Taiwanese Capacitors Leaking, Exploding

ackthpt writes "A few astute slashdot readers were on to something back when this article was published. After a tip (at e-insight.net) on failing caps over at amdmb I did a little looking around and found this article by Dennis Zogbi on TTI Inc.'s site, which goes into more detail. In a nutshell, many motherboards are now failing due to electolytic capacitors made with an inferior water-based electolyte. Within days or a few months these capacitors build up hydrogen gas and blow the rubber bung out the end of the capacitor, leaking electolyte and causing havoc. The problem may be widespread, as many consumer electronics made with these capacitors may also fail prematurely. Gary Headlee specializes in Abit motherboards, but as his FAQ states, he will work on other makes and the FAQ has more info on capacitor problems."

Comments

Recalls?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good god...how many of these things could be lurking about in automotive airbags, ABS systems, or in any sort of medical device?

Re:Recalls?

[shivianzealot]

Not many, I should hope. Just as we have "server grade" components in the tech industry, other standards exist in different industries.

Re:Recalls?

[victim]

Good god...how many of these things could be lurking about in automotive airbags...

Well I would hope none. The only thing in your air bag should be the sodium azide and an igniter. The last thing you need in an accident is a bunch of loose capacitors and crap being blown into your face.

Re:Recalls?

[zsazsa]

Good god...how many of these things could be lurking about in automotive airbags, ABS systems, or in any sort of medical device?

(Slightly OT)

While not quite as bad, this is becoming a problem in older automotive ECUs (engine control units). The problem is especially rampant in DSM cars (Mitsubishi Eclipse, Eagle Talon, Plymouth Laser) manufactured between 1989 and 1994. I know because it happened to me. All the big electrolytic capacitors leaked all over the place, pretty much destroying the board. One of the symptoms is a 'rotten seafood smell' coming from behind the console. :)

Mitsubishi wanted around $750 for a replacement. Luckily since this is such a problem, refurbished ECUs are available for cheap.

Re:Recalls?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good god...how many of these things could be lurking about in automotive airbags, ABS systems, or in any sort of medical device?

For the most part, none.

Electrolytic capacitors have a fixed lifetime and are by nature unreliable. They don't meet MILSPEC for electronic components. An F16 fighter for example, won't contain a single electrolytic capacitor.

Where reliability is critical, Tantalum capacitors are used, but they're physically larger and more expensive. Any -critical- system manufacturer(automotive safety systems, medical equipment, etc) that uses electrolytic capacitors should be shot.

Want to see some fun stuff? Do a search for "capacitor" and "Bose" on Google. Bose had a TON of problems with bad capacitors in their car stereo systems(installed on millions of vehicles from at least a dozen manufacturers), and it took years for the car manufacturers to fess up to the problem and offer recalls. Bose knew about the problem for years, so one presumes the car companies did. The Ford Pinto incident apparently never taught companies anything; they still don't issue recalls until enough people die/get hurt that it becomes in the company's financial interests to announce a recall.

Some never did announce a recall, until recently. Audi used Bose speakers in the 1991 200 Quattro 20v turbo(car I happen to drive), and the orientation of the circuit boards for the rear speakers were such that the (conductive) electrolytic fluid often caused serious shorts- the Audi enthusiast community knows of at least a few 200q20v's that met their untimely ends due to speaker FIRES. Loud thumping, smoking, popping, etc are more common.

It was pretty much exclusive to the one model, of which only about 2000-3000 at most were imported. The number of reported problems were low(I'd say maybe half a dozen fires), but keep in mind- this wasn't a Ford Taurus will millions on the road.

Audi continuously lied to us- we have proof that they knew from about 1992 onwards that the speakers were defective. A year or two ago we banded together and got a LOT of owners who had experienced speaker problems to call in and report the problem.
When we called Audi, each owner was separately told "we have no knowledge of any problems with your model vehicle"(or something to that effect.) I guess they didn't think we would talk to each other, eh?

Only after several owners submitted paperwork to NHSTA did we see any action; early spring of this year, Audi -announced- the problem and said there would be a recall. It took months to get the replacement circuit boards in and for the recall procedure to get out to dealerships.

Still, guess what? If you report a problem with your car to NHSTA, you can't actually follow up with anyone at NHSTA. The ONLY people you can talk to are a bunch of lazy government call center workers who can ONLY mail you a form or take information on a new case over the phone. You could have evidence of over 50 vehicles that have had said safety problem, and guess what? The call center couldn't care less, they just want to mail you a @#$! form.

Ask any Audi owner and they'll tell you- they love their car. My 200q20v is well over a decade old, but(thanks to a $500 ECU modification) does 0-60 in under 6 seconds, has all wheel drive for incredible traction, 5-speed, stealthy looks(looks like a 5000, basically) and huge amounths of interior and trunk space. Galvanized panels(standard in most audis since 1985 or so) means that there is barely a spot of rust anywhere on the car despite living its entire life in the Northeast US.) Audis are the most utilitarian of german luxury cars, and you usually get more for your money(in terms of features and interior quality) compared to a BMW or Mercedes...and Audi's all wheel drive system is still the best(despite what Subaru would like you to believe, Audi has been doing AWD since 1980, dominating the rallying world at the time. Subaru is about 15 years behind the game.)

But, ask any Audi owner what they think of the company, and the answer will probably change dramatically. It is a terrible shame when such a great product is hampered by piss-poor support.

Re:Recalls?

[Rich0]

Just as we have "server grade" components in the tech industry, other standards exist in different industries.

Hmm - I take it the server grade components only blow up after the server is linked on slashdot?

Re:Recalls?

[Rich0]

The only thing in your air bag should be the sodium azide and an igniter. The last thing you need in an accident is a bunch of loose capacitors and crap being blown into your face.

Actually, I would rather be hit in the face with a bunch of capacitors than aerosolized sodium azide, which is highly toxic by US definition, and is about as healthy as sodium cyanide powder. It is commonly used as a laboratory preservative since it can kill just about anything...

The NaN3 and ignitor are not actually in the air bag - they are in an inflater, with a filter so they don't end up in the air bag.

Re:Recalls?

[sigwinch]

I think that's overly harsh on electrolytics. Like everything else, what you get depends on what you buy. You can buy from respected companies that have been making good caps for 20 years, or you can buy from whatever random Chinese company was cheapest this week. You can settle for any specs you can get, or you can insist on caps that are rated for 5000 hours of operation at 105 degrees Celcius (hotter than boiling water!).

There are also system design issues. You can push the caps to the very limit of their rated ripple current, or you can use more caps and share the current around.

Good god...how many of these things could be lurking about in automotive airbags, ABS systems, or in any sort of medical device?

For the most part, none.

Medical stuff routinely uses electrolytics. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to fail a lot less often than doctors and nurses.

Electrolytic capacitors have a fixed lifetime and are by nature unreliable.

They do not. The lifetime depends on the grade selected by the engineer, and how hard the design pushes the cap. A good cap used properly can last for many years of continuous service. That's good enough for many applications, even in safety-critical systems.

Where reliability is critical, Tantalum capacitors are used, but they're physically larger and more expensive.

You can't be serious! Tantalums are notoriusly flaky. Not only that, the usual failure mode is that the cap vanishes in a spectacular flash of purple fire. Every capacitor failure I've ever seen in computing equipment has been a tantalum. An engineer who used to work at Motorola told me that tantalums were banned from pager designs. At the time, Motorola would rather pay the premium for ceramic caps than risk tantalums.

Any -critical- system manufacturer(automotive safety systems, medical equipment, etc) that uses electrolytic capacitors should be shot.

It depends entirely on the service life that is needed, and the degree of redundancy you can afford. Satellites and airbags have to remain in service for decades without repair, so electrolytics are probably unacceptable. Medical equipment generally doesn't need such high reliability, and frequently uses electrolytics. (Seriously. Med equipment is regularly replaced, there's no point in making it more than a couple of orders of magnitude more reliable than physicians, and the critical stuff has spares sitting on shelves.) Telecom equipment can afford redundancy in almost everything, and so it's full of electrolytics.

Re:Recalls?

[plover]

While you are correct in your assertion that tantalum capacitors are (or at least should be) used where reliability is paramount, there are severe environmental issues with much of the tantalum mining going on today.

80% of the world's supply of coltan, the ore from which tantalum is extracted, is found in the Congo (formerly Zaire). Illegal mining has caused large sections of Kahuzi-Biega National Park and the Okapi Wildlife Reserve forests to be cleared. The U.N. has determined that 90% of the gorillas in these parks have been killed in the last five years, primarily by the illicit miners, leaving only about 3000 remaining. The miners kill the gorillas as a threat to their safety, and sell the meat for extra income.

It's not an easy problem to solve: coltan sold for upwards of $600/kg in the late 1990s (although it's down to about $100/kg today.) A team of miners can produce about one kg per day, and each miner can earn about $200 US/month in a region where the average income is $10 US/month. Technology's demand for tantalum has driven the poorer residents of these nations to take the easy money where possible. And according to the U.N., both sides in neighboring Rwanda have been funding their civil war in large part by sales of this illegally mined tantalum.

What can be done? It is reported that deposits of coltan have been found in dormant volcanos in Greenland. And there are legitimate mines elsewhere in the world. MoBo manufacturers can and should agree to purchase and use only "gorilla safe" or "non-Congo" tantalum caps (or they can continue to use better quality electrolytic caps.) But this will only occur if the demand for gorilla-safe tantalum crosses some magical political threshhold. I wish I knew what it would take.

Re:Recalls?

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost accurate except for the following:
- There are exceptions in MIL SPEC to allow for Electrolytic as Tantalum caps are not available for > 60V or so.
- Tantalum capacitors have higher CV^2, so they are SMALLER for the same capacitance.
- For low ESR applications, Tantalum is still better than cheap electrolytics. OSCON, ceremic, POS caps are way better than Tantalum though.
- Caps have pre-stressed "vents" on the top part of the aluminium can so that's what opens up instead of blowing up.
- In audio applications, you don't want Tantalum caps anyway. Electrolytic is better than Tantalum (film caps are better, but can't get high values)

Re:Recalls?

[LUN!X]

you're excluding the obvious benefits of electrolytic tech here dude.. i've picked up countless stereo amps at garage sales that just need a few electrolytics replaced. they dry out, one channel goes out, and i get an amp for 2 bucks plus a dollar for a fistful of caps.
on the other hand, i've never encountered a legitimate leakage aside from early wall socket experiments at school :D they make little rockets with a smoke trail, and the legs left behind sticking outta the socket make a cool shock hazard to prune the weak from society

Re:Recalls?

[chriso11]

I use tantalums instead of electrolytics as a rule. Electrolytic caps have a higher ESR, and the dielectric fluid is prone to leakage. The lifetime of an electrolytic is shorter than that of a tantalum - they have a finite lifetime, as the liquid electrolyte evaporates.
While it is true about tantalumns having a particularly impressive failure mechanism, once you remember not to reverse the polarity you don't have problems. Electrolytics also behave poorly when reversed. In addition, electrolytics have a minimum operating voltage and a maximum operation voltage. And how's this:
"Conventional aluminum electrolytic capacitors which have gone 6 months or more without voltage applied may have to be reformed."
Electrolytics are also physically larger than Tantalums, not smaller. They are indeed more expensive, but worth it.

Yes, I use ceramics whenever possible (esp. NP0/C0G, none of the x7r or worse grades). Ceramics are the best general purpose - no polarity issues, small physical size allows them to be extremely close to the DUT (for bypassing), and they have pretty good SRF. The only problems - the max capacitance you can get isn't too good. Polyprop/polystyrene are better for high fidelity audio type signals (earthquake detection anybody?).

Re:Recalls?

