[Info-vax] Used DS-10 or equivalent recommendations?

[Scott Dorsey]

MG  <marcogbNO at SPAMxs4all.nl> wrote:
>Op 8-okt-2016 om 16:33 schreef Scott Dorsey:
>> This sort of thing is typically noise on the power supply rails.  Usually
>> either a bad capacitor in the power supply or a bad decoupling cap somewhere
>> on the cpu board.  An ESR tester will find them quickly.
>
>Provided one has the equipment...

The Dick Smith ESR tester kit is $125.  There are several others out there in
that price range.  If you repair ANY kind of electronics you should have one.

Otherwise you can just shotgun out all the capacitors randomly, but after the
first piece of equipment you'll find the ESR tester would have saved you money.

>> It's not particularly hard to just shotgun out all the capacitors on a
>> power supply, and with a machine of this age with this sort of symptom
>> it's worth doing it because even if it doesn't fix the current issue it
>> will prevent future ones.
>
>Not everyone is an electrical engineer and they don't warn for
>nothing to be careful with PSUs, which can still contain lethal
>electrical charges (also after having been fully unplugged and
>seemingly discharged).

Discharging the two capacitors on the primary side with a screwdriver is not
a big deal.

If it scares you, box it up with a $500 or so check and send it to a power
supply rebuilder like Power Clinic in Texas.

>> These machines were not designed to last forever, the way a PDP-8e was.
>
>Perhaps, but plenty of others systems weren't but still run fine.

Those other systems are also likely to die of capacitor failures, because
that's the first place where people cut corners when trying to save money
at the expense of system lifetime.  So, when they die, fix them.

>Unfortunate, the DS10 for the rest is a very nice system.  But
>maybe these are a few unlucky cases, too.

Equipment breaks, we fix it.  That's how life goes.
--scott

-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."