Blown Tantalum Capacitor Advice

Adrian Graham witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk
Sat Oct 8 13:25:44 CDT 2016


On 08/10/2016 19:07, "Rob Jarratt" <robert.jarratt at ntlworld.com> wrote:

>> A WELL-KNOWN problem with Tantalum caps is that if run in equipment for
>> some time, then put on the shelf for some years, then powered up again,
>> the caps will fail, often spectacularly.  Sometimes, in things like memory
>> boards, you will have to replace many caps. Likely, just the cap is bad,
> if it is
>> on an externally-supplied power rail.  Supposedly, if you were to ramp up
> the
>> supply voltage slowly, it would allow the cap's dielectric to reform
> gracefully.
>> 
> 
> 
> I went ahead and replaced it. The drive spins up now, but sadly the drive
> doesn't actually work, after spinning up and making a few clunking noises,
> it spins down again. I suspect it is trying, and failing, to find track 0.

You're aware of the infamous stiction problem with RD53s? The rubber buffer
that the head rests against when it's parked turns to goo and the head
sticks to it and can't move. Top off, unstick head and top back on again.

-- 
Adrian/Witchy
Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator
Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer
collection?




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