17 Dec
2011
17 Dec
'11
4:34 p.m.
From: John Foust <jfoust at threedee.com>
To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Subject: Re: Cheap Chinese electrolytics - a plague - Re: TV -> D-Sub
converter possible?
Message-ID: <201112171752.pBHHptS8082368 at billy.ezwind.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
John Foust <jfoust at threedee.com> wrote:
..."When it first started
happening, I heard the excuse it was a case of industrial espionage
gone wrong where an ingredient was left out of the recipe..."
at the time I heard 3 guys from the factory got together and stole 3 parts of
the formula from a tiawanese factory and defected to mainland china for a $1M
bounty. But they didn't know of a 4th part; the corrosion inhibitor. Without
the 4th part the caps were supposed to little time bombs, slowly eating away at
their aluminum cases. I do know I woke up one night after having a dream of
popcorn popping only to find a ATX p/s with caps going off like popcorn in the
room next door. I unplugged the PC and put it in the bath tub and went back to
sleep. Changed out the p/s the next day and it worked fine.
________________________________
18 Dec
18 Dec
1:46 p.m.
spasticcolin-cctalk at yahoo.com wrote:
From: John Foust <jfoust at threedee.com>
To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Subject: Re: Cheap Chinese electrolytics - a plague - Re: TV -> D-Sub
converter possible?
Message-ID: <201112171752.pBHHptS8082368 at billy.ezwind.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
John Foust <jfoust at threedee.com> wrote:
..."When it first started
happening, I heard the excuse it was a case of industrial espionage
gone wrong where an ingredient was left out of the recipe..."
at the time I heard 3 guys from the factory got together and stole 3 parts of
the formula from a tiawanese factory and defected to mainland china for a $1M
bounty. But they didn't know of a 4th part; the corrosion inhibitor. Without
the 4th part the caps were supposed to little time bombs, slowly eating away at
their aluminum cases. I do know I woke up one night after having a dream of
popcorn popping only to find a ATX p/s with caps going off like popcorn in the
room next door. I unplugged the PC and put it in the bath tub and went back to
sleep. Changed out the p/s the next day and it worked fine.
________________________________
Hmm, one of my customers is Frolyt in Freiberg Germany.
(http://www.frolyt.de/)
The old QM manager (pensioned now) that was in is 2nd function
responsible to some IT related things, contactet me on the phone
and mailed me an pdf that described the problem related to
"forgotten" ingredencies that inhibits the build of H2 in the
condenser trough electrolyse effects.
He was loughing loudly, Frolyt builds electrolytics here since ages..
The recipe of the electrolyte is top secret.
Kind Regards,
Holm
--
Technik Service u. Handel Tiffe, www.tsht.de, Holm Tiffe,
Freiberger Stra?e 42, 09600 Obersch?na, USt-Id: DE253710583
www.tsht.de, info at tsht.de, Fax +49 3731 74200, Mobil: 0172 8790 741
2:14 p.m.
On 18 Dec 2011 at 19:46, Holm Tiffe wrote:
He was loughing loudly, Frolyt builds electrolytics
here since ages..
The recipe of the electrolyte is top secret.
It's amazing to me that in my entire life, I have never run across a
Frolyt capacitor. Until the rise of China and Japan, it has been
brands such as Sprague, Cornell-Duplier, Electrovox, Mallory, etc.
Afterwards, Nichicon, Elna and the other usual suspects.
Frolyt must be very specialized.
--Chuck
3:22 p.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 18 Dec 2011 at 19:46, Holm Tiffe wrote:
That is'nt much suprise for me :-)
I live in the former eastern part of germany and I don't think that the
former GDR exported many of electronics to the US.
Now they are smaller as before too, most of their parts are going in to
automotive they say. Again, I don't think that you have much todo with
german cars, BMW and Mercedes making most of their products for the US
marked in the US.
You can find many of the frolyt caps in electronics from the former
communist countries. Nevertheless, their caps where and still are very
good with the exeption of some mid seventy series of electrolytics with
an white polystyrol or polyvinylchloride housing (they where white, named
Schneem?nner" (Snow Man)here in slang). The electrolyt simple
evaporated trough the housing.
http://forum2.magnetofon.de/bildupload/rk7_drei-Schneemaenner.png
Regards,
Holm
--
Technik Service u. Handel Tiffe, www.tsht.de, Holm Tiffe,
Freiberger Stra?e 42, 09600 Obersch?na, USt-Id: DE253710583
www.tsht.de, info at tsht.de, Fax +49 3731 74200, Mobil: 0172 8790 741
He was loughing loudly, Frolyt builds
electrolytics here since ages..