[pz]

You can't be serious! Tantalums are notoriusly flaky. Not only that, the usual failure mode is that the cap vanishes in a spectacular flash of purple fire. Every capacitor failure I've ever seen in computing equipment has been a tantalum. An engineer who used to work at Motorola told me that tantalums were banned from pager designs. At the time, Motorola would rather pay the premium for ceramic caps than risk tantalums.


He was serious, and so am I when I say that I routinely design with tantalums when I want high reliability, electrolytics when it doesn't matter as much. The fellow you mention from Motorola (and his associates) don't understand the problems with tantalums: they are extremely reliable, and have far superior specifications than equivalent electrolytics, if you simply derate the maximum voltage by a factor of 2. Eg, if your design calls for the capacitor seeing a maximum differential of 15V, specify a 30V capacitor.

My father, also an electrical engineer, and I have separately been doing this for decades (him, something like 5, me, something like 2) and not seen a single tantalum failure. My father used to see a lot of tantalum failures until he took the time to understand the failure conditions and derated the specs. But, this applies when the options are electrolytic or tantalum.

When the options are ceramic or tantalum, as you suggest with the fellow from Motorola, there's a huge difference. Ceramics are not available in value ranges that electrolytics can be manufactured in (in part because it's difficult to make a realllllllly thin sheet of ceramic, plate it on one side, and roll it up). Ceramics, for the same value range as tantalums, have superior specifications but larger physical size, as long as you stay away from the lower end of the quality spectrum. Comparing, however, the selection of tantalums over electrolytics against ceramics over tantalums is, well, like two different kinds of fruit.

In sum, given my druthers, in larger values, it's tantalum, unless the value range necessary or cost contstraints precludes them, in which case the choice is electrolytics. In smaller values/higher frequencies, it's ceramic.

Re:Recalls?

[damien_kane]

Hmm - I take it the server grade components only blow up after the server is linked on slashdot?

No, after the first slashdotting, the server merely melts.
If, by some miracle the server still accepts requests afterwards, it is not until the second slashdotting that it actually explodes...

Re:Recalls?

[Tangurena]

There were an enormous number of electrolytic capacitors that went boom in Car audio systems. Surprisingly, it was only the capacitors made by Nichicon and almost always the 7mm high capacitors. Pity, nichicon was the low bidder on almost everything, and they were the only supplier in the world of 7mm high axial electrolytics.

A previous employer of mine made somewhere near $10,000,000 in repair costs (both in-warranty and out of warranty) because of these capacitors. Radio went poof? $250 repair please. Bose Amp squeals like a siren and pops like a canon? $200 please.

Ford could not believe that our repair shop needed as many capacitors as we were using, and sent out auditors and engineers to get a grip on what they were convinced was out of line repair expenses (or maybe outright fraud). When we showed them radio after radio, and Bose amplifier after another with exactly the same failure mode, they started waking up. We even gave them boxes of ruined circuit boards for them to analyse. The real kicker was the Bose amp used in Chevy Caprices: the board is mounted so that the capacitors are suspended from the board, the electrolyte boils and spurts out of the base of the caps so hard that it splatters all over the board. Once they saw these, and learned how they are mounted in the vehicle, they went after nichicon.

Because of the size of the part, and that nichicon has a stranglehold on the market, we had to order parts directly from them. When you need 2,000 to 4,000 per month, you use them far faster than the US car makers ordered for replacement parts. However, instead of ordering the 65C rated parts, like the OEMs used, we ordered the 105C parts. Still took 12-20 weeks to send the boxes from Japan to Florida. That is real fun committing your employer to buying stuff for a year at a time and having to wait months for each delivery.

Because of heat and humidity issues, the south florida climate accelerates the aging process for these parts. What fails in 2-3 years down here, may take take much longer for you folks who live with frost. Heck, car batteries only last 2 years before they need to be replaced.

Re:Recalls?

[seanadams.com]

I guess it's ime to plug a few tantalum caps into 110VAC and see what happens... :)

Re:Recalls?

[yakfacts]

Mil-grade tantalum caps are very expensive, and
very good.

Re:Recalls?

[ckedge]

.
I call bullshit.

I'm not saying that coltan production hasn't caused hell in Central Africa. It has. But 2001 demand for Ta2O5 was 2600 tons, of which ONLY 2-400 tons were produced in Central Africa. That's only 10 percent. A FAR FAR cry from 80 percent.

http://www.roskill.co.uk/tantalum.html

Production has been ramping up in Australia by SoG, they were expecting to produce 1200 tons this year, and are expected to reach 2600 tons per year by 2006.

http://www.sog.com.au/web/aboutsgwindex.htm

So there is a huge alternative to "conflict coltan". You just need to make sure that you buy your Ta caps from people who only get their raw material from a non-central-african source.

Re:Recalls?

[sigwinch]

While it is true about tantalumns having a particularly impressive failure mechanism, once you remember not to reverse the polarity you don't have problems.

Yes, you do. When a standard tantalum develops a fault, the resultant heating makes the fault worse. The slightest pinhole defect tends to turn into a catastrophic failure. Even when properly installed, they occassionally fail in service.

The only problems - the max capacitance you can get isn't too good.

One more problem with ceramics: some regulators don't like the low ESR and oscillate! One of my colleagues found this out the hard way, and had to put a series resistor on his prototype. You don't normally have to worry about components being too good...

Re:Recalls?

[sigwinch]

Quality costs money, and money is limited. If you spend all your money improving one thing, you don't make it much better, but you can't afford quality anywhere else, and so the overall results are poor. Once something is "pretty good", you don't keep spending on it. You stop and ask "What's the cheapest way to improve results?" and that tells you where you should be spending.

Re:Recalls?

[sigwinch]

The fellow you mention from Motorola (and his associates) don't understand the problems with tantalums: they are extremely reliable, and have far superior specifications than equivalent electrolytics, if you simply derate the maximum voltage by a factor of 2.

I'm looking at an AVX data sheet and it shows that 50% derating produces a factor of 0.006 decrease in failure rate.

But the base failure rate for the standard grade is 1% max per 1000 hours, which is huge. Assuming 10 capacitors per device, the factor of 0.006 from voltage derating, and a factor of 0.4 from temperature derating, that's a failure rate of 240 ppm/1000 hours. Not exactly a six sigma quality level. For one year of operation, that's a failure rate of 0.2%. For three years, 0.63% failure rate. For ten years, 2.1%. For 50 years, 10%.

So what does 0.2% per year mean? If the device is a line card, and the telephone switch has 10,000 cards, that's a failure every 18 days. That's often enough that you'd have to have a $100k/year employee on call 24x7. That's $1 of expense per capacitor. Not so cheap. I don't even want to think about the cost for devices that are geographically deployed, like electric meters and embedded controllers.

There's also the failure-mode issue. When they fail, tantalums blast their (electrically conductive) guts all over the inside of the enclosure. That's an appalling thing to have happen in an enclosure filled with $50k processor cards.

I stand by my opinion that tantalums are ungood. If you just want to screw the consumer, electrolytics give more screwage per dollar. If you need high-rel and can afford scheduled replacements, good-quality electrolytics. Otherwise, ceramics.

Have you seen the new solid aluminum caps? Better volumetric capacity than tantalums, ESR nearly as good as ceramics. I haven't bothered to look up the data sheets, but I'd imagine that aluminum oxide has a lower failure rate than tantalum oxide.

Re:Recalls?

[pz]

Interesting. I don't normally use AVX components, but this discussion has motivated me to re-examine our assumptions about tantalum reliabilities. We have, however, as previously stated, not seen one fail with the 50% voltage derating.

Solid alumninum sounds very interesting -- hadn't heard of those caps. I'd agree that from basic principles, alumninum oxide should be *much* more stable than tantalum oxide.

Re:Recalls?

[plover]

I didn't say 80% of production occurred in Central Africa, I said that it is estimated that 80% of the world's ore is located there.

Regardless, I'm very pleased that production has shifted so heavily from the Congo to other, presumably more responsible, sources.

I have a question for you, though. How do I, the average consumer, identify the source of the metal when purchasing caps? I try to make responsible choices when presented with alternatives, but I don't see the "No gorillas were harmed in the mining of the tantalum used in the capacitors on this motherboard" logo. Of course, getting back to the main topic, I know my current iWill MoBo is "gorilla safe" because I can see the electrolytic caps. But how do you tell? Which capacitor manufacturers are the responsible ones?

Re:Recalls?

[grub]

..electrolytic capacitors have a fixed lifetime and are by nature unreliable.

You guys are all full of crap.

On Star Trek they use flux capacitors which I presume are far more reliable than your Fancy Pants, Big City tantalum or electrolyte capacitors.

Re:Recalls?

[sigwinch]

I suspect the 1%/1000 hours rate is very conservative. I personally wouldn't worry about putting them in an entertainment or convenience system, but I'd be leery about important devices.

Here's a link to Vishay's solid aluminum capacitors. They're apparently constructed like water-based electrolytics, but with a solid polymer instead of water. ESR is good: 10 milliohm. Reliability is good: 200,000 hours at 65 deg. C. Tempco is awesome: -5%/+10% value change from -55 to +105 deg. C. Major downside is that they hate excessive inrush current. I think they're also a bit pricey.

so...

[iamthemoog]

there's magic water in capacitors as well as magic smoke ?

Re:so...

[billd]

there's magic water in capacitors maybe so! As soon as I get home, I'm going to check both my taiwanese motherboards for bad caps. If there's any sign of leakage, or if the +ive ends are bulging, out they'll come!!!

Thanks for the warning, whoever.

My MSI board failed.

[dsb3]

My MSI board failed a couple of months ago, and we didn't have a dog to blame the smell on.

I noticed many of the caps around the memory banks appeared blown - there was a lot of brown residue around the top. The smell occured a week or so (perhaps?) before final failure.

For my money, even though the original board cost around $120, I just bought a $50 replacement from ECS. It took most of the original memory (2 DIMM slots only, compared to the 3 slots in the original), and otherwise did what was needed without spending repair money on what's now an old-tech product.

The machine has an Athlon 900 T-bird, now has a 1/2G of ram (did have 3/4) and doesn't really do a great deal other than email, web, games, photoshop. Sure, the extra 1/4G of ram would have been nice to keep but for the money of even thinking about the repair I'd be better off just recycling and buying new with a DDR333 system.

Once again, technology is cheaper to replace/upgrade than it is to repair.

Re:My MSI board failed.

[bogie]

Can you tell which model that was? I've got a K7T266Pro2 which works great, but I'd be interested in hearing which one yours was and then checking into what other MSI board used the same capactitors.

Re:My MSI board failed.

[Mindwarp]

Had exactly the same thing happen to my MSI K7T266A about six months ago. In my case it was two of the 1100uF capacitors to the north of the processor that popped their tops one day.

Needless to say, I won't be buying MSI again.

Re:My MSI board failed.

[dsb3]

It was nothing that recent. I believe I bought it in jan/feb of 2001. Perhaps a K7T Turbo 2?

Re:My MSI board failed.

[alizard]

If I were you, I'd check those URLs and take a look at your new motherboard. You may have just purchased the same set of problems you think you've fixed.

Re:My MSI board failed.

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

ECS has so far proven to be quite good. I've had their k7s5a for quite a while and it works excellently.

Tim

Re:My MSI board failed.

[Skuld-Chan]

Once again, technology is cheaper to replace/upgrade than it is to repair.

Actually this is one of the easier repairs one can do to a motherboard - assuming you know how to use a pencil soldering iron. If you still have it mail it me :)

Re:My MSI board failed.

[shepd]

>ECS has so far proven to be quite good. I've had their k7s5a for quite a while and it works excellently.

