PDP 11 gear finally moved

[Local52Mixer at aol.com]

Hi all,
 
Question to the group...not a vintage computer problem.  A problem  with a 
much newer system.  An Acer Aspire desktop about 10 years old.   I'm trying 
to sell it and reset windows (vista) to factory original.  It  locked up'd 
during that process and I reset it.  Seems the BIOS is now  corrupted.  I 
need to re-flash the BIOS and to do that I need a bootable CD  disk.
 
I have tried several times to format a brand new disk and make it a boot  
disk.  Problem is the format option under Windows 8 doesn't allow me to  
click that make boot disk option.  Any ideas on how to create a boot  disk for a 
windows vista system?  Once I have the boot disk, it's a simple  matter to 
copy the BIOS files to that disk and re-flash the system.   Once it is 
started again, I can see what's up with the original Vista or whether  i need to 
do a full re-load.
 
I would like any ideas anyone has to offer.  I have lots of computer  gear 
and need to "cull the heard", too much space and I'm moving soon.  I  hate 
to see a buyer slip away.
 
You can email me directly at _local52mixer at aol.com_ 
(mailto:local52mixer at aol.com)  _or_ (mailto:local52mixer at or)  call my cell...732-530-1924.
 
Thanks in advance,
BD
 
 
In a message dated 7/24/2015 1:18:09 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
tothwolf at concentric.net writes:

On Wed,  22 Jul 2015, Chuck Guzis wrote:
> On 07/22/2015 10:09 PM, Tothwolf  wrote:
>
>> One example I can give are some Pentium P55C  architecture (Socket 7) 
>> systems which I've been running with  minimal downtime for ~15 years. 
>> The original power supplies with  their original (and relatively low 
>> quality) capacitors lasted  about 15 to 17 years (I think the 
>> manufacture date code stamped  on the oldest one was 1998) before the 
>> systems began to develop  stability issues, requiring me to rebuild the 
>> power supplies with  new capacitors. I fully expect that the 
>> replacements would last  even longer than 20 years, however I rather 
>> doubt I'll be running  those computers by then.
>
> Does anyone have much experience with  the so-called "solid electrolyte" 
> electrolytics?  Fvor replacing  vintage caps, they're probably not a 
> viable choice as they're mostly  SMT, but just wondering...

I believe there are a few webpages out there  written by people who have 
tried it. From what I remember reading about  them years ago, they had no 
success when they tried to use them as  replacements in switch mode power 
supplies (no surprise, since the solid  polymer parts they attempted to use 
had way to low of ripple current  rating for that application) but had 
better results with certain PC  motherboards.

I use solid polymers as replacements in some  applications, and as they 
continue to decrease in cost, I've been  considering using them more for 
replacement of aging SMD aluminum  electrolytics. One application where I 
particularly like solid polymers is  for replacement of the vcore regulator 
filter capacitors on Pentium 4  industrial single board computers (yes, the 
P4 is still /widely/ used and  extremely common in that market, although it 
is slowly being replaced by  the Core Duo). The original aluminum 
electrolytics in that application are  usually 6.3V rated parts while the 
solid polymer replacements are 2.5V or  4V (vcore is under 2V).

In addition to long term stability, another  major benefit to solid 
polymers is that unlike aluminum electrolytics and  solid tantalums, solid 
aluminum polymers they can be used at their full  rated voltage with no ill 
effects. The only real downside that I know of  for a solid polymer is that 
they have an incredibly low ESR (less than  0.01 ohm), which can actually 
upset older circuit designs which were not  designed for capacitors with 
such a low  ESR.