The recipe of the electrolyte is top secret.
It's amazing to me that in my entire life, I have never run across a
Frolyt capacitor. Until the rise of China and Japan, it has been
brands such as Sprague, Cornell-Duplier, Electrovox, Mallory, etc.
Afterwards, Nichicon, Elna and the other usual suspects.
Frolyt must be very specialized.
--Chuck 
3:32 p.m.
On 18 Dec 2011 at 19:46, Holm Tiffe wrote:
> He was loughing loudly, Frolyt builds electrolytics here since ages..
> The recipe of the electrolyte is top secret.
Is that a challenge for somebody to cut oepn a acpacitor and anaylse the
electrolyte?
It's amazing to me that in my entire life, I have never run across a
Frolyt capacitor. Until the rise of China and Japan, it has been
Now hae I. And like you I must have seen thousands of electrolytics in my
lifetime.
brands such as Sprague, Cornell-Duplier, Electrovox,
Mallory, etc.
Over here ther were also TCC (which IIRC was 'Telephone|Telegraph
Condenser Company' and LCR (who at one time had a serios reliability
problem with the rivits on the connecting tags. TV repairers who've fixed
Philis G11 sets will know that one).
Afterwards, Nichicon, Elna and the other usual
suspects.
Frolyt must be very specialized.
-tony
5:47 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
Don't know really.
There where two Elko Caps manufacturers in eastern germany, one in Gera
(Company was named Koweg = Kondensatorenwerk Gera) and the other was
Frolyt (Freiberger Elektrolytkondensatoren) in my Hometown Freiberg.
(The city with the first mining academy of the world, and the cithy where
the Linux Penguin Plushy came from, try to translate this:
http://www.freibergnet.de/linux-tux-story.html) :-))
Koweg and an Company in G?rlitz made PIO and other Foil Condensers,
Ceramics came from Keramische Werke Hermsdorf (KWH).
We had a trainfold "Praktische Arbeit"i (practical work) in the school
when I was around 14-15 years old.
Every 2nd week there where some work hours in workshops where parts are
made for the local industry. In my case we made some length rulers for
woodworkers (The man in the forrests), Parts for vinyl record players
under the hood of the "Freiberger Pr?zisionsmechanik" a part of The
Carl Zeiss Jena combinate (conzern) and I spot weldet the kathode foil
of axial electrolytic caps into the aluminum housing of caps for frolyt
to this time.
We had to make an test if the hand sweat contained chlor, If yes, the
condensers where bad after handling the inside parts, such boys and girls
got other jobs.
So far as I know there is nothing really special on the recipe for the
electrolyte, but it seems, that Chinese companies failed to get a working
recipe. Don't ask me why, tought the would copy better such things.
But I know that the manufacturers use different soups in ther condensers.
You can smell different things when the condensers are bad, some really
stinking fishy, Frolyts and others not, they have a different technical
smell..(couldn't explain).
I've seen thousends of elektrolytics too, still curios about bad sprague caps
in TEK 7000 PSUs (5V raw rail). Since they had a ugly footprint I've opened the
can and inserted other condensers. The wound part inside the spragues was
still wet and ok, but the Anode connection was corroded in two halves?!?
There are other companies where I don't have good experiences, Roederstein
On 18 Dec 2011
at 19:46, Holm Tiffe wrote:
> He was loughing loudly, Frolyt builds electrolytics here since ages..
> The recipe of the electrolyte is top secret.
Is that a challenge for somebody to cut oepn a acpacitor and anaylse the
electrolyte?
It's amazing to me that in my entire life, I have never run across a
Frolyt capacitor. Until the rise of China and Japan, it has been
Now hae I. And like you I must have seen thousands of electrolytics in my
lifetime. from Western Germany for Example, I had many many bad
caps from them in the
past. Such condensers where mounted from time to time in east
german products,
others where Tesla and some polish and russian types.
Since this, I think the production put out of Frolyt wasn't big enough to
satify the needs of the local industry, which in the other way explains why
you don't evers seen one. :-)
Wan't to buy an old east-german radio?
I don't have such bad experiences with Frolyts, I still have some from before
the fall of the iron curtain and I still use them for repair old devices (after
checking the ESR).
Regards,
Holm
--
Technik Service u. Handel Tiffe, www.tsht.de, Holm Tiffe,
Freiberger Stra?e 42, 09600 Obersch?na, USt-Id: DE253710583
www.tsht.de, info at tsht.de, Fax +49 3731 74200, Mobil: 0172 8790 741
19 Dec
19 Dec
4:36 a.m.
