The story of the bad batteries is similar to the saga of the bad caps. Defective components due to a bad design found their way into reputable manufacturers end products; these defective components were used into thermally marginal designs. In time, the components will bulge, vent or even explode. The ‘reputable manufacturers' would deny that there is a problem, then eventually do a very limited recall without recognizing any responsibility. Some like Samsung were publicly wronged, but others like Apple ‘deny, deny, deny' got away.
Apple problems are illustrated here by these 2 stories:...
vince88
Senior Member
Last Activity: 08-29-2019, 10:33 AM
Joined: 02-21-2008
Location: SF Bay Area, California
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Apple bad batteries plague e.g. iPhone6/MacBookPro
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Dell Optiplex GX620 with Oozing Rubycon caps
Unit is a Dell Optiplex GX620 tower with an Intel Pentium-D945 3.4GHz, 3.5GB RAM DDR2 and a 250GB SATA drive.
Units does not boot up. MoBo (see pic 'mobo') has two clusters of oozing caps, one around the CPU/GPU (see pic 1) and one around the extra 4-pins 12V power plug (see pic 2). All caps are Rubycon, see pic 3.... -
Gateway GT5670 with ECS MCP61PM-GM Oozing Caps
The unit is a Gateway GT5670 with AMD Phenom triple cores 8400 in AM2 socket with 4GB RAM, 500GB SATA drive and nVidia GeForce 6150SE GPU.
Unit is not booting any more. On the MCP 61PM-GM MoBo (Pic 'MoBo'), caps are bulging or oozing in 4 clusters: along the CPU (see pics 1 & 3), the memory (pic 4) or the PCIe slot. Caps are TK brand, see pic 2.... -
The curse of the overheating graphics chips
The curse of the overheated graphic chips (here below called GPU or Graphic Processing Unit) is similar to the badcaps plague: a badly conceived and processed device found its way into poorly designed system !
For the GPU curse, it is a perfect storm of
[1] a badly designed GPU e.g. NVIDIA chip with silicon hot spots, combined with the wrong bumping solder balls and defective packaging underfill. If the GPU chip overheats, the balls will crack and disconnect the GPU from the motherboard. Because in most laptop the GPU BIOS interrupt the boot BIOS during boot, the laptop will then... -
Cisco Linksys SD216 10/100 Switch failure modes
Out of 12 Cisco/Linksys SD216 10/100 16 ports Ethernet switches, 7 have now failed. I just got time to look at these. To open the box, first remove the front by depressing the 3 tabs on top of the plastic, then slide the top metal part of the housing to the back to disengage the four ‘L' hooks, see pictures.
[A] 5 units [out of the 7] were ‘Rev. 1'; 4 had the same failure mode: with 12VDC applied, the PWR LED would light up, then all the LEDs would blink very fast at a very low power. I noticed that the 2 primary caps C3/C4 were very hot e.g. 80deg C. These caps are ‘STONE' 100micF... -
Re: Dell Dimension 4550 bad Nichicon HM caps
Opened an old & dead Dell Dimension 4550 model DHM manufactured 102502 that had been used as a COM server for a long time. Found 4 faulty caps alongside the CPU (P4 2.6GHz) with 2 oozing and 2 bulging. The 4 are Nichicon HM(M) 3300micF 6.3V 105degC marked H0238.... -
Re: Cisco/Linksys SD208 Failure
I did replace the two STONE 470micF/16VDC C129 on the input 12VDC and C202 on the 2.5VDC output of the step down converter AMC34063AM feeding the switch IC. The SD208 works, but I hesitate to put the SD208 back in a mission critical role as it was before. I will leave it powered on the bench for a few days with a full set of loop-back cables to validate the fix.
With that full loop-back load, the small heat-sink on top of the switch IC [124 pins plastic gull wing SMT] runs at 50degC and the caps at 40degC for a convection-only bare PCB with...Leave a comment:
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Cisco/Linksys SD208 Failure
5 years of service, the SD208 started to fail at random. Last night, it failed completely with all LEDs flashing a 1Hz. The SD208 was well fanned and UPS'ed. Open* case revealed a bulged cap C202 470micF 16V 105deg brand 'Stone'.
*tip to open the case: pry the front/LED plastic bezel [three catches up and down] and the back/RJ45 plastic bezel [two caches on RHS and LHS side], then slide the top metal half-shell forward. See pictures 'case' and 'catch'.... -
Re: Westinghouse L2046NV dead Capxon
The Westinghouse L2046NV LCD is also marked 'CHI MEI Model A201P2'.
The Power/backlight board is also marked Delta DAC-19M005 DF Rev 00A.
On the Power/backlight board, the other large caps are CE101 & CE109: Capxon 220micF 25VDC, CE103 and CE104: Capxon 1000micF 25 VDC, CE102 and ?: Taicon 2200 micF 10VDC. Hope this helps.Leave a comment:
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Westighouse L2046NV dead Capxon
Just got a Westinghouse L2046NV 20" LCD . Power light stays green when the LCD is connected to a VGA source, and one can see a dimmed picture, so the backlight has a problem. Opened the LCD see Pic 'LCDall': it has three boards, including a [1] processing board see pic 'GPU' [2] power and backlight board see pic 'PwrBacklight' [3] button board. On the power/backlight board, capacitor C204 [Capxon 220 micF 25VDC 105 degC] is bulging, see pic 'cap'. Failure of the cap has killed the fuse F200 located on the other side of the board very close to C204; this fuse is a very small surface mount... -
Re: Linksys WRE54G extender with failed CapXon's
I added some pics showing [1] the power board with the C3 & C5 caps removed [2] the ‘power-plate' slot and [3] the ‘power plate'.
