Re: Soyo P4RC350 not POSTing -- suggestions?

It's not that I'm averse to getting my hands dirty... As an engineer, I've done my fair share of soldering, but nowadays I unfortunately don't have the time to track down, order, gather replacements and do it. I can get a newer, better board for ~$30 and my time is worth more than that.

But I do hate to see otherwise good stuff go to waste... I'll leave this post here in case someone stumbles upon it and needs the board for other working parts, sockets, etc.

Re: Soyo P4RC350 not POSTing -- suggestions?

That's correct -- on most all caps, the top stamp (in the shape of an "X" or "K") runs over the (what I assume is heat-shrunk) sleeve, usually a mm or two onto the inner circumference that wraps around the top bit. Scanning over a few other non-Soyo components and boards I have lying around, I noticed this is indeed unusual.

So, I guess it could indeed be the caps. I'm divided at this point on whether or not to spend the effort to replace the caps, which I could do. Gathering replacements and the work...

Re: Soyo P4RC350 not POSTing -- suggestions?

Indeed. They are all SACON brand, various capacities all over the board -- I figure about 30 - 40 of them.

I see no visible damage -- e.g., no blown seams on top, no leaking electrolyte, no "pushing up"/"tilting" from a bottom leak, but it's entirely possible they failed internally.

The behavior of the motherboard prior to going (well, essentially) dead was exactly on point as those described in the Wikipedia article at [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague#Symptoms[/url]...

This is a Soyo (SY-)P4VTE motherboard that got screwed over by a bad video card. The card was inserted and had a short, which burnt out a MOSFET and blew a small capacitor near the AGP slot. The board powers up fine, but of course doesn't post or power up video.

The MOSFET in question is a Niko Semiconductor P3055LD, basically an N-channel 25V/12A model in To-252 packaging. The datasheet is at [url]http://datasheets.ru/datasheets/393269/data-P3055LD.html[/url]. I've been unable to find it (or an equivalent) at Mouser Electronics, DigiKey, or Jameco. I e-mailed all to get either...

Here's the story:

This is a Soyo (SY-)P4RC350 ATI RADEON 9100 PRO IGP/IXP150 chipset based Socket-478 motherboard that I bought some time ago and shelved for the time being. This weekend, I pulled it out to start setting it up for a project. I was hoping to use it for a small media-extender type installation, running Windows XP.

First, things went well -- mostly. I was able to install Windows fine and after spending about a day or so digging out drivers from AMD/ATI, CMI, and VIA for the components (now that Soyo has gone bust). I got it to a point where I could install...