Hi all, Question to the group...not a vintage computer problem. A problem with a much newer system. An Acer Aspire desktop about 10 years old. I'm trying to sell it and reset windows (vista) to factory original. It locked up'd during that process and I reset it. Seems the BIOS is now corrupted. I need to re-flash the BIOS and to do that I need a bootable CD disk. I have tried several times to format a brand new disk and make it a boot disk. Problem is the format option under Windows 8 doesn't allow me to click that make boot disk option. Any ideas on how to create a boot disk for a windows vista system? Once I have the boot disk, it's a simple matter to copy the BIOS files to that disk and re-flash the system. Once it is started again, I can see what's up with the original Vista or whether i need to do a full re-load. I would like any ideas anyone has to offer. I have lots of computer gear and need to "cull the heard", too much space and I'm moving soon. I hate to see a buyer slip away. You can email me directly at _local52mixer@aol.com_ (mailto:local52mi...@aol.com) _or_ (mailto:local52mixer@or) call my cell...732-530-1924. Thanks in advance, BD In a message dated 7/24/2015 1:18:09 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, tothw...@concentric.net writes:
On Wed, 22 Jul 2015, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 07/22/2015 10:09 PM, Tothwolf wrote: > >> One example I can give are some Pentium P55C architecture (Socket 7) >> systems which I've been running with minimal downtime for ~15 years. >> The original power supplies with their original (and relatively low >> quality) capacitors lasted about 15 to 17 years (I think the >> manufacture date code stamped on the oldest one was 1998) before the >> systems began to develop stability issues, requiring me to rebuild the >> power supplies with new capacitors. I fully expect that the >> replacements would last even longer than 20 years, however I rather >> doubt I'll be running those computers by then. > > Does anyone have much experience with the so-called "solid electrolyte" > electrolytics? Fvor replacing vintage caps, they're probably not a > viable choice as they're mostly SMT, but just wondering... I believe there are a few webpages out there written by people who have tried it. From what I remember reading about them years ago, they had no success when they tried to use them as replacements in switch mode power supplies (no surprise, since the solid polymer parts they attempted to use had way to low of ripple current rating for that application) but had better results with certain PC motherboards. I use solid polymers as replacements in some applications, and as they continue to decrease in cost, I've been considering using them more for replacement of aging SMD aluminum electrolytics. One application where I particularly like solid polymers is for replacement of the vcore regulator filter capacitors on Pentium 4 industrial single board computers (yes, the P4 is still /widely/ used and extremely common in that market, although it is slowly being replaced by the Core Duo). The original aluminum electrolytics in that application are usually 6.3V rated parts while the solid polymer replacements are 2.5V or 4V (vcore is under 2V). In addition to long term stability, another major benefit to solid polymers is that unlike aluminum electrolytics and solid tantalums, solid aluminum polymers they can be used at their full rated voltage with no ill effects. The only real downside that I know of for a solid polymer is that they have an incredibly low ESR (less than 0.01 ohm), which can actually upset older circuit designs which were not designed for capacitors with such a low ESR.