Power block: the power block is marked ‘UMEC' and uses an opto-coupler 817B as IC1, plus a reference voltage source AP432 717AL at IC2; I did not trace the schematics. C3 & C5 are on both side of an output choke CN2.
Cisco vs Linksys: this is an interesting question about rebranding.
Before being acquired by Cisco, Linksys [like Netgear, Buffalo, etc.]...Leave a comment:
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Linksys WRE54G extender with failed CapXon's
Just got two Cisco/Linksys WRE54G WiFi extenders manufactured in November 2007 that failed within a month of each other. Both failed to power up. The sliding 'power plate' in the back is only a passive cord adapter. Opening the box requires removing four screws under the rubber feet. As shown in picture 'open', the WRE54G has two boards [1] the networking board [2] the power supply board. On both failing WRE54G, the power supply was about 2 volts, too low to power up the networking board that requires 3.3volts. Both failing power boards showed bulged output capacitors C8 (CapXon 25V 220micF 105deg)... -
Benq FP931 Q9T3 bulged Elite Caps
Just got a non-working Benq FP931 Model Q9T3 manufactured July 2004. On power ON, the screen will light up with moving green light pattern, then fully white, then dark. No picture, but the LCD would respond to input, turning itself ON when connected to a VGA source, the OFF after 5 secs.
When Opening the LCD, I found three boards [1] a small control board with the buttons, linked to connector J3 of #2 board [2] a graphic processor and LCD driver board 48.L0G01.A00 [see pic GPboard] connected to the LCD panel and to the #3 board [3] a power and backlight board 48.L0G02.A00 [see pic PwrBlight]... -
Jetway i405 bulging purple GSC 2200micF 16V
Jetway i405 is a P4 Socket 478 MoBo. It died because of 2 two large bulging purple caps marked "GSC 2200micF 16V". The 10 medium green caps by the 478 socket marked "TAYEH 1500micF 6.3V" are OK while on another Jetway MoBO type 350DF, these caps by the 478 are "GSC 1500micF 6.3V" and most of them are bulging/oozing.... -
Jetway 650DF 16 bulged/oozing GSC caps
Jetway 650DF is a P4 Socket 478 small footprint MoBo. It died because of 16 bulged caps, 4 of them oozing. Two large bulging caps by the ferrire cores are marked GSC 2200micF 16V. Medium caps by the CPU/VGA/DDR sockets are marked GSC 1500micF 6.3V.... -
Jetway A210GDMS-PRO
Jetway A210GDMS-PRO is an Athlon64/Socket 939 PATA-IDE/SATA MoBo. It died because of six oozing caps with a "K" vent, all marked FZ51 1500micF 6.3V... -
Re: Norwood F199 3-seconds image
TKS PlainBill. I was wondering what caused the failure, considering that [1] both CCFLs on the 'non-working' side were OK [2] inverter transformer is OK [3] there was no overheating traces for either transistors, just punctured cases. I was suspecting initial failure of C305 cap, but I will have a second look at the inverter transformer solder points.Leave a comment:
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Norwood F199 3-seconds image
Just repaired a Norwood 19" F199. This is CompUSA private brand and is identical to Tyris T901DB 19".
Problem: when turned-on, the LCD will display an image only for 3 seconds; green light will stay on, and the image would show with a flashlight. My guess was a fault with some of the backlights.
Opening the LCD is simple: the backshell is fixed to the front bezel by a number of plastic tabs, see pic "tab", and sliding a credit card between the back and bezel does the job to separate backshell from the front bezel. As shown in the "shell" pic, the VESA... -
Viewsonic 2030B: failed LTEC & TEAPO caps
Just repaired a Viewsonic 2030B, Model VS10772 20" diagonal Manufactured Dec. 2005. that did not power-up. Cracking the shell open is tricky; because the front bezel is hooked to the metal chassis [see pic “clamps”] you need to gently pry the back shell front the bezel by pushing in numerous plastic tags [see pic “shell”] until you can lift the back shell away from the bezel/chassis. Only then can you separate the bezel from the chassis, see pic “chassis'.
There are four main boards [1] Power Board model EADP-64BF, see pic “pwr” with 120/220VAC input [2] Processing/VGA/DVI... -
NEC1560 Failed Rubycon & Elite on Power & Backlight boards
Just repaired a 15" NEC Multisync LCD1560V+ [BK] Rev. 1E Model NL2501. The image could be seen with a flashlight, so I knew the backlight "system" had a problem. I then open the case with the magic tools: old credit card to pop the case open, and digital camera to take pictures 'before' to help with re-assembly. Inside are 3 boards: Processing, Power [JB000813 Express E157925; input 120-240VAC] and Backlight [AMBIT T301001.00 JM100021]; see picture "NEC15603B" for all the boards.
On the backlight board, capacitor C5 [RUBYCON 25VDC 220micF 105DegC] was bulging and...
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