I'm happy about that, but you'll have no trouble proving that ECS is PcChips, and that PcChips changes their name occasionally (ok, very often) because it gets tarnished faster than iron by the sea. Basically, here's what PcChips does (very easy to verify, if you like):

- Pirates BIOS code.
- Manufactures and uses fake cache chips (ie: Plastic blobs with metal bits sticking out -- nothing inside).
- Fakes chipsets (they often make their own in-house chipsets, which are famous for being buggy and slow, and are known to brand/name them according to OEMs wishes)
- Uses misleading names on their in-house chipsets (eg: TXPro, VXPro, etc, etc)
- Fakes processor speeds (they used a batch of slower than expected chipsets and simply re-programmed the BIOS to always multiply the speed by 100, no matter what you set the FSB speed to)
- Uses low quality/grade parts whenever possible
- Makes chipsets that silently corrupt hard drives (my personal experience on another PcChips mobo about 3 years ago).

Also, a former PcChips employee informed me that PcChips executives were once sued for being involved in remarking processor speeds (can't verify this one, but it sure goes along with the other fraud PcChips commits).

There's more, read about PcChips here if you like. That site is the only place you're going to get help should you lose the box/manual to your mobo (since the majority don't have a model number marked), so keep it bookmarked! Deja can sometimes be some help if you want to check if your board is a PcChips board or not.

Some other PcChips brand names (ie: My short shitlist): Ability, Alton, Amptron, Aristo, Asia Gate, Asiatech, Assa, Atrend, Elpina, Eurone, EuroCom, Fugu, Fugutech, Hi Sing, Houston Tech, Hsing Tech, H Tech, Matsonic, Minstaple, PCWare, Pine, Protac, Warpspeed.

And, just to let you know, you'll find if you ever take the machine into a shop, they'll probably charge you double when they see a PcChips mobo inside. I know I do, because I know it's going to take twice as long to fix (if possible).

But hey, best of luck with the board! I've got one PcChips machine in the house, and other than having to disconnect the video before powering up, it's been fine for a couple of years.

Ouch

[athakur999]

Imagine having a Beowulf cluster that used these things. That'd be a big repair bill...

Dude... You're going to Hell!

[disc-chord]

Like many /.ers I like to save money by putting together my own machines. Unfortunatly we do not get the benifits of extended warranties you find with Dell, Gateway, etc... This is why I highly recommend you purchase your parts from people who have been in business for a while and offer considerable warranties. Not some gimp who just put up a website and will be out of business next week. And be sure to SAVE your warranty cards!

That is of course unless you do something to void your warranty... But for the rest of us, this should be a good reminder of why warranties on pc parts are really important.

Re:Dude... You're going to Hell!

[sweetooth]

Ordering from sites that offer short warranties isn't that big of a deal since most manufacturers offer 1 year or longer warranties on thier products anyway. All the additional 30 day dealer warranty allows you to do is return the item to the retailer instead of the manufacturer. In my experience it's been cheaper to deal directly with the manufacturer. Depending on the item some will drop ship you a new item while yours is in transit to them, others will pay for shipping. Of course each manufacturer varies, and the companies that have had the worst products also seem to have the worst warranty and rma policies.

Re:Dude... You're going to Hell!

[MyHair]

My (brick & mortar) company had a problem with caps blowing in the power supply of custom mini PCs at customer locations. However this was a major distributor who built these 'custom' PCs for us, so we had warranty protection. I believe we got the PS manufacturer to foot the bill for the replacement PS'es and paid for us service techs to replace them on several thousand units. (We had a special code on our ticketing system to charge our time to 3rd parties.)

However it was still a nasty problem. It took a few months to replace them all because generally every PC was in a different geographical location and we had to coordinate with the customer.

During the time before the problem was discovered and solved the PSes were dying left and right, and they tended to blow chips on the hard drives, mother board, and modems when they went. Many customers lost their data and weren't happy. (I told them to back up and gave them the disks to do it, though.)

A warranty is definitely important for many companies and individuals.

However for my personal PCs I buy cheap parts (not the cheapest, though...motherboards and RAM I now pay more for) and rarely get burned. I figure I get burned seldom enough that it works out in my favor in the long run, but I back up my important data and have the knowledge and spare parts to get myself up and running again when things go South.

Slashdot seems to be slashdotted today, so here goes a submit with no preview.... (takes too long to see the preview if at all)

Re:Dude... You're going to Hell!

[psychosis]

Minor point of correction - what you describe is a "cross-shipment." A "drop shipment" is when I order an UPS from someone like CDW, and APC ships from their factory to my location.
I only mention because I caused some confusion with an sales account rep by confusing these two shipping methods...

Re:Dude... You're going to Hell!

[sweetooth]

You are absolutly correct, I realized my mistake after submitting the previewed comment and well.... no edit your own comment function here unfortunatly.

Re:Dude... You're going to Hell!

[Ryan Amos]

Bad caps take a while to blow. Much longer than the 90 day warranty. I've had caps blow on me on a $9000 Ascend Max 6000 (512-channel dialup router) and it was out of service contract. So what'd I do? I went to ye local electronics store, bought more caps, soldered them back on, and it worked. It's worth a try to fix. Of course, on the Ascend, 3 of the fans decided to die randomly and the caps overheated, but still..

Re:Dude... You're going to Hell!

[sweetooth]

I recently replaced a Soyo Dragon V Plus. It took them about 3.5 weeks. I had Abit replace several boards with bad capacitors and they took about 4 weeks each. Most people don't bother dealing with the warranty so many companies are sloppy. That's no reason to not get it replaced by the manufacturer, especially when it's a warranty covered issue or a manufacturer defect.

I thought it was because I violated that EULA...

[mog]

That takes a load off of my mind... So THAT'S why my computer blew up!

shopping list?

[visualight]

I'm in the middle of shopping for a new board. Now I'm afraid to make a decision until I can find a list of boards that are "safe". If anyone finds such a list please post it!

Re:shopping list?

[ackthpt]

I just checked out an Asus A7V8X and it's popped with Rubycon and Nichicon, both japanese, caps. Sigh of relief. I'll be picking one of these up in December and entrusting it with a XP 2600/333

On a side note, there's a fried powersupply at work here with Rulycon caps. Imitations, surely.

Cheap capacitors

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

Nothing new about the annoucement. Cheap electrolytic capacitors have been around and been a problem for years. There are other failure modes. i've fixed several old Mac's where the cap has pissed it's electrolyte all over the motherboard. Usually removing the cap, scrubbing the board and installing a new cap fixes the problem. Even worse is when the electrolyte is lost gradually. The product that it's in gets flakey over time and the problem is very hard to find. These problems are all made worse by exposing your gear to high temperatures. Never leave your electronics in the passenger compartment of your car in the summer.

Re:Cheap capacitors

[Soko]

Going under temp is just as bad, if not worse, as going over temp. The cost-consious id10t who approved using an electrolyte based on H2O should be liberally bathed in it - it's the worst possible thing to put in a cap. Being water based, if the electrolyte in the capacitor freezes, it expands and basically mashes the caps plates together. If they touch, well, hope it was time for an upgrade. The electrolyte would normally act as anti-freeze, but being water based means that it freezes a lot sooner. All the wrong things happen with water in the capacitor.

If you fly, keep your electronic gear with you, since the baggage compartment of an airplane isn't usually temperature controlled. Or, if you live in Sweden, Canada or any place that can get low screen temps, keep that laptop in the car or someplace warm so you con't freeze a cap and blow up your gear. In any event, insulate it from temerature extremes whenever possible.

Soko

Not the only problem

[Bobulusman]

It seems that motherboards in general are being made more poorly lately. Last April I bought a Soyo Dragon Plus motherboard. It has been give me and others problems. Apparently, they screwed something up because the board is not technically PCI compliant on the top two pci slots. So basically, if you use the AGP slot and either of those slots with anything more taxing than a modem, you will be riddled with reboots and the like.

Not to mention that there is something else screwed up with the board because the MadOnion benchmark always identifies it as having twice as much ram as it does (I have 512 mb on two 256 mb's. It thinks I have two 512 mb's) and it can not seem to complete the PCMark test without rebooting during the ram tests. This has happened to other Soyo Dragon Plus users, so it's not like it's just the software.

And don't even get me started on how they ripped me off by not bothering to tell me that they would not give me the accessories needed to make various functions work. Had to by them seperately....

Same case with the motherboard I bought before that.

Anyway, my point is that it just seems that MB manufacturers are cutting a lot of corners, so it doesn't surprise me that they are using cheap capacitors.

Supergeek to the rescuuuuue...

[sheWhoWalksWithToesL]

Depending on whether customers retain their product warranties, this could end up being good or bad for the tech industry.

If the warranties were kept && the failures happen within the warranty period && if companies are nice, this could really cost tech companies a pretty penny.

Else, there may be a surge in people spendng to replace failed devices.

Either way, people aren't going to be happy. How many devices do you suppose are affected by these failures?

This has happened to me

[techmuse]

I just replaced an MSI KT266Pro Motherboard with exactly those symptoms. The computer suddenly started crashing at strange times, and in a week could barely boot. It turned out to be the capacitors, which had ruptured at the top.

Now, who is affected?

[ChicoLance]

Yikes! But what everybody will need to know next is: Who is affected by this? Which board manufacturers used these brands? Will they actually tell us, or will we have to fight for this information?

Ick.

Your motherboard is next

[jmcwork]

many motherboards are now failing due to electolytic capacitors made with an inferior water-based electolyte.

Early indications of capacitor/motherboard demise include failure of spell checking software.

Re:Abit KA7

[Anonymous Coward]

So did my roommate. However, as bad as this is, ABIT has a lot more stability issues other than capacitors:

http://www.xtremetek.com/info/index.php?name=kt7 -r ant&page=1

This site isn't very large and the article writer received over 100 emails about faulty ABIT mobos and to say the least, ABIT's tech support is horrible.

Power supplies at risk too

[Wansu]

I'll bet these bad capacitors have found their way into many power supplies too.

Isn't Anyone Doing Qualification Testing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes these are obviously bad components but I am curious. Do consumer electronic manufacturers do any type of development validation or component qualification testing?

In the automotive world, this would have been caught way before production started, unless of course, the component supplier changed the electrolyte type without notifying its customers after start of production.

The amount of testing that occurs on automotive electronics is sometimes thought of as gross overkill. When I hear stories like this, it reminds me of why.

Re:Isn't Anyone Doing Qualification Testing?

[plover]

I'm afraid the only validation most of them perform is: "Are you still the lowest bidder?"

If you want that MoBo to cost you $75 instead of $150, what are you as a consumer willing to sacrifice?

uh oh

[tps12]

If you're trying to boot up, and your rubber bung breaks and leaks electrolyte, then I'd recommend getting tested as soon as possible, especially if you were trying to boot from a strange floppy.

We got hit....

[IpSo_]

The company my parents own bought 30 machines a while back which apparently all had these bad caps on the mainboards. When the first few mainboards started failing we tried to send them back on warranty, but our vendor wasn't cooperating, and shipping them all back to ABIT was resulting in too much down time. (shipping time, etc...)

So we went to the nearest electronic wholesaler in town and bought a box of the equivilent caps and soldered them on ourselves. It doesn't take more than 5 minutes and the caps themselves are very inexpensive.

Of the 30 machines we bought I think almost 25 have failed, just a matter of time before the rest fail I'm sure.

blame the gangs!

[misterhaan]

they're always threatening to "pop a cap," and now this starts happening! coincidence? i think not!

Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[dcavanaugh]

Instead of viewing these as commodity items, we need to insist on a motherboard that does not have self-destructive components. Someday, DRM-enabled hardware is going to be the law of the land, therefore the last generation of uncrippled boards is going to be whatever we own at the time.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[anonymous cupboard]

Regrettably my board may be ATX but it isn't going to support AGP-8x or a 2GHz+ processor. So, eventually I will upgrade. I guess a lot of other people treat the motherboard as another item to be upgraded, after all it isn't expensive compared to CPU chips or graphics cards.

Palladium is optional. You aren't forced to use it. Some s/w (such as the new DRM compliant WinXX) won't run without it, but you should always be able to run untrusted s/w.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[Kombat]

Someday, DRM-enabled hardware is going to be the law of the land

Uh, dude, it may become the law of your land, but that still leaves about 5.7 billion of us who don't give a rat's ass what stupid laws your knuckle-dragging, war-mongering leader foists upon your apathetic populace.

Why do Americans think that they can pass laws for the whole world? It was the same thing with the CDA/CDA-II. They were supposed to eliminate porn on the net. Why would a Brazilian pervert care about American laws when he's downloading his German porn from a Eurpoean fetish site? He wouldn't.

And here in Canada, we're legally allowed to copy all the CDs we want, as long as we do it ourselves (i.e., I'm not allowed to sell a bunch of burned copies of Celine Dion's latest album, but I am allowed to lend you the CD, and you are allowed to copy it yourself). Think those DRM mobos will be popular up here? Ha! And when you pass that silly law, do you think the supply of non-crippled boards will dry up? Sorry, Yanks, you're not that important.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[Kombat]

Argh, my "Preview" button hasn't been working lately, I keep getting a bunch of thread summaries. Sorry about the excessive bold in my previous post. Here's a version that's easier on the eyes.

Someday, DRM-enabled hardware is going to be the law of the land

Uh, dude, it may become the law of your land, but that still leaves about 5.7 billion of us who don't give a rat's ass what stupid laws your knuckle-dragging, war-mongering leader foists upon your apathetic populace.

Why do Americans think that they can pass laws for the whole world? It was the same thing with the CDA/CDA-II. They were supposed to eliminate porn on the net. Why would a Brazilian pervert care about American laws when he's downloading his German porn from a Eurpoean fetish site? He wouldn't.

And here in Canada, we're legally allowed to copy all the CDs we want, as long as we do it ourselves (i.e., I'm not allowed to sell a bunch of burned copies of Celine Dion's latest album, but I am allowed to lend you the CD, and you are allowed to copy it yourself). Think those DRM mobos will be popular up here? Ha! And when you pass that silly law, do you think the supply of non-crippled boards will dry up? Sorry, Yanks, you're not that important.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[Mac Degger]

So what cpu are you going to use? AMD and Intel have said they'll be going the palladium route, so they're out. Sure, you can use the newly developed chinese chips, but they're not what you'd call top of the line...hell, they're not even middle of the road yet.

Sure, DRM won't be popular, but when you finally want to upgrade, where's your choice? That's one of the reasons why I've always joked that I want to be able to vote in US elections, even though I live in Europe; what happens in any part of the world affects you, so don't kid yourself.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[dcavanaugh]

"Why do Americans think that they can pass laws for the whole world?"

I would like to believe that the rest of the world can think for itself, and perhaps serve as the last line of defense against legislative stupidity. The ability of America to dictate the laws of others is limited only by the rest of the world's willingness to assert itself. In such matters as fair use and copyright, that assertiveness has been in short supply. Too many countries have adopted their own DMCA-inspired copyright laws, to say nothing of software patents, and other bad ideas that are unfortunately "made in USA". A few overly righteous people may be shocked to learn this, but the method of buying politicians and then pushing custom-built legislation is not an "Americans only" game. We simply have more than our fair share of corporations playing it. Without the cooperation of sleazy politicians in other countries, the influence of US corporations would end at the border. Due to a global glut of sleazy politicians, DRM badware is closer than you think.

I hope you are correct. I hope the Canadians have the sense to resist not only Palladium, LaGrande, and the entire genre of crippleware, but also DMCA, TCPA, and software patents as well. If necessary, I can buy my next MB from a mail order house in Montreal.

Unless you have absolute confidence in the Canadian legislative process, it might be prudent to examine your MB and perhaps find an upgrade without electrolytic capacitors.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[Mac Degger]

So what cpu are you going to use? AMD and Intel have said they'll be going the palladium route, so they're out. Sure, you can use the newly developed chinese chips, but they're not what you'd call top of the line...hell, they're not even middle of the road yet.

Sure, DRM won't be popular, but when you finally want to upgrade, where's your choice? That's one of the reasons why I've always joked that I want to be able to vote in US elections, even though I live in Europe; what happens in any part of the world affects you, so don't kid yourself.

Oh, and you're not allowed to copy a cd you've borrowed from someone; that violates international copyright law everywhere in the world.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[dcavanaugh]

Palladium may be optional, but it how optional do you think it will be when a future version of Windoze won't boot without it? You might switch to Linux, but I can see the day coming when Palladium compatibility is required to boot any OS. There may be quite a market for "legacy" MBs and operating systems.

Think about it. Just how much juice do the copyright interests have when they can force a much larger industry to spend its own money to design "features" that customers don't want? And Palladium is somehow going to remain optional? Not for long!

Could the lard industry get McDonalds and Burger King to make greasier french fries, just to sell more lard?

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[Kombat]

Oh, and you're not allowed to copy a cd you've borrowed from someone; that violates international
copyright law everywhere in the world.

You're wrong. Canada levies a special tax on blank CD-R media. It's outrageously high (last time I checked, it was 77 cents per CD-R, adding $7.70 to every 10 pack you buy), but it comes with a caveat that we are allowed to copy CDs "for private use." There is no restriction that we must OWN the CD we're copying - just that it be for "private use" (i.e., no reselling).

I'm not making this stuff up, do some googling for "canada cd levy blank" or some such combination. Here's a quick article to get you started.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[Codifex Maximus]

Ya know, you really pi$$ me off with yer attitude Kombat. Calling our leader a knuckle-dragging, war-monger foisting stupid laws, the rest of the world could give a rat's a$$ about, on an apathetic populace.

But then, you're essentially right.

Anyway, DOWN WITH WATER BASED ELECTROLYTIC CAPACITORS! RAH! RAH! RAH!

P.S. I think the NET has popped a few caps today.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[Mac Degger]

That's exactly what private use entails; you have to own the original media. Otherwise you are distributing intellectual copyright. If you don't own the cd/lp/digital recording, it's not private use. It's implied (laws do that).

That tax is just nabbed on under the idea "we'll redistribute this money to the artists". We have it in the Netherlands too. But in actual fact it's just a tax which never goes to it's intended recipients. You can even make the claim that it's illegal, as you pay it even if you do nothing else but put your backup documents on the cd's. But it's not a justification for illegal breaking of copyright.

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[Mac Degger]

Haven't heard that, but your probably right...but the same problem remains, doesn't it?

Re:Time to start thinking about MBs that last

[dcavanaugh]

Absolutely correct. That means legacy hardware may not boot some future DRM/crippleware OS, just as 286 processors were left in the cold when Win95 came out. Before that happens, I can imagine M$ checking for Palladium hardware and then requiring it to be enabled. IMHO, Palladium & LaGrande are the technological equivalent of Saddam's WMD programs. The best time to resist and evade this menace is right now. Apathy may be hazardous to your freedom.

If there is anything that would interest AMD and Intel in adding features that customers don't want, it would be the premature obsolesence of CPU and MB, correct? They won't be selling much of this crippleware unless people are somehow coerced into buying it. The entities that cause this stuff to exist certainly don't want it to be optional for long; therefore it won't be.

I predict that a DRM-free lifestyle will eventually require legacy hardware and a legacy OS. Step #1 is awareness of the electrolytic capacitor problem. My whole point is that your MB won't be so disposable when all the new ones have badware inside.

Leaky/exploding capacitrors?

[CTho9305]

Sure, they're a problem, but they're a great way to get free boards that you can pretty easily fix :)

The pics page is linked to at the very bottom.

Abit BE6-II

[Carbon Unit 549]

I had 8 of 12 Abit BE6-II (Pentium III - Slot1) boards die just after 1 year of operation. I noticed that the some of the capacitors had ooozed, but not being electrically inclined, I assumed that it was only cosmetic.

Could this or other fundamental defects be the new "Y2K" problem?

I say electOlite, you say electROlite...

[ackthpt]

Doh! Yeah, I know how to spell electrolyte (and even some stuff about dialectrics.) I was more focused on getting details right and assembling information.

This is a bit of a bugger, though, because myself and a coworker are shopping for new boards, at the moment, and concerns over lower grade commodity components to increase the manufacturer's profit is a worry.

Hopefully MSI and ASUS use Rubycon or Panasonic.

How to check before you buy

[Jeffrey Baker]

It is easy enough to check this before you buy. Go up to the display case at your local computer parts retailer and ask to see XYZ motherboard that you are thinking of buying. Jot down all the markings on the electrolytic caps. Now go home and look up the datasheet for those caps. A good computer grade capacitor will have longevity of 2000 to 3000 hours or more at maximum ripple current and a temperature of 105 or 125C. Reputable brands are Panasonic HA or NHG, Rubycon, etc.

Forget case mods, maybe we need to start modding our mainboards with better caps.

Re:How to check before you buy

[msblack]

Capacitor lifespan of 2000-3000 hours? That's the equivalent of one work year. Have you misplaced a decimal point or are computers expected to be replaced EVERY year?

Re:How to check before you buy

[CTho9305]

That is at max current and 100C if you look carefully. I would hope your motherboard isn't that underengineered and not that hot!

Re:How to check before you buy

[Jeffrey Baker]

3000 hours is actually a very good rating for an electrolytic capacitor. This rating means that the capacitor will operating within specs after being subjected to its maximum ripple current at maximum working voltage and maximum operating temperature. Electrolytic capacitor lifetime is most directly related to temperature. Panasonic TS-HA types for example will last 3000 hours at 105C but will last 200000 hours at 45C. So, keep the case temperatures down for high reliability.

Re:How to check before you buy

[dnoyeb]

I think we can safely assume the caps are failing "prematurely." Thus the rating is meaningless.

This is why you should always buy quality.

[Prince_Ali]

It is always important to buy quality components. I for example bought a *shuffle shuffle* Abit... BH6. Dang. Excuse me I have to go check something.

Waddya know...

[ucblockhead]

Funny, my KA7-RAID motherboard blew a capacitor just last week. Up until then, I thought it ruled.

Anyway, I got that horrid ozone burnt-electronics smell and the damn machine powered itself off. Sometimes I can get almost a half hour of uptime before it shuts itself off. I found the casing to a capacitor next to the power hookup at the bottom of the case.

My experience with failing Abit motherboards.

[Lethyos]

I can finally vent about my misery! This experience ought to be useful to anyone who is currently in the market for a motherboard. Simply put, don't buy Abit.

About 1.5 years ago, I purchased two motherboards from Abit. This one for an 800MHz Athlon system, and this board for a dual, 733MHz Coppermine system. Last semeter, my KA7 failed slowly over time. At first, I thought it was the power supply because it seemed all the capasitors around the power regulator were fried (they were encrusted with the carbon of some substance that appeared to boil out of them and burn). I replaced my power supply and motherboard. A few weeks ago, I started having interrupt failures on my VP6 (APIC errors on both CPUs). I replaced the motherboard with a Gigabyte GA-6VTXD (sorry for the shameless plug, but Gigabyte denies deep linking, and this is where I got the board - a great buy). Turns out the VP6 also had fried capasitors and I *know* the PS in my that dual proc box is solid (a well tested Antec). The only two Abit mobos I've ever purchased burned out their capasitors. The moral of this story? Don't buy Abit. While this problem is wide spread, Abit seems to have a particular affliction.

Re:My experience with failing Abit motherboards.

