Re: [Nolug] AGP / DRI diagnostics problem solved

Thou spake:
>On Thursday 20 November 2003 08:29 pm, Andrew S. Johnson wrote:
>> My computer has been locking up frequently lately. I've determined
<snip>
>
>Problem solved. Since I don't want to burden everyone with a
>long explaination and pictures, the interested may go here for
>the whole story:
>
>http://www.asjohnson.com/~asjohn1/bad-caps.html
>

I used to work in a TV shop, mainly fixing VCRs, and we had a recurring
problem with a few brands of VCR, which the factory everntually fixed. The
common complaint was that a VCR that worked perfectly for years stopped
working when the user moved the furniture in the living room.

The mysterious cause was not the moving of the furniture of course, but
capacitors that were rated too low, heat-wise. Once the caps dried out, they
could no longer provide the voltage to "bootstrap" the switching power
supplies. Until the unit was unplugged, everything worked fine, as the caps
still worked well enough to keep the unit running, but once unplugged, it
played dead.

The capacitors used in the switching power supply were rated at 85 degrees C,
and swapping them for 105-degree caps fixed the problem, which is what the
factory also switched to, when they finally got around to it.

Oh, and you might be interested to know what kind of dielectric the far east
uses in their electrolytics: fish oil --- really stinky fish oil, once you
heat them with a soldering iron X-(

-- 
Joey Kelly
< Minister of the Gospel | Linux Consultant >
http://joeykelly.net
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