[OT] Machine won't boot
Marko Vojinovic
vvmarko at panet.co.yu
Wed Aug 20 21:59:19 UTC 2008
On Wednesday 20 August 2008 15:14, Ed Greshko wrote:
> What motherboard are you talking about...and what time frame are you
> certain was the time when it was manufactured with faulty capacitors?
What I know is not precisely for one specific type of motherboard. It's just
that during the Pentium II / III era it was like general practice to put
cheap capacitors on motherboards. Note --- *cheap*, not faulty. This means
that the lifetime of some capacitors was as a rule far shorter than that of
the motherboard, and the outcome was that motherboards often needed
replacement after a year or so.
Some time after, manufacturers realized that this is not a good thing, and
started implementing better quality (and more expensive) capacitors, so the
motherboards stoped breaking every now and then.
OTOH, this is just general hear-say knowledge (some first-hand, I often had to
deal with that situation on a number of motherboard models), I have no
links/reports/technical info to support any of this...
Also, while my knowledge on electronics is fairly limited, I believe that
capacitors are the one type of component on the motherboard that is most
likely to fail after some time. Resistors, transistors and ICs have much
bigger lifetime, in my naive opinion. And the very role of capacitors --- to
iron out peaks in voltage or whatever --- puts them on the front line for bad
external conditions.
Oh, and you can know that a capacitor failed by visual inspection (if it is
deformed in shape and/or has traces of electrolyte flowing out) or by taking
it off the motherboard and using an ohm-meter.
:-)
Marko
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