[shaldannon]

You have me interested...

I have a VP6, two 750's, scsi card, dual-head video card, etc...

Thursday night while I was surfing the web, the system utterly froze. 79 days of continuous uptime, no problems, locked like *that*. Rebooted...worked OK til Saturday. Froze twice in 30 minutes.

Last time I saw this kind of behavior, there were too many computers plugged into the same circuit. With the Friday incident, I figured, "why not?" and turned my other two systems off. Saturday, both were off when the VP6 box went down.

I've had the board for about a year so I'm beginning to wonder if this is the reason for the problems. How can I go about verifying it?

Re:My experience with failing Abit motherboards.

[jelle]

You're not alone, happened to me with the same board for the Athlon. I had two, in a server and its backup (doh!)... they failed within a day of each other (doh! again! suffice to say that now they are different brands and types). Warranty from abit returned me two fixed board (new caps), but the caps blowing also fried one of the CPUs. Now those boards are 'spare trash' boards, and abit is not on the buying list until they publicly demonstrate that the caps problem is forever fixed.

And I knew one person who was using the same boards, and had the same problem, with each of them...

Re:That's disturbing

[gezerk]

>> seems like this has been going on for about a year but it hasn't been solved

Many manufacturers buy their parts in massive lots. They may not have known about the problem till those lots were exhausted.
If they did discover the problem, they probably chose to accept the failure rate and honor the warranties if they were called on to do so(not likely). Their only other choice would be a recall.

I find it amazing we don't have more problems with components. In light of the growth of the PC market in the last few years it seems electronics parts makers have been doing a pretty good job.

Seen this happen before

[Vampyl]

This is a very widespread problem. The gateway e3400 series falls prey to this, i have replaced no fewer than 30 in the past 4 months, and the gateway tech told me that they had a school with over 200 cases of this. I hate to see that problem is more widespread that a single series of motherboards.

Magic Smoke

[Hollinger]

I suppose they're letting the magic smoke out prematurely.

(Lifted from the Jargon File)

Magic Smoke - n. A substance trapped inside IC packages that enables them to function (also called `blue smoke'; this is similar to the archaic `phlogiston' hypothesis about combustion). Its existence is demonstrated by what happens when a chip burns up -- the magic smoke gets let out, so it doesn't work any more. See smoke test, let the smoke out.

Usenetter Jay Maynard tells the following story: "Once, while hacking on a dedicated Z80 system, I was testing code by blowing EPROMs and plugging them in the system, then seeing what happened. One time, I plugged one in backwards. I only discovered that *after* I realized that Intel didn't put power-on lights under the quartz windows on the tops of their EPROMs -- the die was glowing white-hot. Amazingly, the EPROM worked fine after I erased it, filled it full of zeros, then erased it again. For all I know, it's still in service. Of course, this is because the magic smoke didn't get let out." Compare the original phrasing of Murphy's Law.

Re:Magic Smoke

[dnoyeb]

Once again technology imitates God.

Humans carry something called "the ghost" upon which being let out ends them as well.

CommPlus PowerSupplies

[malraid]

We had a similar, but much worse case a couple of years ago. We bought some cases that came with power supplies branded CommPlus. After about 2-6 months the power supplies would die in a really fierry death (sparks, high temparature, whatever)

The worst thing was that HDs, CD-ROMs, MBs, and procesors were also trashed. This happened in about 50% of the cases. We lost a whole lot of money. Anyone had this joyful experience also?

Dear Abit,

[uberstool]

Are you planning on doing anything to retain me as a customer other than using good capacitors in the future? I'd like to know because I need a new system. Currently I'm using my old Pentium 233 box because my vp6 is dead.

Re:Product of globalization

[Usquebaugh]

Rubbish. What are you xenophobic?

Unless you buy a known grade of electronics you have no hope of getting stable, reliable kit. American or otherwise. Quality costs period.

If you've used a cheap board for a mission critcal server then who is at fault? It ain't the supplier.

My mouse exploded.

[mypalmike]

I had a Logitech Cordless Mouseman Optical which only lasted about a month. Then, at one point, I was just mousing along, and suddenly my mouse made a loud bang, which I heard, felt, and saw. Man did that scare the crap out of me. This was about a year ago, before the whole D.C. sniper news, but my first thought was seriously that a sniper had shot the mouse out of my hand.

Anyhow, I ended up deciding it must have been a buildup of gas leaking from the batteries. However, now I'd bet my money on a capacitor exploding, since it still kind of worked after that, but mouse control would be spastic, possibly indicating failure in voltage regulating circuits.

-_-_-

Re:My mouse exploded.

[antirename]

I had a microsoft natural elite keyboard do something similar. The keyboard was purchased with an Abit VP6 raid MB about a year ago (damn! gotta pull the cover and check for this!). I had never seen a keyboard literally smoke before. Spontaneous combustion, no spills, virtually brand new. I was typing when it did it. It got replaced with an old IBM "clicker". I don't think that'll go up in flames, at least, and the arrow key placement is better for Ksnakerace :)

Re:My mouse exploded.

[antirename]

Ok, my VP6 isn't leaking anything... but from now on I'm going to check it every couple of weeks while I shop for a dual Athlon board with an up-to-date AGP slot.

Tanatlum shortage

[huie]

Do a Google search on "tanatlum shortage" and you'll see that there was a flury of articles about a year and a half ago. This prompted development of other electrolytic capacitors, one of which is the aluminum electrolyte that seems to be having problems.

I assume that it's only taken this long to find the problem due to the development time and time to qualify (ha!) and integrate these new caps onto boards. Needless to say, I guess they needed to develop the caps better, but they may have rushed to market since there was little else available (at a decent price).

Re:Tanatlum shortage

[Flakeloaf]

It wasn't what I'd call a shortage exactly.... the suppliers definitely *had* the Tantalum, they'd just wave it in front of my nose & refuse to sell it.

Computer Grade

[Detritus]

In the good old days, when mainframes ruled the earth, you could order "computer grade" electrolytic capacitors from electronics parts companies. I never saw a definition of what exactly "computer grade" was, but they were noticeably more expensive than generic electrolytic capacitors.

Part of the problem may be that the engineers are underspecing the capacitors in an effort to cut costs. A friend of mine used to have a job evaluating component reliability. He had lots of graphs that showed reliability as a function of how hard the component was driven in the circuit, for example dissipating 5W in a 5W transistor instead of using a beefier transistor.

Re:Computer Grade

[nolife]

Here is an interesting story about the marketing and construction costs of capacitors. Basically says that labor costs are not an issue with the actual constuction of caps (with the exception of screw type terminals) and that materials dominate the price. I did some searching around with Google for large quantity cap purchases. There seems to be a noteworthy difference in price between higher and lower rated voltage caps of the same cap value, so maybe they are using something closer to the limit to save some pennies. Or cutting corners during fabrications, maybe not something that directly effects the electrical characteristics but the physical ones, like thinner walls, poor sealing surfaces etc. which will lead to failure sooner..

Real Culprit is Chamelionic Mycrobe

[bstadil]

Remember Holly from Red Dwarf?

[A plain starfield. Narrative text draws across the screen:]

"Lone escape pod from SS Hermes - Survivors one.

Ship destroyed by Chameleonic Microbe."

[A pause, then the words 'by Chameleonic Microbe.' are deleted, and replaced with:]

"by Chamelionic Mycrobe."

[A second pause, then 'by Chamelionic Mycrobe.' is deleted, and replaced with the much simpler:]

"by shape changing weird space thing.

Non essential electrics all down, including spell checker.

Massage ends."

Did anyone read the article brief? Troll Material

[toupsie]

build up hydrogen gas and blow the rubber bung out the end of the capacitor,

Come on /. editors, you just pitched a softball to the Trolls.

So does this mean I can get my $$$ back?

[Fallen Kell]

Just wondering, cause I had a $140 Abit board blow 19 capacitors last year exactly 12 months after I purchased it... Needless to say that was the last Abit board I bought, I use ASUS now exclusively.

Been there

[Crus7y]

I've seen waves of bad production lots like this before over the last 20 years. What seems to be the problem is the parts are mismarked for operating voltage and are fine at lower voltages. It may have been something as simple as the maker using the wrong heatshrink plastic sleeves over the cans. Sometimes the board makers demand a smaller size cap because of board space limits and the cap makers try to sub a lower voltage (hence smaller) part rather than match the construction of their higher priced (and quality) competitors. BTW, all aluminum based electrolytic caps use a water based electrolyte.

At least their easy to fix...

[nomel]

if they don't burn something out by blowing up. I've replaced a couple capacitors on computers easily. All you do is solder a new one with the same values in. The first one was on my motherboard, cause by a slip of the hand. The second was on a Vodoo3 vid card (the badly placed ones right at the edge of the card). On the v3, it had power going to it for quite a while, but ran fine after i solderer the existing one back on.

If one breaks, and you don't want to/can't get your money back, you could always try putting in a new one yourself. The worst that you could do is cover things with solder...heheh.

What, are you gunna break it!?

Re:Product of globalization

[lostchicken]

Yeah. The Toyota product I drive every day is a real piece of unreliable crap.

Same here

[XenonOfArcticus]

Experienced and identified this problem last year when two Abit Slot-A mobos of ours failed at around 6 months of age. Replaced them with Socket-A systems (we were on a time crunch and didn't know if the CPUs were still good or damaged). Later, we tested the damaged systems and found that one CPU appeared to be non-functional, but the other was still ok. Both mobos had substantial black leakage on and around nearly all electrolytic caps. Both mobos were discarded. We bought a cheap slot-A mobo earlier this year and put the working CPU (an 800Mhz Athlon) back into service where it is working fine today.

A customer of ours also had an Abit Slot-A mobo of the same vintage fail about a month after ours. Again, cap leakage was evident. He got the board replaced under warranty from his vendor, and the new one is still operational.

Re:The slowness issue

[StarHeart]

The net seems to have been having problems off and on especially today, but for the last 3-4 days. I don't think it is a dns issue. I run dns on my machine and one moment a site works and then it doesn't. Had a problem with www.webmin.com eariler and Slashdot seems to be slow right now.

You can live without a PC.

[smack_attack]

But can you live without your heat?

Had some capacitors blow on a heater circuit board recently, looked pretty suspicious, now we know why.

Re:Did anyone read the article brief? Troll Materi

[puppetman]

ha ha.

Brings a whole new meaning to the money-shot...

as in...

"That will be $100 for the new motherboard..."

Agreed

[GooseKirk]

I've bought dozens of Asus boards over the years, but one day a few years back I needed a mobo quick, and turned to my friendly neighborhood computer store. They only had Abit boards on hand, and I, having read all kinds of glowing reviews online, figured a KA-7 would be fine.

Within a year, it had blown caps. Wasted a lot of time with that PC, trying to figure out the problem.

It was my first and last Abit board.

ka-blam

[mikers]

Tag line of the hour:

"If we were meant to fly, we wouldn't keep losing our luggage." /. Corollary:
And if I was meant to use the WWW the pages I'd visit wouldn't be /.ed

m

Had to be done....

[perrin5]

Can you imagine what happened to the Beowulf cluster of these? It'd sound like popcorn...

Is capacitor failure the reason ...

[Lucas Membrane]

Why all my audio equipment starts losing a channel intermittently when it gets old? Seems to happen first with phono input, then the other inputs start picking up the symptom too. Cranking up the volume will usually cause the lost channel to come crashing back to life.

Couldn't resist...

[BigJimSlade]

Within days or a few months these capacitors build up hydrogen gas and blow the rubber bung out the end of the capacitor, leaking electolyte and causing havoc.

Yes, this will leave a bung hole in your capacitor.

