On 8 Jul 2006 at 21:13, Gaffer wrote: > It might help to understand why capacitors, in particular Electrolytic > ones fail, possibly more than any other electronic component. > Particularly on mainboards.
Can't tell you exactly why they fail suddenly. Electrolytics have been around for a long time, since the first radio or power supply. Thy use an electroyte, as the name implies, which can "go bad" due to constant heat, or bad electrolyte, or usage times of all equipment has increased. At one time, people listened to the radio or watched TV for a couple of hours a day. Now equipemnet is on all the time (see my other post). All the equipment is designed to work only a few days longer, than the warranty period. Even if all else was fine ie. desing for cont use and correct ambient, there's a suggesting on the net, that the Orientals (Chinese) ripped off the electrolyte formula, but never got it right. I first became aware of this problem in late 1990's, when the mobo I have was reported to suffer from cap failure. Later it came up in other stuff, like DVD players, etc. It may be a bad formula, or a combination of above factors. There's a plague - read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague http://www.mrsci.com/Motherboard/Capacitor_plague.php http://www.siliconchip.com.au/cms/A_30328/article.html There was a webpage decicated just to this problem, but do not have it handy. Rich -- ---------------------------------------- The WIN-HOME mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
