HP ScanJet ADF

Close call. The problem turned out to be a shorted SMD bypass capacitor, not a tantalum. I've seen thru-hole tantalums fail in the past, but I haven't had much experience with SMD repair (until now). I checked the capacitor after removal to be sure that it wasn't just a solder problem, but it was in fact shorted! Fortunately, I was able to salvage the two other SMD parts, one SO-8 and one P-DSO-24-3, which I had also removed in order to verify that they were not the cause of the short. I had considered just cutting the legs to remove them, but used a pointed scriber to lift the legs instead. After cleaning the solder off of both the board and the legs, and then straightening the legs back to the proper pitch and height, I was able to replace them onto the PCB ok. After putting the PCB back into the ADF and hooking it all together, the scanner now operates properly with the ADF -- woohoo!!! I guess that I just saved some more space in a landfill somewhere for someone elses ADF unit, because HP won't sell parts for these units. Imagine what HP will do with anything that Compaq managed to save from DEC (though I don't imagine that would be much)... Thanks for everyone's advice! --tom At 06:32 PM 5/31/02 +0100, you wrote: