Well I never...

[pentium]

I was in the midst of reforming my old AT power supply (it was covering over the motherboards power sockets when installed and so I had to bend the case) when I was stunned to find bad caps.

Before I got it, it lived it's life as a 386 workstation until one day the pc chips motherboard (baaaaaaaaaaaaad brand) gave out.
By the looks of it they used vent caps and the PSU case is a huge waste of space.
You could fit a second board in this case and still have room.
God I wish I had my camera. I still can't believe that a Max Power 250W 386 PSU would really have bad caps.

[dood]

Re: Well I never...

I wouldn't consider it an issue with badcaps.... I mean, yes, the caps failed... but look at how old that PSU is!!! In all likelyhood, the caps simply dried out from being so old.

[pentium]

Re: Well I never...

That was one of the other reasons why I pulled it.
For a while it has been causing some nasty voltage fluxuations and a FET on the board is beginning to look scortched (he PSU board, not the motherboard).

[PeteS in CA]

Re: Well I never...

Lytic caps have a finite lifetime. We fixed a P/S for use in our lab a couple of weeks ago at work (an SCR-regulated boat anchor!). It had two bad caps - both 30-year-old Sprague 30D, a GP axial-lead series.

[RoadWarrior]

Re: Well I never...

I blew the caps in quite a few 386 era "230" or "250" Watt supplies when I was trying to get a K6-2 system clocked over 500. Put it on an early AT era "200W" supply and all was good. Cheapness started creeping in pretty early on really.

Come to think if it, I've blown a couple of Max Power "250W" ATXes on boards that they shouldn't have had any trouble with.

[pentium]

Re: Well I never...

I'm still looking over the thing and I amazed.
Only ONE cap per voltage rail. the 12v cap had failed and the 5v looked fine.
This thing was giving out an insane voltage flux and it spiked every so often hitting 13.5V!
I ain't using this thing again.

[Spacedye69]

Re: Well I never...

Let me know if you need another AT ps or cases. Those and 15" monitors fill half my garage@

[pentium]

Re: Well I never...

I'm keeping the PSU case. A normal AT PSU will not fit in this tower. I'm ptobably gonna just gut another AT PSU and install it in this case. With all that space I have plenty of room to expand.