Tools was Re: Diagnosing and Reparing Commodore 64s

MAybe... My expeireicne is that while capaciors do fail (more so in recent-ish consumer-grade stuff than in the sort of classic computers I noramlyl work on), the 'witch hunt' against elecrrolytic capacitors is unjustified. I tend to divide test equioemnt into 'genral-purpose' and 'specialised'. A multimeter is the former, you will use it for many jobs on just about everythign you fix. An ESR meter is the latetr. It is very useful for fidnign a particualr type of defective component, but it's not something you use all the time. The OP is starting out, so I (and I think others) are suggesting he starts with the gernal-purpose instruemtns mad learns to use those. Then he will have a good idea as to what ESR means, why it's important, and how it coould be measured. It's possible to measure ESR with a sine wave signal generator and a ;cope (You apply a known AC signal to the capcitor under test, look at the currnet thrpough it (voltage drop across a small resistor in series), then resolve the impedance of the cpacitor into in-phase (due to ESR) and quadrature (due to the capacitive reactance) somponents. It gets boring fast, which is why there are ESR meters. Of coruse a good measuring bridge will do it too, which is how I normally measuee ESR.It's slow, but I am not being paid by the hour... There certainly used to be kits for ESR meters available. One of those would be aquite a sensible project. Unliek most test gear you don't need a very ccurate readign for ESR, so calibrating such a meter is not too difficult. -tony