Always Suspect Electrolytics

[ONOIML8]

I've worked as a professional electronics technician (radio communications) for 13 years, and grew up around the industry. The one thing I learned early on is to always suspect the electrolytics.

Any electrolytic will change value with age, they simply dry out. Change it enough and the circuit either quits or is way out of spec. But I'm talking about caps that are 20+ years old. It seems like caps made back then could hold up for that length of time.

I've noticed in newer equipment that the caps just don't hold up. This seems to be a trend in the last 10 years or so. Everything else like diodes, resistors, transistors, etc. holds up just fine as long as you don't exceed engineered values in the circuit. But caps, anymore you just cant rely on an electrolytic to stay within spec for more than a year or two.

All this time I thought it was just me and my bad luck. Guess not.

Note that I'm not talking about just computer equipment here. Most of my experience is with land mobile radio, power supplies, and telephone equipment.

If your switching power supply in your computer has gone on to the afterlife, and the fan still worked (they won't take heat buildup)......I'll lay odds it was a cap that croaked.

Re:Always Suspect Electrolytics

[yakfacts]

I would have to agree with you on the lower-quality components. I ordered cap kits for some video monitors and the new capacitors were such off-brand components that I really wondered if I should replace the old ones...which at least were name-brand.

I think it is just a case of cost. We buy from no-name suppliers in Taiwan who offer a lower cost component, and they buy from no-name suppliers who offer them a lower-cost component and suddenly you get what you pay for.

Sun mainboards too.

[jmajb]

We have 9 Sun Ultra 10 stations. Because there were some problems with the PCI cards (add on PC card), we opened one. We choose the Sun which seemed to have some loose parts inside. After opening it appeared to be the cap of a capacitor, which lay loose inside and was completely swollen. Almost all of the other capacitors were leaking. This was not incidental, then the other Suns had the same problem. We contacted Sun, who said that the problem did not exist... Do the Ultra's work, theya asked. To our amazement, we had to reply: yes. So what's your problem, was their reaction. Jac

Re:Third world countries

[aussersterne]

Welcome to the real world, slick, in which Taiwan and Hungary are not 3rd world countries.

In fact, probably 80% of the electronic components you own were manufactured in Taiwan, which is at least as large a hi-tech center as Japan in the global electronics game.

Manufacturers not effected?

[Sivar]

Is there a way to tell which manufacturers aren't effected by this problem--that is, which ones do not purchase capacitors from Asia (or at least Taiwan)?
The list may be small, but there to appear to be manufacturers that consistantly churn out good products with only the occasional hiccup. Tyan, Supermicro, MSI, and perhaps Asus are all reliable manufacturers in general.
However, they may all be using the defective capacitors, and the problems may not be noticed until the boards have been around for a while. Remember the IBM 75GXP hard drive--it was hailed as "the" drive to have for enthusiasts at the time. It wasn't until six months and millions of drives later that it was found out they were crap.

Interesting... underpriced hardware?

[bryan1945]

I find this kind of funny after repeatedly hearing about how Apple's hardware is so overpriced, how "I can get the same performance with cheaper hardware".

I guess now we know why it is cheaper?

Re:Explosive potential of electrolytic capacitors

[falzer]

Try this for highly dangerous capacitor experiments.

How does this happen?

[Smallpond]

These electrolytic caps are basically a roll of
aluminum foil. The two electrodes are separated
only by a thin layer of aluminum oxide. We're
talking umeters/volt.

The failure mechanism is due to the series
resistance of the cap. High current through
R generates heat = breakdown.
Cheaper caps have higher series resistance.

For info from a high quality supplier see:

Nichicon

By the way, the switch to Al. from Tantalum due to
shortage? Hunh? This is like the Engineer shortage.
Tantalum is widely available, just more expensive.
Tantalum caps explode quite nicely, too.

Happend on my Epox 8KTA+

[gweihir]

The Epox has 14 capacitors with dark green insulation and marked "GEC". These are 2200uF, 16V supposedly low-ESR capacitors arranged in two banks, one to filter the output of the siwtching regulator for the CPU, the other to filter the 5V line on the mainboard after it has be decoupled from the power supply via an inductor.

I had altogether 4 blow-outs, luckily with no secondary damage. I did not observe instability with one blown out capacitor, but when I finally replaced them all, I did not realize that it was two banks and created a different balance between the banks. About 20% difference from the original (~2 blown caps in the wrong place) was enough to totally destabilize my mainboard. What happened was that the 5V line dropped to 4.9V with something like 500mVss "noise". This lead to HDDs not being found, VGA not initializeing and other random failures. After I had a second look, I discoverd that it was two banks and re-created the original values. No problem so far, runs stable again for 3 months now.

As replacement I used Rubycon ZL's, which I hope will last longer. One problem I encounterd is that the "GEC" (could not identify the manufacturer) are 10mm diameter, while the Rubycon ones are 12.5mm. As diameter seems to affect lifetime, maybe that is not an accident...

It is really disappointing to find this kind of low-quality components in a supposedly high-quality mainboard. The 8KTA+ is not low end of the price scale. I thought manufacturing standard electronics components was well understood by now! And components from reputable manufactorers are not that expensive, I paid something like 10 Euro for the replacements.

Problems in classrooms

[mmol_6453]

My electronics teacher told me about the shipment of electrolytics they got, whose polarity markings were reversed.

Took them a couple semesters to figure out why, when the circuit was hooked up with everything in spec, caps kept popping.

Incidentally, I was thinking about the functionality of capactiors. They're not always used explicitly to "store charge," they're more often used as a sort of resistor that reacts more to AC(in the case of inductors) or DC(in the case of capacitors) current.

Having a capacitor's plates short out would seem to be just like shorting a resistor; depending on the circuit layout, the device may still work. (Unlikely, though, since adding a ten-cent component to a production design scales up with the number of units produced. For thirty million units, you've added a total cost of three million dollars.)

Re:Problems in classrooms

[dnoyeb]

Depends on the cap style. Most fail open circuit.

Caps always work by storing charge. Thats their nature. You can use that effect for different things.

If you have a car stereo and are a wasteful showboat you can put a huge useless Cap near your amps to smoth out the current when the load spikes. the caps will charge while the volts are high, and drain when the volts drop thereby supplying extra power when needed. They effectively filter out spikes/drops.

This is what they are mainly used for. Filtering noise.

Airbag modules use them to hold a few milliseconds of charge to complete deployment since the batters is in front of the car and could be cut before deployment.

They are also used for timing since their charge drain time is constant, though crystals has replaced this usage today.

Re:Problems in classrooms

[mmol_6453]

Some clarification:

True, capacitors work by storing and releasing charge. This actually has two effects, when working with AC(not necessarily 120V):

As the capacitor charges, the current transfer into the capacitor is low, until the voltage level is at a maximum. Once the voltage reaches that maximum, the current level increases. At some point, the voltage level will drop, followed by the current level, 90 degrees later.

For DC current, a capacitor is like on open switch. The voltage on one side of the capacitor has no effect on the other side. However, if the voltage level changes, the effect of changing will cause a change in the voltage level on the other side of a capacitor. This means that AC current flows across a capacitor, even if it's not in the form of moving electrons.

A capacitor is never finished charging or dischargine, really. It's actually a curve of exponential decay. However, after five "time constants" (periods determined by the capacitor's value and the rate at which it is drained) a capacitor is considered to be charged, as it is filled to 98% of its capacity.

If you use a capacitor small enough so that it is "finished" charging before your voltage level starts to decrease, then you've stifled the transfer of A current across the capacitor. This has the net effect of behaving like a resistor, except it only affects AC current. This effect is called "reactance." Inductors (similar to capacitors except they depend on magnetic fields) have a similar effect, except they react more to high-frequencies than low frequencies. (Thus, in simple terms, they allow DC, but block AC.)

My descriptions here are based on putting the device in series with the current flow. The opposite effect can be reached by placing the device in parallel with your load. (The device whose input you're affecting.)

Minor nitpick:

Capacitors are actually in more common usage than crystals, though the frequency of their usage varies depending on the application. In the hobbyist realm, capacitors are almost always the prime choice for quick-built circuits, since their use is simple, and they require only a single resistor as support circuitry.

I just had 2 MSI 694D motherboards die like tihs

[egarland]

I have been having spontaneous reboot problems with 2 MSI 694D Pro (V 1.0) motherboards which is almost certainly caused by these bad capacitors.

They each had completely different hardware and software configurations. One was my Linux server at home and the other was my Windows 2000 desktop at work. One had a single Celeron, the other 2 P3-866's. They had different sound cards, different network cards, different video cards, different RAM. The only thing they had in common was this MSI 694D Pro (V1.0) motherboard and they both had the same symptom, random spontaneous reboot without warning.

They both have black 2700uf 6.3V capacitors around the CPU sockets that have the tops bulged out with brown crusty stuff on top that smells nasty!

I troubleshot this problem for a long time and decided the problem must be something to do with the CPU power supply. Both of these boards now reboot once they get to the CPU-initialization part of boot when they have 2 CPU's in them (They have MSI DR-LED's so I can tell what part of the boot they are in.) One of the boards will run for a while with only a single Celeron 600 and all the on-board devices disabled. It runs a lot less stably with a P3-866 and won't get through the boot with a single P3-1ghz They both failed slowly, starting out rebooting just once then staying up for a month or so. All this is why I thought it had something to do with the CPU power supply. They started out rebooting every once in a while, then once a day, once an hour, now with 2 CPU's it's up to once a second.

I suspected it might have something to do with the capacitors but now that I've heard about this I'm sure that's what it is. It really bothers me since both machines were in nice, big, well-ventilated cases with good power supplies. I designed and built both machines with well-supported name brand parts. It has taken me a long time to track the problem down, and since the reboots were random I though I had them fixed many times. I have replaced one of the motherboards but the other system was using the RAID controller and I'm having a hard time finding a good replacement board. I can't believe MSI would use these shoddy capacitors in a high-end dual processor board. It cost me hours of down time, hours troubleshooting time, a new motherboard, and the time to install it, just to save a few dollars on parts! I will never buy a MSI part again!

umm

[ZipR]

Someone set us up the capacitor?
It had to be said.
On second thought, no. No it didn't.

I fixed my dead MB, you can too!

[malloc]

If you've got a motherboard that has the usual symptoms (won't start up when you press power though PS is OK, suddenly shuts off during heavy use), then take heart:

My brother's Q-lity CPV4-T motherboard died. Before buying a new one I did a little googling, and 'bingo' I found the Abit/Garry Headlee info: Same symptoms, bulging caps. We picked up a few new caps and soon had them all replaced using $15 radio shack soldering equipment. It's still getting a burn in -- on initial testing the AGP video card didn't want to work though PCI would, but it decided to work later. Right now everything is working!

Moral of the story:
Take...

• an hour or two of time
  
• a soldering iron
  
• $3 worth of new capacitors
  
• and a bit of patience
  

...you too can fix your dead motherboard (or whatever). You don't need expensive equipment or lots of skill, just try it!

OK, you weren�t trolling.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you really are that naive. Memorize this phrase: "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it."

if the best example you folks can come up with is "cars from the 70s", you need to find a better example and get with the times

Get back on your tricycle, you're too young to play with flames. I picked that example because it is well known and understood and I don't have to write 10,000 words of background. You may substitute any of a number of industries. Electronics and steel come to mind. Or perhaps one that a young pup like your patronizes - toys.

My point is that if you think that something will be better just because it was "made in the USA", then you are sadly deluding yourself. All the flag waving and in the world doesn't make products better. It's about progressive attitudes and long term thinking (i.e., contrary to the greedy American fast-buck stock market driven mentality). If it's one thing that the Asian automobile manufacturers learned and then taught the Americans, it's that quality DOES matter and sitting on your fat overpaid asses instead of improving things is the fast track to obsolescence. American auto manufacturers deservedly had their asses kicked for skimming all the profit instead of re-investing it in improvements like the Japanese auto industry. Lessons learned.

