that implies polarity. From
little that is readable, I can infer it is a '470 uF 16 VDC Aluminum
Electrolytic Capacitor'. There is just enough lead wire left for
multimeter measurement. Resistance is polarity related. Conductivity
starts high then drops. Maybe this predicts behavior of other caps. Maybe
'Self-healing' will eventually work.

On the other hand, maybe pessimism is logical (Spock?). That would imply
replacement of all caps.

Comments?


The motherboard will not survive your attempts to bodge it.

The problem is, there are two kinds of holes drilled for capacitors.

1) Generous hole diameter used, pick and place machine
bends and forms the legs of each capacitor during insertion,
so capacitor does not fall out of hole during wave or
reflow soldering.

Benefit: Easy to remove capacitor with solder-sucker and soldering
iron.
These are a treat to rework.

2) Hole diameter selected for "interference fit". The hole
is only about 0.005 larger than the diameter of the capacitor
leg. The cap is jammed in by the pick and place.

Benefit: Good for manufacturing line, bad for home repair experts.
Interference fit capacitors are almost impossible to remove,
even with vacuum desoldering tool. (I know, I tried at work
with our very nice vacuum station. I spent *two hours* with
nothing but damage to show for my efforts.)

Not many companies do it the (1) way.

My oldest employer was a (1), the newer one was a (2).
The (2) people are "winning".

*Don't* get into a capacitor-damaging spree, unless
your plan is to ruin the board and write it off.

The 470uf 16V is likely a bulk decoupling capacitor
on some rail. The ATX power supply can drive up to
5000uF of those, before the control loop becomes
unstable. Every supply design has a spec for that,
but the value is not prominently displayed anywhere.

Your motherboard can have multiple of those, sprinkled
around. They don't have to be polymer caps, because the
ripple current flowing in them is small. Whereas the
two "banks" of caps (input side and output side) on
VCore, those are high-ripple-current banks, and the
capacitors must be good quality. (By putting a bunch
of caps in parallel, the ripple current is shared.) And
while the odd person will suggest "replace with OSCons",
that's a mistake. The design is "centered" on the availability
of commodity capacitors for the VCore. The manufacturer
specifically did not intend the usage of OSCons.

See the article here, in particular "Series-equivalent circuit",
where the ESR and ESL are mentioned. When they design
the VCore controller, it is designed for "loose"
ESR and ESL. If you replace the caps with OSCONs, you
have to redo the calcs and change some of the other
components. You can't just replace OSCONs based
on a single parameter printed on the side of the sleeve.
There is more to it than that. Pages of calcs to do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolytic_capacitor

Whereas bulk bypass caps (largish caps not near the
VCore ones), those have no special properties. They don't
typically have good frequency response ("invisible"
above 1-2MHz or so). They provide bulk power storage
for short term "spike" loads from plugged in cards.
They reduce the impedance of long PSU cabling effects.

*******

At this point, you really need someone to help you.
Someone with a bit of test equipment, perhaps a spare
E4700 or E7500 to test with.

Paul


Good idea. But I sold my E4700 or E7500 long ago. Once system is booted and
I can see PCI VGA BIOS screen, I can change defaults. I have downloaded all
Gigabyte drivers and BIOS updater and placed them on a DVD R/W disc. It is
dangerous to connect to Internet with new system.


  #6  
Old December 27th 19, 08:03 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware
Norm Why[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 114
Default Old Stock Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor Self-healing

[snippage]
The service life of electrolytic capacitors is 17 years

Suspect capacitor was removed by hand. No change to beep codes,
'Continuous short beeps: Power error'. We are NOT going backwards! This
problem cap may imply other shorts on MOBO caps. Maybe time will tell;
'Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor Self-healing'.

The top of this bad cap is hard to read because of damage. It appears to
have an industry standard purple crescent that implies polarity. From
little that is readable, I can infer it is a '470 uF 16 VDC Aluminum
Electrolytic Capacitor'. There is just enough lead wire left for
multimeter measurement. Resistance is polarity related. Conductivity
starts high then drops. Maybe this predicts behavior of other caps. Maybe
'Self-healing' will eventually work.

On the other hand, maybe pessimism is logical (Spock?). That would imply
replacement of all caps.

Comments?


The exposed socket shows no +5V, when 'Self-healing'. Maybe solder on
backside of MOBO is damaged?


My error. 'no +5V' was detected because it's not there. +5V is maintained to
mouse, keyboard and Ethernet(?) to support other methods of boot or reboot.
'Self-healing" only happens when board is powered up. Catch 22.


  #7  
Old December 27th 19, 10:23 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware
Norm Why[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 114
Default Old Stock Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor Self-healing

[snippage]
The service life of electrolytic capacitors is 17 years
Comments?


The motherboard will not survive your attempts to bodge it.

The problem is, there are two kinds of holes drilled for capacitors.

1) Generous hole diameter used, pick and place machine
bends and forms the legs of each capacitor during insertion,
so capacitor does not fall out of hole during wave or
reflow soldering.