On Sun, 18 Dec 2011, Holm Tiffe wrote:
There are other companies where I don't have good
experiences, Roederstein
from Western Germany for Example, I had many many bad caps from them in the
Also known as ERO, short form for Ernst Roederstein.
Then there is Frako, Frankfurter Kondensatorenfabrik.
And WIMA (I think it's the short form of WIlhelm WesterMAnn)
Other brands like Hydra-Werk, Siemens or Bosch either don't exist or
don't produce "ordinary" capacitors any more.
All of them still manufacture capacitors.
I don't have such bad experiences with Frolyts, I
still have some from
before the fall of the iron curtain and I still use them for repair old
devices (after checking the ESR).
And I buy them new to repair SMPS (PC and other ones). Buerklin has a
rather good sortiment of Frolyts.
Christian
3:14 p.m.
On 12/19/2011 04:36 AM, Christian Corti wrote:
Also known as ERO, short form for Ernst Roederstein.
Then there is Frako, Frankfurter Kondensatorenfabrik.
And WIMA (I think it's the short form of WIlhelm WesterMAnn)
I've seen WIMA capacitors all my life; they are pretty common here.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
New Kensington, PA
18 Dec
18 Dec
8:30 p.m.
New subject: Mitbringen
On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 11:14:22AM -0800, Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 18 Dec 2011 at 19:46, Holm Tiffe wrote:
Hmm, from the names I'd guess that's pure american.
He was loughing loudly, Frolyt builds
electrolytics here since ages..
The recipe of the electrolyte is top secret.
It's amazing to me that in my entire life, I have never run across a
Frolyt capacitor. Until the rise of China and Japan, it has been
brands such as Sprague, Cornell-Duplier, Electrovox, Mallory, etc. Afterwards, Nichicon, Elna and the other usual
suspects.
Sure. How many made-in-the-eastern-bloc capacitors did you see at all?
Probably very, very few ;-)
Frolyt must be very specialized.
Well, according to their website, only 30% of their revenue is from export,
so they mostly sell to customers in germany (and, at a guess, probably mostly
industrial customers at that). Founded in 1947 in what was then east germany,
I would not be surprised if a significant fraction of their foreign customers
was to be found toward the east (eastern europe and russia).
As a general rule, those east german companies that survived the 1989
re-unification as an independent company tended to be very, very good
at what they were doing.
Kind regards,
Alex.
--
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison
9:07 p.m.
New subject: Mitbringen
On 19 Dec 2011 at 2:30, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
Well, according to their website, only 30% of their
revenue is from
export, so they mostly sell to customers in germany (and, at a guess,
probably mostly industrial customers at that). Founded in 1947 in what
was then east germany, I would not be surprised if a significant
fraction of their foreign customers was to be found toward the east
(eastern europe and russia).
In general, the US shunned a lot of DDR trade, but there were
exceptions. Photo equipment, particularly lenses and Exakta cameras
from the 1960s were readily available as well as
musical instruments
(for example, B&S tubas from that time still have a
legendary
reputation). I think a lot of the products made in the DDR using
1930's and 1940's designs and manufacturing techniques were valued
quite highly. (The same might be said of post-1945 Sudeten-based
Czech goods--for decades, they went on using the old German designs
and techniques while the rest of the world moved on.
I was thinking about the amount of Telefunken, Grundig, Siemens and
Bosch gear that I've seen over the years and never having seen a
Prolyt capacitor. I suspect that before 1990, very few GDR firms
used DDR components.
--Chuck
19 Dec
19 Dec
2:57 a.m.
New subject: Mitbringen
On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 06:07:07PM -0800, Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 19 Dec 2011 at 2:30, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
I'm pretty sure that basically all of them did, because DDR = GDR ;-)
DDR = Deutsche Demokratische Republik == GDR = German Democratic Republic.
Yes, having two countries calling them themselves "german republic" just
confused everybody so we did away with that in 1989.
But the above mentioned companies (Telefunken, Grundig, Siemens, Bosch)
were all west-german companies (FDR = Federal Republic of Germany) back
then. They may, however, have used some omponents from the GDR as quite
a bit of OEM production for west german companies was done in east germany,
which was important to bring in convertible currency (for some odd reason,
very few countries in the world accepted payment in transfer rubles *g*).
Kind regards,
Alex.
