by staff

ecently, past president John MacGregor, toasted his motherboard and two CPUs with an odd problem that may affect the club. His motherboard is identical to those in most of the clubhouse computers, he had worked it harder than the club’s, and had just boosted it with a faster CPU, the computer’s brain, which we were considering doing to the club’s computers.

Any problem where use was a factor should show up first in John’s computer. It certainly did. Odd problems appeared more and more often. When he upgraded the CPU, which makes the motherboard work even harder, the system failed totally. At roughly the same time, George Bowden was trying the same upgrade CPU in a system at the club. It seemed to work OK there.

Randy Esdon set to work on John’s machine. It actually took a great deal of work because the problem was not clear at all. But Randy is good. Eventually he came to the conclusion the core of the problem was the motherboard capacitors. Now capacitors have been around since the 18th century, store electric charge, have no moving parts, and each board has a couple of dozen of them. They almost never cause trouble. But these ones did.

Randy and George Bowden researched the problem. It turned out to be strange and yet relevant to many of us. Millions of capacitors on motherboards all over the world are under threat. They could fail anytime. The capacitors are from Taiwan and there is a whiff of industrial espionage in the background, as well as a good deal of denial from businesses involved. Capacitors are a multi-billion dollar business. But IBM admits its boards are affected and that acknowledgment carries weight. Often, as in John’s case, the system fails erratically over time, and there is no simple pointer to the dilemma.

Randy was puzzled until he noted some of the capacitor tops were slightly domed when they should have been flat, and then it clicked. John asked Randy what made the end of the capacitor swell. "It’s a gas,"said Randy.

"As the owner of the board, I didn’t think it was that funny, actually" said John. Many of the stronger members of the club are able to put up with his sense of humour; some without rolling their eyes.

"You have a choice with a new motherboard," Randy told him. "You can start from scratch and get a lot more power for a lot more money, or you can use all your old components, save money and maybe help the environment."

"With a name like MacGregor I have no choice. We always fight for the environment."

So Randy installed another motherboard and CPU but used the old memory and hard drives and cards. John got the warm feeling that comes from a faster running computer, without the cold feeling from an empty wallet.

One of the reasons we chose the club motherboards was that they could be upgraded from 800 MHz to 1.3 GHz a couple of years later. That’s where we are now. There’s lots of thinking going on whether to change the CPUs. The current general feeling is that since upgrading will probably shorten the life of the boards, that we should hold off. We’ll see.

"When I got that computer I thought it was flying."said John. "I didn’t know it would be the club canary."

Capacitors are arguably the oldest electrical component in a modern computer, dating back to 1745. Those on the motherboard are vertical cylinders with two wires leaving the bottom, and a silver top. They store electric charge, discharge immediately and block DC current. The electrolyte in the faulty capacitors, a conductive fluid, breaks down and creates hydrogen gas. That swells the casing or forces a leak, leaving often a brown residue. The capacitors have a cap (I guess that follows) that usually has a cross inscribed on it. That’s where it bulges when failing. X marks the spot.

More on leaky motherboard capacitors can be found at http://www.careyholzman.com/ or search google for "bad capacitor electrolyte".