24 Feb
2015
24 Feb
'15
8:14 a.m.
On Mon, 23 Feb 2015, Noel Chiappa wrote:
You've missed many past debates. Some would put a typical Emacs vs vi
discussion to shame ;)
From: Tothwolf
I've seen pushback from some people in the
vintage computing community
to wholesale replacement of aluminum electrolytics which are long past
their life expectancy and I just don't get it.
Well, notice you didn't cause a big debate on the topic to break out
here, as we often get on some of these things (e.g. crimping versus
soldering, etc).
My _guess_ is that vintage computer people aren't very 'religious' about
it, and to the extent that they _don't_ do it, it's as much because they
don't have the parts on hand (or the ability to find them easily), plus
the work involved, as anything else. For those of us who are basically software people (or
even pure
digital), this stuff can be a little daunting - not necessarily because
it's actually hard, it's just out of our comfort zone. I myself am
certainly daunted by the concept of replacing every electrolytic in all
the power supplies of all the vintage -11's I've got... (And I don't
want to even think about all the filter caps on all the boards! :-)
Maybe you (or someone) should offer a service... I'd sign up! :-)
I don't think taking on additional projects would be a very good idea for
me anytime in the near future. The hard part however, really is cross
referencing older parts to modern replacements. I can help find part
numbers for modern parts using my notes from past projects though. With
aluminum electrolytics, I've kept my notes each time I've sourced
replacements in recent years and have quite a lot of information on hand
(although not in an easily parsable format).