Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Rocky & Bullwinkle: further on the power issues

Did I mention how much I love Clay's blog?
He has an entry in there for a RaB that presents the same problem mine has occasionally:  a bunch of jumbled lines on the display.  the CPU board is not getting enough power, so the DMD basically just displays memory remnants.
He traces it back to capacitors C2 and C3, which sit next to a heat sink on the board.  In his example, they were oozing their contents and obviously in need of replacement.
In my machine, everything LOOKS nominal.

Nominal, eh?  No one digging a hole back to earth?

so my machine was doing the funny display thing, and the lights on the CPU board weren't lit.
Turned it off and ran my finger across the capacitors and connectors, gave only the slightest jiggle, powered it on and it runs fine.
So obviously the issue is that something is starting to go on the power board.  My inspection reveals no leaky capacitor jelly yet, so perhaps they are coming loose.  Or failing... or both.

Next time it happens I will just focus on the capacitors.  If I've isolated them, I'll just order more and have them replaced. 

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