29 May
2007
29 May
'07
5:41 p.m.
Quoting Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca>:
Maybe it's the climate around here (mild) but
other than early tube
equipment
and the occassional leaking one (and the well-known manufacturing
problems in
the mid/late-90's), I don't often have problems from electrolytics; or
to put
it another way, I'm of the feeling the concern over electrolytics is
overstated.
To put it more concisely perhaps, I think the well-justified
concern/experience with early 'lytics has carried too far over to more
modern equipment/components.
other than some tantalium caps that failed when someone plugged an I/O board
backwards into an Altair 8800 (and I had to replace the caps for them almost 10
years after the Altair had been built) the only caps I have had fail on me are
electrolytic caps, the usual failure mode is that they start to bulge and leak
and then fail. Part of that fault may be with equipment manufacturers putting
capacitors in that -just- meet specs or are barely beyond the minimum needed cap
for the application.