I'm just saying that all these things people consider "commodities" where one is no better than the other, are full of problems like this where corners are cut, etc to make things cheaper
CHEAPER IS NOT ALWAYS BETTER

There we agree. In fact, that was my second point. But don't blame the far east or Mexico for American consumer stupidity. People more often want to buy cheaper rather than better. This is because they would rather live in a house full of cheap crap than have a few quality items. The crap wouldn't exist if there wasn't demand.

Re:Product of globalization

[Velox_SwiftFox]

What a comfortably short memory you must possess.

The reason electronic parts manufacturers in the United States lost market share to foreign makers in the first place was the shoddy workmanship of the US companies' products. Like the US Auto companies, they exaggerated the importance of their own prestige and assumed that this guaranteed competition did not matter, so they inflated their profits by shipping bad parts. The machine control manufacturer I worked for in the 1980s, when trying to purchase parts, would receive shipments that fit into two classes: The ones where the 10-15% non-operating parts were scattered throughout the shipment, and the other variety where the manufacturer had tested the parts, then placed what they already knew were the bad ones in the bottom of the cartons in the hope that they would thus slip by incoming inspection.

It was not until foreign companies began to supply the parts as well, usually with failure rates so low the incoming inspections were no longer necessary, that the US companies realized they could no longer get away with this crap, and began to get their own act together.

Worst case scenario: protectionism placing non-US manufacturers under a handicap with regards to US electronic parts makers - inevitable result would be the domestic suppliers slacking off on their quality again.

MSI K4 Ultra info

[ackthpt]

An associate just picked up an MSI K4 Ultra during lunch. It has Rubycon (jp) 3300uf and some G-Luxon (tw) caps in the power converter and a few Nichicon (jp) scattered around the board.

G-Luxon has this insightful bit on their news page:

recently, a rumor says that some of the customers (I company in USA, F company/ M compnay/ S company in Japan) are worrying about the quality of Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor from Taiwan Manufacturers. It has resulted in a storm during Taiwanese suppliers. We are badly worrying this ill news is getting to harm LUXON'S reputation. According to the information, it was caused by some of manufacturers- L company and Y company, have failures in their products and it was raised by that L company and Y compnay used the electrolyte P-50, P-51 which are from a company named "LENYAN". For this reason, many customers misunderstand all of Taiwan Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor Manufacturers are using the electrolyte including P-50 and P- 51. LUXON definitely understands that the electrolyte is one of the most important materials for Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor. In order to ensure our reliability and innovative technology, LUXON always develops the electrolyte by ourselves. We hereby declare that: LUXON ELECTRONICS CORPORATION DO NOT HAS ANY BUSINESS WITH "LENYAN" AND DO NOT EVER USE THE ELECTROLYTE CONTAINING P-50 AND P-51. We are sorry to hear that this ill rumor released by unknown defamer has caused unnecessary anxiety to our customers. We have to make the truth clear. We guarantee that our products do not use the electrolyte including P-50 and P-51. Sincerely wish having your always support and encouragement to LUXON as usual.

Re:Product of globalization

[pcmills]

That Toyota you drive everyday is probably made in the U.S.

Asus A7V333 go boom

[notime]

This sounds like what happened to my Asus A7V333. I awoke in the night to the smell of burning plastic and found the system had caught fire. Asus did replace it, but I got some pics (be gentle on my DSL) and saved the shrapnel before I sent it back for repair/replacement.

Re:Product of globalization

[dnoyeb]

Say which? Learned their lesson? Surely you jest.

The auto industry in US constantly tries to accelerate their cycle to compete or beat the Japanese cycle, "by any means necessary."

Quality = time.

remove time, remove quality.

Japanese have used same parts across all their cars for years so they dont have nearly as much design work as US, but US ignores that fact and still tries to reduce lead times...such is life on the bottom line.

Strange

[dnoyeb]

Not much heard about dying BP6 boards. my BP6 has run non-stop 24-7 since I bought it several years ago. Big ole heat sing and several caps surrounding the processor are touching it. Of course the fan is overkill and the processors are quite cool.

Never had a single problem.

This explains the 100% ka7-100 failure rate...

[bani]

5 out of 5 ka7-100's that i have seen have failed, all with blown caps.

one of them was mine, the rest were various friends ka7-100's, and they were purchased at different times from completely different vendors.

every single one of them died with the same blown caps.

Re:the quality of components is decreasing overall

[Maserati]

Actually, that Intellimouse should be replaced by Microsoft. I've had to deal with half a dozen at a time that needed replacing. The way it worked a year ago was I'd call MS, bitch about the mouse, they'd ask me to fax them the serial number (photocopy the underside of the mouse), then they'd send me new ones. This should work as often as the mice break.

Technically, this is actually an HP error, they designed the mouse (iirc) and MS just branded it.

This flaw can be fixed by adding a shim of some sort around the point where the cable enters the body of the mouse. That will keep the sharp edges from fraying the cable. YMMV.

I'm sorry...

[Tokerat]

...but I couldn't help but break in into a Beavis & Butthead-style laugh when I read "blow the rubber bung"...

Coincidentally, this also happens everytime one of my C++ buddies mentions "member functions". :-)

Unfortunately, I must agree..

[dohnut]

Just got things back to normal this week actually.. Where do I start..

Ok, let me start by saying I have been building PCs for 10 years.. I don't do it as a job anymore, but I used to. I've been using Abit boards exclusively since about 1997. Out of the dozens of systems I've built with Abit, I only ever had one flakey problem with an Abit board. Up until recently that is..

I have (had) an Athlon 2100 XP running in a KR7A-RAID133 Abit board. I was replacing the heatsink in this system and one other system. Afterwards, the other system was fine, this one wasn't. I had to run the FSB at 100MHz for it to operate, and it did, flawlessly, but wouldn't run at 133MHz, like it used to. So, I figured I messed up installing the new heatsink and broke/fryed/etc something. My fault right? I won't go through the gory details, but I tried a new (insert every computer component here -- I'm not kidding) and still had the same problems. Actually no, they got worse. Eventually the new motherboard toasted my CPU. I said screw it and decided to go with Abit's KD7-RAID and used an Athlon 2200. Get that and try it, doesn't work. @&#$*&@#$ Ok, cross-ship _another_ KD7-RAID and CPU. This doesn't work either!!! Break down and buy an ASUS A7V8X. Swap out the Abit board, everything else is the same and guess what? Works perfectly.. I'm back up and running.

I don't know what's going on at Abit, but dear god. I wasted a decent sum of money on shipping alone, plus was without my main system for about 2 weeks. I'll never buy Abit again, plain and simple. The whole time I'm doing this, I'm talking about it with my co-workers and they're all, "Abit sucks!" And I was like, "Are you serious, I've never had any problems with Abit." and they'd say, "Times have changed, they've really gone downhill." Maybe I'll listen next time.. Actually, no, I probably won't.. :P

I'll take the bait.

[ONOIML8]

Way offtopic and bait for sure....but I'll play your game.

It would appear that you and I took VERY different courses in economics. We sure have vastly different experiences.

It sounds as if you are claiming that these motherboard manufacturers built thier products intending them to fail in short order. You would have me believe that they did this to keep computer repairmen employed and sell more motherboards.

I don't know many people, in any country, in any economic system who would continue to purchase those products from those manufacturers for long. Maybe if it was the only choice, which might be the case if you are proposing something like the old USSR had. (And we all know how popular thier quality products have been in the marketplace).

In the real world, competition to develop an item (like....a capacitor) is considered good. One has to remember when shopping for the item to compare specifications, so that you compare apples to apples. Competition will generally result in the lowest prices for the best specs in a given tier.

In your world you have one choice: the one the General Secretary allows. Want a better capacitor, sorry we don't make one. Want a cheaper, less durable unit, same story. The Soviet authorizes and funds the production of a limited amount of choices. But hey, you get them at cost. It's a good price but what you can design and build is going to be pretty limited by the available parts supply.

You asked me to imagine all those unemployed service people who would be starving if quality products were built. I did. I imagined television repairmen, two way radio technicians, telephone repairmen, appliance repairmen, service station attendents. Hell, I don't have to imagine, I know these people. I am one! We're not starving, we eat quite well. Thank you for your concern. There aren't quite so many of us, most have gone on to other professions. But those of us who remain in the service industry are now able to support more equipment because the quality has, for the most part, improved.

You asked me to imagine a world where one does not have to work to survive. The basics of life handed to you. I did. You and I must also have very different imaginations because I imagine a good number of poor slobs doing nothing more than living off of the handouts. How is it I can imagine this? Come to the US sometime, we see it here everyday. We have quite the welfare program, where we support people based upon race. It is a very rare case when one of these people, whose basics in life are provided for them, makes a positive contribution to society. Make a better capacitor? Hell, these people can barely make their own lunch.

No, the people who are going to make the better capacitor are the ones who have to do it or they will starve. They know damn good and well that they had better do a good job or the work won't be there next week. They want to eat and eat well.

They will make what the market demands. If the market demands a quality product, which has been engineered with quality and specifies quality components, then those people will be asked to build a quality capacitor.

You and I do agree on one thing. Ignorant Americans who think that country is a democracy do have a hard time remembering that english is not the most popular language. They would do well to learn and remember that their country is a democratic republic and that white folks are the minority in the world. I think you'll be suprised to learn that those are the very same people who oppose capitalism and support socialism in this country.

The capacitor problem with be solved. Not because some goverment leader issues an order to build a better capacitor. It won't be because a bunch of people who don't have to work to survive decide it would be a good thing to do. It will be because the market will only except a certain minimum level of quality on the lower tier.

If you live here, get educated on the candidates and vote early. I am educated and will be voting first thing in the morning.

Re:I'll take the bait.

[ONOIML8]

Ok, I don't think I'm going to sway your opinion until you get a little more life experience under your belt. But let me try anyway.

I'll answer your questions, but I'm sure you already know the answers. Nobody is going to make something if it isn't profitable. For something to be repaired there must also be some profit, some benefit.

Lots of things are already designed to be cheaper to replace than repair. You're right, nobody pays to have those items repaired. That's simple logic. Would you pay a repair technician to patch up your broken PEZ dispencer? You would pay far more than the value of the item in labor alone. If you get a new one, not only are your replacing the broken parts, you're getting everything new.

I have no idea why you would "continue to strive to educate myself about how to fix this stuff" unless.....

That sort of education is great for learning how to design improved products. Or maybe for historical preservation.

There might be some niche market there for those skills. But if an item is cheaper to replace than repair you are going to have a very hard time eating.

As a repair technician you have to look at replacement costs vs. repair costs all the time. You have to do what is best for your customer and they expect you to know. So if you're going to persue this line of work, that would be the skill you should focus on the most right now.

While I embrace open source and helping other people, you are correct that I oppose communism. I am a former cold warrier. If you would like to persue that discussion then I will be happy to educate you, and we can start that discussion by having you provide me with any long term example of a communist state that has had any benefit to the population under its control.

Allowing ones source code to be open is not communism. Please do not confuse these two concepts.

You are correct that quality products would require fewer resources. There is a curve there, and quality will rise. But for the time being most people can't afford the quality of which you speak. But once the majority of people have the low end product they will then seek to upgrade that product in features and quality. You must learn patience.

As an example of that, look to the automotive industry. In the beginning there were lots of quality cars made, each by hand. Few could afford them. When Ford began mass production, their product in no way compared in quality. But people could afford them. Once the majority had them the quality rose to the level we have today, where mass produced cars are affordable and quality products.

