3lectr1cPPC
Well-known member
The PowerBook 5300/190 series Power/DC Board is just a capacitor disaster waiting to happen. A total of 12 surface-mount electrolytics, 11 of which are very large, sitting there, in neat rows, waiting to spill their guts out whenever the rubber seal decides to disintegrate. I've heard that these boards can be rather unreliable (no surprise there), but I've been lucky so far. I have 2 that both work, although both have damaged battery contacts from 2 separate leaks. As a challenge for myself, I decided I'd take the one with less damage and attempt to recap it, to avoid capacitor doom.
This would be a tricky repair, as the caps are in incredibly close quarters with each other. To help lessen this issue, I went with the smallest replacements I could find. These ended up being some really cool looking red Wurth caps. Let’s begin!
Step 1: Remove the old caps. I don’t have any fancy hot air tools or methods, I just twist them off. It works fine for me, and I’ve only every broken one single pad doing it. (Which was when I was first starting).
After removing the first one, I saw some crusty crap under it! Was it leaking? Maybe not. I never smelled any fish smell when the board was running, and there was nothing liquid. Nor was there any of the stuff inside the plastic bottom of the cap, only on the underside of it and the board. Perhaps this was there from the factory? It also left no visible corrosion. I could be wrong of course, perhaps it’s just leaked out slowly over time.
Leakage or not, the stuff was under every single cap.
All clean! Now to clean up the pads and remove the remaining bits of legs. (And yes, I did realize that I forgot one later on and fixed it).
Next, let's get some caps on that board!
I was a bit worried about installing them, as the cap legs are so small on the new ones. They ended up being pretty quick to install, but they aren’t on there very good due to their size. As long as I don’t drop the thing really hard (which would cause worse issues than some caps falling off), I should be good. It was either that or getting larger ones, which would have been near-impossible to install with my tools.
Here they are all installed! I did go with a tantalum for the smaller one. I wish I could have used all tantalums, but they just aren’t available in such high values.
But does it still work?
It does! I feel much better about using this system now that that tank farm has been taken care of. I've had it on for a couple of hours now, getting programs installed, and having some fun, and it's been pretty stable. Granted, it has crashed twice (Bomb errors, once when booting the first time after the recap, and another time when emptying the trash of all things), but that aside, it's been fine. I have it mounting SCSI images from my RaSCSI, and playing back MP3s like a champ.
Next time I make a mouser order I'll get caps to recap my 1400c. Like the power board, it doesn't need to be recapped, but better safe than sorry.
Extra couple of questions:
Does anyone know a source where I could get a new 5300 battery and replacement contacts for my power board? I'm guessing nothing on the battery, hopefully someone like @360alaska starts to rebuild them at some point. Compromised macs deserve love too!
Thanks,
3lectr1c.
This would be a tricky repair, as the caps are in incredibly close quarters with each other. To help lessen this issue, I went with the smallest replacements I could find. These ended up being some really cool looking red Wurth caps. Let’s begin!
Step 1: Remove the old caps. I don’t have any fancy hot air tools or methods, I just twist them off. It works fine for me, and I’ve only every broken one single pad doing it. (Which was when I was first starting).
After removing the first one, I saw some crusty crap under it! Was it leaking? Maybe not. I never smelled any fish smell when the board was running, and there was nothing liquid. Nor was there any of the stuff inside the plastic bottom of the cap, only on the underside of it and the board. Perhaps this was there from the factory? It also left no visible corrosion. I could be wrong of course, perhaps it’s just leaked out slowly over time.
Leakage or not, the stuff was under every single cap.
All clean! Now to clean up the pads and remove the remaining bits of legs. (And yes, I did realize that I forgot one later on and fixed it).
Next, let's get some caps on that board!
I was a bit worried about installing them, as the cap legs are so small on the new ones. They ended up being pretty quick to install, but they aren’t on there very good due to their size. As long as I don’t drop the thing really hard (which would cause worse issues than some caps falling off), I should be good. It was either that or getting larger ones, which would have been near-impossible to install with my tools.
Here they are all installed! I did go with a tantalum for the smaller one. I wish I could have used all tantalums, but they just aren’t available in such high values.
But does it still work?
It does! I feel much better about using this system now that that tank farm has been taken care of. I've had it on for a couple of hours now, getting programs installed, and having some fun, and it's been pretty stable. Granted, it has crashed twice (Bomb errors, once when booting the first time after the recap, and another time when emptying the trash of all things), but that aside, it's been fine. I have it mounting SCSI images from my RaSCSI, and playing back MP3s like a champ.
Next time I make a mouser order I'll get caps to recap my 1400c. Like the power board, it doesn't need to be recapped, but better safe than sorry.
Extra couple of questions:
Does anyone know a source where I could get a new 5300 battery and replacement contacts for my power board? I'm guessing nothing on the battery, hopefully someone like @360alaska starts to rebuild them at some point. Compromised macs deserve love too!
Thanks,
3lectr1c.