> I remember now something in a cloudy corner > of my brain about Pluses not supplying sufficient term power.
Since the Plus supplies *zero* termination power to the external scsi port, it's definitely not sufficient. :-) If the external drive does not provide termination power, the Plus will just hate it. > but does anyone have = > any > scientific explanation as to why something like this would render a dead > motherboard functional again? I have my SE/30 motherboard right now on > "pots and pans" setting in the dishwasher and the people around here are > starting to question my sanity. The short explanation: Dirty board, bad. Clean board, good. More detail: The electrolytic capacitors on many computers (not just the classic all-in-ones, by the way) are ultra cheesy. After a few years, powered up or not, they begin to leak. Not electrically; I mean chemically. They start to ooze a conductive slime that starts shorting things together (and eating away pc board traces). Washing gets rid of the residue, but it does nothing to heal the capacitors (or restore the eaten metal). So, the caps might continue to ooze, forcing you to repeat the ritual, assuming that enough pc board interconnect remains to keep things going. If you want to fix things more permanently, have a lot of time that you don't value, and don't mind soldering, you can replace those caps with tantalum ones. Tantalums have other problems, but seepage of goo isn't one of them. If a tantalum fails, it usually shorts out completely (sometimes acting like a mini cherry bomb, depending on the power supply's testosterone level). None of this namby-pampy halfway working stuff to keep you guessing. Most of the caps in question are just "power supply bypass" caps, meaning that their job is to keep the voltage steady during transients. There's enough overkill in the design that you can afford to lose a good many of them before there's a real problem. That's why washing often does the trick by itself. --Cheers, Tom -- Prof. Thomas H. Lee Center for Integrated Systems, CIS-205 420 Via Palou Mall Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305-4070 http://www-smirc.stanford.edu 650-725-3709 voice, -3383 fax -- Compact Macs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/>. Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> Compact Macs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/compact.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive:<http://www.mail-archive.com/compact.macs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> --------------------------------------------------------------- >The Think Different Store http://www.ThinkDifferentStore.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