Henry Ford therefor brought quality products to the people. Henry Ford was a capitalist, he made great amounts of money doing this.

It is possible to be a capitalist and help others. One does not have to be a bleeding heart in order to make the world a better place.

Think of this using the rule of thumb for first responders. You can't help the other guy if you are hurt as well. Provide for your own safety as well as those you are trying to help. Capitalists work on this principle as well.

If you honestly believe that companies who are wasteful succeed, then you need to talk to any business owner and become educated. Profit margins are usually quite narrow. A manufacturer has to pay for the materials that come in to the plant. Anything not required for production is waste, and is therefore money lost to the company. Not good business sense.

I don't know that much about the other companies you mentioned, but let's talk about MCI for a moment. As a company they have done much to improve the lives of others. If you care to study the thing you'll find that their industry was not a capitalist industry. For almost 100 years the telecommunications business was a monopoly.

When the monopoly was broken up, and companies like MCI came into the picture, the costs of telecommunications dropped. Technological advancement in telecommunications boomed.

Companies like MCI have given quality long distance voice and data communications at low price to the masses.

So it's not the company, or the mission of the company that is at fault. Again it is individuals within the company who are at fault. Those individuals were working to their own interests, not those of the company.

Or perhaps you can explain how the mismanagement of a company like MCI was at benefit to the company as a whole?

You seem to believe that communism is a better way. When you look at the mismanagement of Enron, MCI, etc and you look at the largest communist experement in history you find the same things brought them down. The failure of the Soviet Union was largely due to individuals acting in their own best interest, without regard for their comrads or the long term greater good.

Help others. Help yourself in the process. Build quality that everyone can enjoy, not just the elite few.

Send it to Underwriter's Laboratories

[Animats]

If it blows up or catches fire, and it has a UL label, Underwriter's Laboratories wants to know about it. Fill out their report form. If you check the "Yes, I agree to ship the product to UL", they'll send you mailing instructions. You send it in, they take a look, they send it back, they pay shipping. They then apply a large hammer to the manufacturer.

UL exists for the benefit of fire insurance companies; if something can cause a fire, they want to know about it.

Yup

[crisco]

Add me to the 'Me Toos'.

We have 200 custom PIII 'industrial' boards deployed as kiosk type units. We started accumulating board failures, our manufacturer wouldn't help us and I couldn't find anyone that seemed interested in motherboard repairs. So, for lack of anything better we obtained some replacement caps and now we've got most of our boards working again.

Co-worker found a P200 system in the trash. Wouldn't boot so we replaced some suspicious caps and now my wifes friend has a free computer.

Re:Product of globalization

[lostchicken]

Nope. Final assembly is in Japan with a 0% American Parts distribution.

Re:Product of globalization

[ces]

US automakers have a lot more commonality in parts between models than they used to.

Some US brands are reasonably decent as well, Ford Trucks and Vans, some Ford passenger cars, Chevy Silverado, Dodge Caravan, Saturn, etc. are all decent for vehicles from US automakers.

Weekend Science Project

[mrm677]

Get yourself a big electrolytic capacitor from radioshack and apply some voltage (20v should do) in opposite polarity. Make sure you cover your ears when you do ;)

*phew!*

[CAIMLAS]

*wipes brow*

I am exceedingly glad that I decided on a Gigabyte board for my latest system instead of an Abit. Too bad, Abit has had a very good reputation for quite a few years for having good boards. Looks like they'll have to rebrand. :P

Re:Troll?

[John Miles]

The reason telephones are POSes these days (I agree BTW) is that they aren't owned by Ma Bell and leased to consumers anymore. Back in the rotary-dial days, Western Electric built those puppies to shrug off World War III.

For any number of reasons, the last thing the telcos wanted was customers with phones that didn't work. But as soon as there was money to be made selling you a new phone every couple of years, that old truism went right out the door. The fact that all phones made today suck ass has absolutely nothing to do with any perceived trend in overall manufacturing quality.

Put another way: over a generation's use, one of those leased Western Electric phones probably cost you or your parents a couple thousand bucks or so. Dunno about you, but I'd rather buy a disposable POS every couple of years.

Re:Product of globalization

[EzInKy]

Agreed...my '90 Bonneville hit 186,000 miles before the ABS system went out. Only reason I junked it was the cost of repair was more than the thing was worth.

Abit

[Konster]

Abit currently outsources their motherboard work to ECS.

ECS = PcChips = Complete Garbage.

Abits reputation

[Qbertino]

The BP6 is the coolest Mobo to date, and is that which gained Abit that super-dooper reputation they have (had). The sucker even has 4 (!!) EIDE Controllers on board, so that Debian/Woody won't find my HD that's as far of as 'hdg'.

There is probably no other Mobo that has been f+cked around with and modified and tweaked more often than the BP6.
In fact, I know of no other Mobo with actuall third party Fansites (http://www.bp6.com/).

But I guess I'm gonna double check from now on, if I ever consider buying an Abit again.

A few things I've noticed...

[Lethyos]

Here's behavior I caught on my Abit VP6 as it started to die.

First, I started getting rare APIC errors (CPU interrupts). They occurred in groups of 2-5. Later, they would be pumped out so rapidly that my system would freeze printing them to the log (or landing in deadlock). No fun.

Second, I noticed that CPU1 (2of2) began demonstrating temperature fluctuations. I thought the CPU itself might be going bad, so I did a simple experiment. I swapped the CPUs, and monitored the temperature again. No matter which chip was in the CPU1 socket, the temperature oscillated. Could this be dirty voltage on the board? I'm no EE, so I cannot speculate.

When I finally did replace the board, the capacitors did show some signs similar to my KA7 that failed. A yellow-ish residue seemed to be creaping out from between the seams at the top of some caps and around the rubber. The board had not burned up as quickly and violently as the KA7 did, but it looks the same.

So, look for carbon, leaks, or any other sign of decay on your caps. Otherwise, check for abnormalities like those described here.

Re:hungary a third world country?

[Beliskner]

I also love the fact that he is ragging on hungary and india and he is called "Avishek Chaudhuri"...

No it's not, this is my Uncle's computer

Hey one second, even if that was my real name what does that mean? What you're saying is if my surname is Smith I should wear sunglasses and join the FBI, but if my name is Chaudhuri I should wear a rag on my head and smash some planes into tall buildings? Now who's the xenophobe asshole?

Re:Product of globalization

[dnoyeb]

Sure the quality is decent becuase they are using improved parts and such. But relative to the japanese quality gains have been small and hardfaught.

I have a 95 Chevy blazer that is the quality equivalent of my 86 Toyota Tercel. They break just as often, I alternate :D

Re:Product of globalization

[dan the person]

It crapped out after only 186K miles?

That's not much geeze, and for a '90 too. Modern cars should do 240K no worries. My '85 subaru is getting there

Hook, line, and sinker

[ONOIML8]

Now you've really confused me. In one paragraph you complain because a company mass produces a low end product in quantity such that those with low income can afford it. You complain about the low quality but you acknowledge that it's made for the masses.

Then, in the next paragraph, you complain that the masses are poor and can never afford such luxury.

WTF???

By the way, if you would like a quality car you can still purchase one of several. There is a company in England that makes a fine automobile, entirely hand crafted.

It seems to me that you were the one to point out that you get what you pay for.

Now you allude that you still believe that Enron, as a company, felt it was in their best interest to do what they did. Those actions resulted in those rolling blackouts and inconveinenced you. I guess you'll have to explain to me how this was a benefit to them. All this time I thought it was mismanagement by several individuals who acted in their own interests, not that of the company. Please enlighten me.

Anyone who pulls their investments simply because of media hype deserves the losses they take. Anyone who understands investments will tell you that decisions like that should be made with more data than that. Buy low, sell high. Sorry if you took it in the shorts but this has created a great enviroment for me with stocks at low prices. I can now invest with the hope of a return. Ride the wave.

Speaking of investments, why don't you fill me in on this great network you say is easy to build. You seem to indicate that it will cost nothing to build. I would like a cut of that action. Please let me in before companies like MCI gobble that up. If there is a demand for it then it will sell. If it's as cheap as you claim then the profit margins can be high, we can make a ton of money while providing service to those who have never had it and improving service to those who require.

And that is the sweet thing about living in a democratic republic with a capitalist economy. If there is a demand for these things, and they can be done, then they will be. If the demand is great enough, over time, the costs will come down as mass production is put into place and less expensive units can be built.

It sounds as if where you live people sit around and wait for the government or corporations to do what is in the common good. That must be frustrating. I can't imagine.

Over here we tend to look at a thing and determine if we can make a go of it. In other words, we look to see if people want what we have to offer, and if they are willing to work for it. If so then we forge ahead and do it. The people get what they want and the provider makes a profit. Win+win.

You seemed to say you have worked for large corporations. You also seem bitter about that. I can see why. It sounds like your people treat corporations as some entity with a mind of it's own. That is a sad thing.

Here we realize that corporations are just large companies which are made up of hundreds or thousands of individuals. When you get that many people working toward a common goal, together as a team, it is amazing to be a part of what happens. Of course it hurts like hell when it falls apart too, like when you get a few selfish bastards such as in the Enron, MCI, or Tyco examples. But the same thing can happen with small companies or Sole Props. The difference for us is that we recoginze that corporations are simply large groups of people, that the corporations themselves are simply a tool. They do not guide themselves, they do not think or act without the input of those who are a part of them.

I'm sorry that you have a class system. That never seems to benefit anyone except those on top. I've seen examples of that in my travels around the world, I choose not to experience that for myself. Oh I wish you could come to my country. We really don't have that sort of problem. There are some who tend to pretend that such a thing exists, usually because they have low self-esteem or a low drive to do things. But here you can be down and out but come up with a great idea (killer ap) and suddenly be making a decent living. While rare, sometime you can even hit the big time. Nobody here holds anyone to a particular class.

Maybe you can come to our country. Our "technology sector" is very healthy. The last shakeup of the stock market has really weeded out those who wern't producing. The ones who remain are the ones with stable business plans, and products or services that are in demand. Lots of secure jobs with those, the kinds of jobs that a guy can retire from someday. You might want to look into that. Or if working for those large corporations has really put a bad taste in your mouth, you can consider starting your own business, be your own man. The great thing about it is that you can still start a business here for no money, I've had several friends do it. They aren't getting filthy rich.....yet. But they do earn a very decent days pay for a days work.

Re:Hook, line, and sinker

[ONOIML8]

It sounds as if you've experienced some loser corporations. Are any of them still in business?

If a corporation was going to hire someone and tell them what to do, why would they hire anyone who went to school? That must be a good side to your experience, the corporation making all the decisions and training you. Never a worry about what to do or how to do it, they tell you.

Now my experience has been quite different. The company hires people based upon their knowledge of the position they are hiring for. Once those people become a part of the company they are expected to perform that job without being told what to do or how to do it. The corporation looks to its employees for answers, that is why those people are hired. In my experience, executive management manages the corporations, that is why they are hired, it is the function they serve.

I do agree with you that it would be nice to have my every need met. Ah, to have my every whim served by slaves. Yes, the idea of never having to work is attractive........at first.

On second thought I don't know that I could live for long without some goals, some purpose in life. I don't know many people who like that idea. But if that is truely how you feel, good luck with it. Let me know if your dream of it comes true, I'll lay odds it doesn't.

Then again, it could happen. But someone would have to roll up their sleeves and build the infrustracture. From the sounds of it that isn't going to be you, you want to be free of work.

Someone still has to take out the trash. Someone still has to clean the shitter. In your system do those people ever have any hope of being work free? Or is it just for the elite.

Sorry, but here in the real world you don't have to work forever. But you have to contribute BEFORE you retire. Most people take great pride in their contributions too.