captaineos
Well-known member
Hi everyone
A recent project has been servicing my Apple 12" Macintosh RGB monitor M1296 made by Mitsubishi. I have two of them in mint condition, both known to have minimal use. I turn them on every 3 months or so and keep a diary simply 'Working great! 01/01/2018". Well I went to test one and found vertical fold over symptom and quickly turned it off.
Top down inspection looked fine so I started to dismantle the main and neck boards. This requires desoldering ground cables, the design is not user friendly at all.
The further I got to the bare boards the more shocked I became. My hands were becoming stained with a fake tan look and I could smell the oil. When the main board sits in the plastic cage, was a thick line of wet capacitor goo. The whole main board was sitting in a pool of electrolytic leakage. I had to wear gloves to desolder and wipe down my ESD mat which was stained from all the crap.
My theory is the sheer level of 'wetness' to both boards caused it to fry itself. All quite confusing as you'd think being 'low miles' that they'd last longer.
I would never turn a M1296 on again until I've washed the boards. BOTH monitors were equally as 'wet', just the one shown had worse corrosion.
I spent at least an hour going over both sides with thick and thin cotton tips and alcohol to mop up the goo. Later in the project I put the main board in a sink and poured alcohol over the solder side. Again to my surprise , the alcohol turned brown and the sink was full of brown run off. So the board was that filthy that even manual cleaning wasn't enough - it needed a scrub and rinse.
Element14 are stuffing me around with delivering my replacement caps so I am yet to actually re-cap it.
For the first time online I can present a reference list of capacitors:
Main board
V
uF
Ordered
C525
50
0.1
1
C401, C413, C502, C523
50
1
4
C507, C520
50
10
3
C915, C921
100
10
2
Unknown
160
10
1
C416
25
22
?
C105, C526
50
47
2
West of C417
160
82
1
C517
25
100
Yes
C414, C5151
50
100
2
C519
25
220
1
C205
100
e
1
C908
450
220
1
C919
180
330
1
C148
6.3
2200
1
C920, C417
35
2200
2
Neck board
V
uF
Qty
C6B5, C6R5, C6G5, C207
160
1
4
C203
50
1
1
C2B4, C2G4, C2R4
50
2.2
3
C6B3
25
47
C6R3
25
47
C6G3
25
47
C2R2,C2R1,C2G1,C2B1,C2G2,C2B2
25
47
9
C206, (C517 from main board)
25
100
2
A recent project has been servicing my Apple 12" Macintosh RGB monitor M1296 made by Mitsubishi. I have two of them in mint condition, both known to have minimal use. I turn them on every 3 months or so and keep a diary simply 'Working great! 01/01/2018". Well I went to test one and found vertical fold over symptom and quickly turned it off.
Top down inspection looked fine so I started to dismantle the main and neck boards. This requires desoldering ground cables, the design is not user friendly at all.
The further I got to the bare boards the more shocked I became. My hands were becoming stained with a fake tan look and I could smell the oil. When the main board sits in the plastic cage, was a thick line of wet capacitor goo. The whole main board was sitting in a pool of electrolytic leakage. I had to wear gloves to desolder and wipe down my ESD mat which was stained from all the crap.
My theory is the sheer level of 'wetness' to both boards caused it to fry itself. All quite confusing as you'd think being 'low miles' that they'd last longer.
I would never turn a M1296 on again until I've washed the boards. BOTH monitors were equally as 'wet', just the one shown had worse corrosion.
I spent at least an hour going over both sides with thick and thin cotton tips and alcohol to mop up the goo. Later in the project I put the main board in a sink and poured alcohol over the solder side. Again to my surprise , the alcohol turned brown and the sink was full of brown run off. So the board was that filthy that even manual cleaning wasn't enough - it needed a scrub and rinse.Element14 are stuffing me around with delivering my replacement caps so I am yet to actually re-cap it.
For the first time online I can present a reference list of capacitors:
Main board
V
uF
Ordered
C525
50
0.1
1
C401, C413, C502, C523
50
1
4
C507, C520
50
10
3
C915, C921
100
10
2
Unknown
160
10
1
C416
25
22
?
C105, C526
50
47
2
West of C417
160
82
1
C517
25
100
Yes
C414, C5151
50
100
2
C519
25
220
1
C205
100
e
1
C908
450
220
1
C919
180
330
1
C148
6.3
2200
1
C920, C417
35
2200
2
Neck board
V
uF
Qty
C6B5, C6R5, C6G5, C207
160
1
4
C203
50
1
1
C2B4, C2G4, C2R4
50
2.2
3
C6B3
25
47
C6R3
25
47
C6G3
25
47
C2R2,C2R1,C2G1,C2B1,C2G2,C2B2
25
47
9
C206, (C517 from main board)
25
100
2
