A couple of weeks ago, I brought home a PC to set up for my parents as a dual-boot machine. It had been sitting idle for some unknown amount of time. After cleaning up my work area a little, I get it all plugged in and hit the power button. A couple of fans start up, but no drives spin up, and there is no video. I take it apart to find the motherboard has no less than 9 blown capacitors, some of them leaking. I believe the board was manufactured around 2002, and as I recall, there were a lot of low quality caps floating around in that time frame.
So my parents get a cheap replacement for the motherboard (<$30), and hand it over to me this Wednesday. After installing the new motherboard and a DVD burner, I get the PC set up as a dual-boot Windows/Fedora (10) box. It is almost ready and I should get it back to my parents today or tomorrow.
I may end up taking this old motherboard to try my hand at replacing caps. It should be good practice for my soldering skills, once I get a soldering iron.
No comments:
Post a Comment