Benefit: Easy to remove capacitor with solder-sucker and soldering
iron.
These are a treat to rework.

2) Hole diameter selected for "interference fit". The hole
is only about 0.005 larger than the diameter of the capacitor
leg. The cap is jammed in by the pick and place.

Benefit: Good for manufacturing line, bad for home repair experts.
Interference fit capacitors are almost impossible to remove,
even with vacuum desoldering tool. (I know, I tried at work
with our very nice vacuum station. I spent *two hours* with
nothing but damage to show for my efforts.)

Not many companies do it the (1) way.

My oldest employer was a (1), the newer one was a (2).
The (2) people are "winning".

*Don't* get into a capacitor-damaging spree, unless
your plan is to ruin the board and write it off.


The 'bad cap' I found was near the PCIe video slot. My GTX 950 has plenty of
caps, all of which look like electrolytic capacitors. One less cap is not
dangerous(?).

The 470uf 16V is likely a bulk decoupling capacitor
on some rail. The ATX power supply can drive up to
5000uF of those, before the control loop becomes
unstable. Every supply design has a spec for that,
but the value is not prominently displayed anywhere.

Your motherboard can have multiple of those, sprinkled
around. They don't have to be polymer caps, because the
ripple current flowing in them is small. Whereas the
two "banks" of caps (input side and output side) on
VCore, those are high-ripple-current banks, and the
capacitors must be good quality. (By putting a bunch
of caps in parallel, the ripple current is shared.) And
while the odd person will suggest "replace with OSCons",
that's a mistake. The design is "centered" on the availability
of commodity capacitors for the VCore. The manufacturer
specifically did not intend the usage of OSCons.

See the article here, in particular "Series-equivalent circuit",
where the ESR and ESL are mentioned. When they design
the VCore controller, it is designed for "loose"
ESR and ESL. If you replace the caps with OSCONs, you
have to redo the calcs and change some of the other
components. You can't just replace OSCONs based
on a single parameter printed on the side of the sleeve.
There is more to it than that. Pages of calcs to do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolytic_capacitor

Whereas bulk bypass caps (largish caps not near the
VCore ones), those have no special properties. They don't
typically have good frequency response ("invisible"
above 1-2MHz or so). They provide bulk power storage
for short term "spike" loads from plugged in cards.
They reduce the impedance of long PSU cabling effects.

*******

At this point, you really need someone to help you.
Someone with a bit of test equipment, perhaps a spare
E4700 or E7500 to test with.

Paul


Good idea. But I sold my E4700 or E7500 long ago. Once system is booted
and I can see PCI VGA BIOS screen, I can change defaults. I have
downloaded all Gigabyte drivers and BIOS updater and placed them on a DVD
R/W disc. It is dangerous to connect to Internet with new system.


Because of the high cost of electricity and Greta Thunberg, I keep my
thermostat set at frigid. The hand and face is sensitive to radiant heat. I
can feel the heat radiating from the Intel Q9650 CPU, while the systems
beeps, recycles and then stops. Here is a table:

Intel Q9650 TDP 95W

Intel E4700 TDP 65W

Intel E7500 TDP 65W

But more than the thermal design power is what the CPU is doing. Does a CPU
have a 'power up self-test' that draws more power than when idle?


  #8  
Old December 28th 19, 12:47 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware
Paul[_28_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,467
Default Old Stock Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor Self-healing

Norm Why wrote:


The 'bad cap' I found was near the PCIe video slot. My GTX 950 has plenty of
caps, all of which look like electrolytic capacitors. One less cap is not
dangerous(?).


There are a number of items on any circuit board, that
if they're removed, you can't tell they're gone. Bulk decoupling
would be an example.

The further away the next bulk capacitor is, determines how
much ripple could be present on the rail the video card uses.

The PCI Express video card, the only power inputs are 3.3V and 12V.
There is no 5V on PCI Express.

A PCI slot is keyed for 3.3V or 5V, and cards can be "universal
keyed" and run from either, on their I/O interface. Typical desktop
systems likely run the slots from +5V. A "universal" card runs
in a 5V keyed PCI slot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_PCI

There is a picture of the keying on that page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conven...PCI_Keying.svg


Because of the high cost of electricity and Greta Thunberg, I keep my
thermostat set at frigid. The hand and face is sensitive to radiant heat. I
can feel the heat radiating from the Intel Q9650 CPU, while the systems
beeps, recycles and then stops. Here is a table:

Intel Q9650 TDP 95W

Intel E4700 TDP 65W

Intel E7500 TDP 65W

But more than the thermal design power is what the CPU is doing. Does a CPU
have a 'power up self-test' that draws more power than when idle?

The BIOS seems to use wait loops, like while it is sitting in
the popup boot menu, waiting for input. The wait loop runs a single
core at 100%.

