D.G. Nova update -- crapacitors strike again - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

1 Apr 2005

...
 From: "Jules Richardson"
<julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk>

On Fri, 2005-04-01 at 00:32 -0800, Tom Jennings wrote:
  Well I identified the failure, fixed it, and the
disk pack is
 formatting right now. Whew!

 Another crapacitor -- looks like a tantalum, but it's only .01uF,
 a dipped-looking bright blue axial part, about the size of a 1/8W
 resistor. I think these were discussed recently; not necessarily
 tants, but some short-lived process. 
That's one thing that bugs me about old kit for which there aren't
schematics around - tantalum caps often completely explode. If the value
was critical for some reason, then that creates a problem!

I've started taking lots of photos of any rare boards I have these days,
just in case. Once a cap explodes or a resistor burns out it might be
impossible to tell what the right part should be (well, without serious
circuit analysis and/or guesswork)

Hi
 One thing to consider is that critical valued passive parts rarely
are in a position that will cause them to burn when shorted.
Still, most IC's are across the rails. I've seen IC's with
a crater right where the part number was.
Dwight