13 Aug
2013
13 Aug
'13
11:11 p.m.
On Tue, 13 Aug 2013, Michael Thompson wrote:
From: Kurt Nowak <knowak at alumni.calpoly.edu>
Just don't leave it powered unattended since tantalums are prone to
burning (and act similar to thermite once they get into the thermal
runaway stage). It would be safer to look for discolored tantalums, but
they don't always look discolored when they initially short. Once I find a
board with one or two bad tantalums, I'll generally replace the whole lot
of them for safety reasons.
By chance does anyone have a Sun 3/80 mainboard
lying around. I fired
mine up after years and it no longer powers up. I first thought it was
the PS, but I replaced it with a known working one from an SS1 and it
still was dead. Any possible ideas would be appreciated.
I bet that one of the tantalum caps on the motherboard shorted.
It is a common failure mode.
If you leave it powered on for a while you will find it.