John said:
Last year, I was asked to recap a an obsolete and non replaceable
motherboard (would have required upgrading an old system with a
completely new version for big bucks and new software). Several caps
were bulged as shown in this article and the values were low, making the
regulators unstable, but at least, none had yet vented.
Getting those leads out of a 6 layer, board without damage was a real
challenge. But new, high quality caps did the trick and the board has
been back in service for about a year without any more problems.
Happened to my VIA P4PB 400-FL (rev B2) motherboard after around 2
years of service.
Had a bitch of a time finding a replacement MB that would run my
video card (AllInWonder TV in etc).
After trying many other vid cards in one of the MBs, research
indicated that *NOBODY* specifies which protocol / spec the video card
supports (most MBs seem to do that).
Real bitchy.
But i was lucky in that i found (new looking and sealed) VIA P4PB
400-FL (rev C2) MBs and got two.
Bought some chip caps to parallel the same-size large caps that went
bad on the original board.
Despite the 2-year time frame and knowledge of the bad cap problem,
VIA chose to use the *same* brand caps (GSC, one of the known offenders
as well).
Seems to me that a parallel chip cap will bypass those switching
spikes and so keep that stress away from the poor aluminums - and so
they should last a lot longer.
I posted the fix in ViaArena, attempting to use ASCII graphics.
Turns out their system ignores spaces between (?non-alfa?)
characters, so i tried another one that looked like a space in the
source,but got converted to a wierd character; so i gave up on that.
They do not allow pictures so too damn bad; if anyone in ViaArena
wants a picture they can either find me or attempt to complain to VIA.