> > Perhaps. But not all of it, certainly. I'm currently four for four > fixing dead flatscreens by re-capping their power supplies; I imagine > others have similar experiences. It's not a huge stretch to imagine
This could be taken to show that modern capacitors are not reliable, and given that there are plenty of 40-year-old ones still in use in various classic computers here it would be better to leave them as-is More seriously, a lot of modern consumer stuff seems to have marginally-rated capacitors (and the use of 85 degree ones doesn't help). Possibly on those it is a good idea to replace them. But the ones in PDP11s were good quality at the start and were over-spec'd in general. > that other power supplies may have similar issues; even if it turns out > to not be the case, there is probably at least a little "can't hurt > anything, right?" running around. Ah but it can hurt. Damage to the PCB (unlikely, sure), the new part might be faulty and thus introduce more faults, you might make an error fitting it, and so on. I prefer to only replace that which needs replacing. -tony
