4seasonphoto
Well-known member
http://gallery.mac.com/fourseason7444/100016
After much procrastination, I finally got around to replacing all of the electrolytic capacitors on the motherboard, and that seems to have solved all problems--crackling audio, sudden shutdowns, etc. Where possible, I replaced surface-mount types with same (and hopefully better quality). The surface-mount caps are the little silver aluminum cylinders, and most had leaked. Surface mount parts were actually pretty easy to replace, but it takes a steady hand. The conventional caps were difficult, and if I were to do another restoration, rather than unsolder the caps from the board, I'd try to snip off the old part, leaving a bit of the wire lead sticking up from the board, then solder the new part to the old leads. Much less chance of damaging plated-through holes and lifting foil traces if you do that.
Older restoration jobs include a rebuilt main battery and a 1.3 gigabyte 2.5" IDE hard drive, adapted to SCSI, fitted into a 2.5"->3.5" adapter bracket and connected via home-made 34-pin SCSI cable. The hard drive + IDE/SCSI bridge card was an Apple service part intended for owners of older Powerbooks in need of an out-of-production 2.5" SCSI hard drive, but it works just fine here too.
The restored system seems rock-solid! Cost of capacitors was about $10, because I got them all as surplus.
After much procrastination, I finally got around to replacing all of the electrolytic capacitors on the motherboard, and that seems to have solved all problems--crackling audio, sudden shutdowns, etc. Where possible, I replaced surface-mount types with same (and hopefully better quality). The surface-mount caps are the little silver aluminum cylinders, and most had leaked. Surface mount parts were actually pretty easy to replace, but it takes a steady hand. The conventional caps were difficult, and if I were to do another restoration, rather than unsolder the caps from the board, I'd try to snip off the old part, leaving a bit of the wire lead sticking up from the board, then solder the new part to the old leads. Much less chance of damaging plated-through holes and lifting foil traces if you do that.
Older restoration jobs include a rebuilt main battery and a 1.3 gigabyte 2.5" IDE hard drive, adapted to SCSI, fitted into a 2.5"->3.5" adapter bracket and connected via home-made 34-pin SCSI cable. The hard drive + IDE/SCSI bridge card was an Apple service part intended for owners of older Powerbooks in need of an out-of-production 2.5" SCSI hard drive, but it works just fine here too.
The restored system seems rock-solid! Cost of capacitors was about $10, because I got them all as surplus.
