[T3] Goin' to hell in a handcart!

[Daniel K. Du Vall]

Do I read right your actually going to repair them 8 year old systems with new caps?
Truly die hard there Jim ;-)

Daniel Du Vall
http://1peter4-10.org
http://volkswageninsanity.us

-----Original Message-----
From: type3-vwtype3.org-bounces at lists.vwtype3.org [mailto:type3-vwtype3.org-bounces at lists.vwtype3.org] On Behalf Of Jim Adney
Sent: Sunday, January 06, 2013 2:22 PM
To: type3 at vwtype3.org
Subject: Re: [T3] Goin' to hell in a handcart!

On 6 Jan 2013 at 12:35, Jonathan Stiles wrote:

> Dells were the absolute worst casualties. We got to the point of 
> sending out letters to incoming student to NOT purchase Dell items, as 
> they were clogging our tech support system.

Around 2000, a story broke about some faulty alum electrolytic capacitors made in Taiwan for, I believe, about 6 months. These capacitors were made with an incomplete electrolyte solution that caused the caps to have a short lifetime.

Since this was 1999 or 2000, I figured that PCs made in 2004 could not have those products in them, but the IT people here at UW have confirmed that the GX270s made that late all seem to have this problem. Maybe it's actually a different problem, since these PCs lasted ~8 years. Maybe the motherboard design is marginal, to the point that stress on these caps causes them to fail early.

We had 2 GX270s here. Both made in 2004 and both showed the same crud on top of the same motherboard capacitors.  

I've got 2 kits of replacement capacitors coming from Hong Kong. The same ebay seller has kits for a number of similar Dell PCs, as well as for some Mac products.

Sorry, this has gotten off-topic, but it has some relevance, since it affects my ability to correspond with the Type 3 list. (There! I managed to ease "Type 3" into this conversation.)

;-)

--
*******************************
Jim Adney, jadney at vwtype3.org
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
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