Your Q9650 has two E8400 silicon dies inside, and they're
in an MCM (multichip module) CPU package. The E8400, while rated
for 65W, draws around 45W or so, and slapping them inside the
MCM means the overall package is 90W. By comparison, the E4700
is 36W (measured) or so.

Paul
  #9  
Old December 28th 19, 07:09 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware
John McGaw
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 732
Default Old Stock Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor Self-healing

On 12/26/2019 5:17 PM, Norm Why wrote:
This post is a continuation of thread:
"Speaker For PC Internal BIOS Computer Motherboard Mini Onboard Case
Buzzer Board Beep Alarm NEW."

The new title above provides searchable entries.

The service life of electrolytic capacitors is 17 years


Capacitor 'leakage' had got so bad, the system shut down immediately. After
much fiddling, the beep speaker is now giving beep codes, 'Continuous short
beeps: Power error'. This is progress. 'Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor
Self-healing' means maintaining +5 voltage. My NEW PSU does that. I see the
PS/2 mouse glows red.

After 24 hours 'self-healing', it is time to worry about bad caps. One near
the PCIe graphics slot is anomalous. Instead of being bowed-out, its head
has a bowed-in dimple, like it expanded and then contracted. It does not
feel hot to the touch, but touch reveals it is loose. Maybe Electrolytic
Capacitor leakage was so great it melted the solder? Since it looks bad,
maybe it can be removed and tested. What are the consequences? I can work
without PCIe graphics for a while, but I will need it later.



My recollection is that this re-forming of old electrolytics must be done
very carefully if it is to be successful. The old-school method was to
connect the cap to a variable power supply with a suitable current limiting
resistor and to slowly and either smoothly or in small increments increase
the voltage to the rated value. This was to take place over at least a half
hour IIRC. I did it a few times in the past and it was generally
successful. I see no way that it could be easily carried out on a MB with
scores (hundreds?) of caps of various voltages.

Sometimes it is necessary to cut one's losses and pitch old hardware as not
worth the time and money to get it working. I found an early-90s
server-class EISA server MB in my storeroom cleaning and actually thought
about trying to get it working but pretty quickly gave up on the idea. Just
not worth the effort although it might make a good display in a computer
history museum.
  #10  
Old December 28th 19, 09:13 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware
Norm Why[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 114
Default Old Stock Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor Self-healing

"John McGaw" wrote
This post is a continuation of thread:
"Speaker For PC Internal BIOS Computer Motherboard Mini Onboard Case
Buzzer Board Beep Alarm NEW."

The new title above provides searchable entries.

The service life of electrolytic capacitors is 17 years


Capacitor 'leakage' had got so bad, the system shut down immediately.
After
much fiddling, the beep speaker is now giving beep codes, 'Continuous
short
beeps: Power error'. This is progress. 'Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor
Self-healing' means maintaining +5 voltage. My NEW PSU does that. I see
the
PS/2 mouse glows red.

After 24 hours 'self-healing', it is time to worry about bad caps. One
near
the PCIe graphics slot is anomalous. Instead of being bowed-out, its head
has a bowed-in dimple, like it expanded and then contracted. It does not
feel hot to the touch, but touch reveals it is loose. Maybe Electrolytic
Capacitor leakage was so great it melted the solder? Since it looks bad,
maybe it can be removed and tested. What are the consequences? I can work
without PCIe graphics for a while, but I will need it later.



My recollection is that this re-forming of old electrolytics must be done
very carefully if it is to be successful. The old-school method was to
connect the cap to a variable power supply with a suitable current
limiting resistor and to slowly and either smoothly or in small increments
increase the voltage to the rated value. This was to take place over at
least a half hour IIRC. I did it a few times in the past and it was
generally successful. I see no way that it could be easily carried out on
a MB with scores (hundreds?) of caps of various voltages.

Sometimes it is necessary to cut one's losses and pitch old hardware as
not worth the time and money to get it working. I found an early-90s
server-class EISA server MB in my storeroom cleaning and actually thought
about trying to get it working but pretty quickly gave up on the idea.
Just not worth the effort although it might make a good display in a
computer history museum.


Thanks John,

My GA-EP45-DS3L is virgin.


The GA-EP45-DS3L is still a hot item in the marketplace:

(2019)
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard...DS3L-rev-10#ov

(2020)
https://www.ebay.com/p/74075851

(out of stock)
https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813128345

I have installed it in a new COUGAR MX330 Gaming PC Case. All components of
this build are new. The problem seems to be that BIOS V1.0 (2008) is not
comfortable with specs on new parts. If I can get it booted with best old
parts, then I can upgrade BIOS and tweak settings. New Gigabyte device
drivers are on a DVD-RW. Booting up the Internet on a new build is a
nightmare. Every piece of old OS & application software wants to be upgraded
at once. Fortunately I have a WiFi AP that is super slow. Only after things
have settled down is it safe to use a Fast WiFi AP.

The work has only begun. And I didn't even mention the joy of upgrading old
to new, CPU & RAM etc. The easy route is Used not 'Virgin'.


 




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