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California Computers S100 smurf grenades me

I've had several tants go "smurf grenade" on me. In one case it was an IBM 5160 motherboard where the first cap on the +12v line went. Note that those are not blue. Two other events involved Tandon 5.25 inch drives. I strongly suspect that the color of the outer jacket may well be irrelevant. It's just that the blue color seems to be much more common. All three events involved gear that had been in storage and powered off for quit a while. After repair they've been in service for hours with no further excitement. ISTR reading somewhere that brand new tants can go off as well. Some might want to make sure all covers are on and/or wear eye protection when powering up gear that has been in storage for a while.
 
Agreed. All of mine were yellow and brand new. The colour IS irrelevant.

Eye protection advised (good call) or a plexiglass sheet. Or a long extension lead and hide far, far away!

Dave
 
daver2 said:
Eye protection advised
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Just as an aside...a good 10-15 years ago, I bought a pair like these. When you wear eyeglasses, I used to skimp on safety glasses and these fit the bill for r-ball as well as a whole bunch of other tasks including, I imagine, exploding capacitors.
 
falter said:
I always wonder, do the huge electrolytics make decent explosions? I had a small one blow up inches from my face... but it just made a puff of air. It was rather underwhelming.
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Depends on the cap, and the characteristics of the circuit it's in.
Back in the early 80's, repairing a terminal with a linear power supply. The main filter cap was bad, and the little vent plug failed to do it's job.
The entire top came off the soda can sized capacitor, ripped free of the 18AWG wires attached to it, and proceeded to punch a nice clean hole in the ceiling tile above the workbench.
 
Older capacitors didn't have an over pressure relief valve like all newer ones have. I would think that this might be what causes some of the newer ones go bad while some older ones last longer?

Those without some kind of intended pressure relief valve (of sorts) tend to go kaboom if you for example feed them lots of voltage and current with reversed polarity or so.
 
daver2 said:
Agreed. All of mine were yellow and brand new. The colour IS irrelevant.

Eye protection advised (good call) or a plexiglass sheet. Or a long extension lead and hide far, far away!

Dave
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And here I was thinking I was a total loser/coward plugging stuff in from far away. This was how I tested my 1974 manufacturer-unknown terminal - I had it plugged in via a long cord outside and let it run for a good while to verify it wasn't going to eat itself. Unfortunately now I'm at the stage where I've replaced broken trimmer resistors and have to plug it in and see what it does with system board and screen. And I'm anxious about that because no documentation exists, so I have no idea what voltages should be where. At least I know now that hiding is a legit strategy!
 
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