--
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison
Well, according to their website, only 30% of
their revenue is from
export, so they mostly sell to customers in germany (and, at a guess,
probably mostly industrial customers at that). Founded in 1947 in what
was then east germany, I would not be surprised if a significant
fraction of their foreign customers was to be found toward the east
(eastern europe and russia).
In general, the US shunned a lot of DDR trade, but there were
exceptions. Photo equipment, particularly lenses and Exakta cameras
from the 1960s were readily available as well as musical instruments
(for example, B&S tubas from that time still have a legendary
reputation). I think a lot of the products made in the DDR using
1930's and 1940's designs and manufacturing techniques were valued
quite highly. (The same might be said of post-1945 Sudeten-based
Czech goods--for decades, they went on using the old German designs
and techniques while the rest of the world moved on.
I was thinking about the amount of Telefunken, Grundig, Siemens and
Bosch gear that I've seen over the years and never having seen a
Prolyt capacitor. I suspect that before 1990, very few GDR firms
used DDR components.
11:26 a.m.
New subject: Mitbringen
On 19 Dec 2011 at 8:57, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
> I'm pretty sure that basically all of them
did, because DDR = GDR
;-)
DDR = Deutsche Demokratische Republik == GDR = German
Democratic
Republic.
Only 20 years and I forget the alphabet soup that divided East and
West. :( I must be slipping. FRG or BRD for the West it is then.
My apologies; I do not know what I must have been thinking.
--Chuck
P.S. Speaking of alphabet soup, I notice that the DPRK has themselves
a new head dumpling...
1:04 p.m.
New subject: Mitbringen
Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 19 Dec 2011 at 8:57, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
:-)
No problem, we are all here to explain this again and again to you.
:-)
This remembers me to PCMCIA ...aka: People Can't Memorize Computer
Industries Acronyms...
That's what I can remember, not the original meaning.
DPRK .. Kim Yong Il....?
Saw a picture of his son that now is "The Guy" there...doesn't look funny
at all.
Regards,
Holm
--
Technik Service u. Handel Tiffe, www.tsht.de, Holm Tiffe,
Freiberger Stra?e 42, 09600 Obersch?na, USt-Id: DE253710583
www.tsht.de, info at tsht.de, Fax +49 3731 74200, Mobil: 0172 8790 741
> I'm pretty sure that basically all of
them did, because DDR = GDR
;-)
DDR = Deutsche Demokratische Republik == GDR =
German Democratic
Republic.
Only 20 years and I forget the alphabet soup that divided East and
West. :( I must be slipping. FRG or BRD for the West it is then.
My apologies; I do not know what I must have been thinking.
--Chuck
P.S. Speaking of alphabet soup, I notice that the DPRK has themselves
a new head dumpling...
5:31 p.m.
New subject: Mitbringen
Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 19 Dec 2011 at 19:04, Holm Tiffe wrote:
Hmm..no, so far as I know this should be sound like the english young.
We had North corean workers in the mid eighties in our company..
but don't nail me on this...
Regards,
Holm
--
Technik Service u. Handel Tiffe, www.tsht.de, Holm Tiffe,
Freiberger Stra?e 42, 09600 Obersch?na, USt-Id: DE253710583
www.tsht.de, info at tsht.de, Fax +49 3731 74200, Mobil: 0172 8790 741
DPRK .. Kim Yong Il....?
Is that the way it's pronouced in Germany? As far as I know, the "J"
in Kin Jong-il is a hard, English-like one in Korean, sort of a dzh
sound.
--Chuck
7:38 p.m.
New subject: Mitbringen
On 19 Dec 2011 at 23:31, Holm Tiffe wrote:
> Hmm..no, so far as I know this should be sound
like the english
young.
We had North corean workers in the mid eighties in our
company.. but
don't nail me on this...
I'm going by the BBC World Service and NHK English-language service,
so maybe the late Mr. Kim has a European twin... :)
--Chuck
9:46 p.m.
New subject: Mitbringen
On Mon, 19 Dec 2011, Holm Tiffe wrote:
This remembers me to PCMCIA ...aka: People Can't
Memorize Computer
Industries Acronyms...
That's what I can remember, not the original meaning.
That is correct.
Ignore the jerks who try to tell you that it stands for
Personal Computer Memory Card Industry Association
They were such jerks that when PCMCIA didn't catch on as a name, they
changed it to "PC CARD"!
Now, THAT takes a real jerk to not realize how BAD that name is!
They are far from unique. Consider "COM", "CPM", "8mm
movie"
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
4632
days inactive
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days old
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