I popped the side and... there on the floor was one of the little round capacitors the motherboard seems to have a zillion of. Original location, unknown. After lots of tinkering, PRAM resets, power offs/ons, and cursing...it booted. AH! it works! Relief! The next morning....boot up, and. It hangs again. <grumble...and 2 choice words in Algerian I know> Anyone ever seen this behavior, lost a capacitor? Any uber-techs know what that cap may be and where I could get a replacement (Radio shack?) to solder back on if possible? I have some experience there and can probably figure where it came loose...if I pull the motherboard and spends some time looking..
You probably won't be able to get the capacitor at Radio Shack as it is probably a surface mount component and RS doesn't sell those. You can almost certainly order it from Digi-Key (but they have a $25 minimum) or from other on-line places such as Mouser.
However, the cap is very unlikely to be the cause of your problem and is probably just coincidental. If you are managing to boot part way and then hanging, you most likely have a software problem with the files on your hard drive. I would try booting from a CDROM and see if the problem persists. If the machine boots properly for a CD, then you have some problem with the system software on your hard drives, such as an extension conflict or even data/file corruption.
If the machine also freezes while booting from the CDROM, I would then examine your SCSI cable configuration very carefully, as freezing while booting can also be caused by an improperly configured but *almost working* (SCSI is fairly tolerant of errors) SCSI chain. The best way to test this is to remove all your SCSI cables and just connect one internal SCSI cable. Plug your CDROM in at the end of the cable furthest from the motherboard and make sure that termination is enabled on the CDROM. Then attempt booting from the CDROM (only choice at that point other than the floppy, as the hard drive won't be connected).
If that doesn't work, I would try a different SCSI cable in the same test.
Only if all that fails would I suspect the motherboard, despite the missing capacitor. In digital electronics, which a motherboard is until you get to the sound in and out ports, the capacitors are just there to filter the power supply. There are a bunch of them and losing a few won't appreciably affect the quality of the power.
It may be a good idea to locate the position from which the capacitor was removed and check for other damaged components in the vicinity. It is possible that the cap was removed in a motherboard gouging incident and you could have some other damage, but a simple missing capacitor is exceedingly unlikely to cause the symptoms you are experiencing.
Jeff Walther
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