David_M
Veteran Member
Along with the 5170 I picked up on the weekend I also got 3 XT clones and a number of XT and 286 motherboards.
One of the 286 clone boards has a socketed Dallas RTC, so no battery leak damage and easy to modify to use an external battery. I thought great an easy repair.
That thought was short lived because when I powered it up the power supply went into overload shutdown. Now I'm thinking of all the effort it is going to take to find the faulty component.
I pondered that dilemma for a few minutes and then a heard a loud crack and saw a flash of light near the motherboards power connector. It seems I had neglected to turn off the power supply.
Shortly after that loud crack I heard a beep from the speaker, looking up at the monitor I saw the Award BIOS startup screen.
So I switched off the power supply and examined the area of the board that seemed to be the source of that crack and flash, my short investigation revealed the remains of a tantalum capacitor.
I had no idea what value that capacitor used to be but the 15 other tantalum cps on the board are all 10uF 16v. I ordered a bunch of new capacitors and plan to replace them all, but for now the board works happily without the caps near the power connector.
So thank you exploding capacitor you made the repair quick and easy.
One of the 286 clone boards has a socketed Dallas RTC, so no battery leak damage and easy to modify to use an external battery. I thought great an easy repair.
That thought was short lived because when I powered it up the power supply went into overload shutdown. Now I'm thinking of all the effort it is going to take to find the faulty component.
I pondered that dilemma for a few minutes and then a heard a loud crack and saw a flash of light near the motherboards power connector. It seems I had neglected to turn off the power supply.
Shortly after that loud crack I heard a beep from the speaker, looking up at the monitor I saw the Award BIOS startup screen.
So I switched off the power supply and examined the area of the board that seemed to be the source of that crack and flash, my short investigation revealed the remains of a tantalum capacitor.
I had no idea what value that capacitor used to be but the 15 other tantalum cps on the board are all 10uF 16v. I ordered a bunch of new capacitors and plan to replace them all, but for now the board works happily without the caps near the power connector.
So thank you exploding capacitor you made the repair quick and easy.