Computer motherboard capacitors.

[DaOld Man]

Have you ever seen a PC still work with capacitors that look like these?
This was on an older dell PC which I bought fairly cheap, (before I discovered these blown caps.)
I was tearing the PC down to use the mother board, hard drive, and PS in a bartop arcade I'm building.
I have had the PC hooked up installing software and what not. Its has been powered on constantly for more than a couple of days, with no re-boots or BSOD.
All four of these caps were swollen and had the brown crap on them, I scraped most of it off before taking this pic.
I removed the caps from the MB and have 4 new ones on order.
Of course the motherboard may be scrap by the time I finish it.
I would have thought the PC would have been showing some serious problems with these caps.

[spoot]

Those are nice and crispy!   I've had a board or two live through that.

[pbj]

Should be fine once those caps are replaced.  I bought one of those same dells.   

[DaOld Man]

Bumped before this got much older.
I got the new caps today. They were a little fatter than the originals so it was a tight fit.
Got everything back together and decided to test before mounting the mother board to the metal back plate.
Everything looked good, so I shut it down to hook up the hard drive.
Turned it back on and the video was all scrambled. 
I noticed the NVidia video card was getting hot so I shut everything off. Then I noticed that the card had come unplugged from the front of the agp socket.
Re seated it and turned back on, video had a bunch of scrambled letters and numbers covering the screen.
I shut it back off and tried another card I had in the ole junk box. Its an ATI card, probably not as powerful as the original NVidia.
Powered it back up and all looks good.
Guess the NVidia card is fried, but I may try it again, maybe cooling down will help. but I don't have high hopes about it.
I have now mounted MB to the back plate and am working on mounting the original fan to the CPU heatsink.

[DaOld Man]

Ok, got it all back together now, mounted to the back plane (metal plate).
First pic is the capacitors. Notice how they are crowded (right next to the cpu heatsink).
Also you can see how I made two L brackets out of 3/4" wide aluminum stock, and mounted the fan to the heat sink. Works great. (I think I first used this method on "Brendas Jukebox")

Second pic is how I mounted the hard drive to the metal back plane. (Ive used this method on several of my projects, including my last, "Gayles Jukebox").

The Nvidia video card is toast. I tried it again and all I get is scrambled letters filling the whole screen, and screen changing from red to blue. But the ATI card seems to be running my emulator games so far.

[lilshawn]

yup, that card is toast.

The main flaw with AGP is it's design of having 2 rows of staggered pins kind of configuration, if it's not lined up properly, voltage and all kinds of nasty flows into what are supposed to be data lines.

you have had the worst case scenario.

also an issue with AGP is getting dirty. dust flows in there (due to CPU right next to it) and you remove/reinsert the card and jam all kinds of stuff in the slot. contact cleaner will ---meecrob--- it out, but cleaning before disassembly/reassembly will greatly reduce this issue. again, just the bad design of the slot.

Also, i'd stop trying that nvidia board and toss it before it REALLY fails and does your motherboard dirty.

those original slim caps often fail, more so than regular sized caps. jam them in there as best you can and put some hotsnot on them to keep them from flapping in the breeze. They will likely outlast your setup now. I've even resorted to bending the legs at a 90 degree angle and mounting them that way... some hotsnot and it's fine.

[DaOld Man]

yup, that card is toast.

The main flaw with AGP is it's design of having 2 rows of staggered pins kind of configuration, if it's not lined up properly, voltage and all kinds of nasty flows into what are supposed to be data lines.

you have had the worst case scenario.

also an issue with AGP is getting dirty. dust flows in there (due to CPU right next to it) and you remove/reinsert the card and jam all kinds of stuff in the slot. contact cleaner will ---meecrob--- it out, but cleaning before disassembly/reassembly will greatly reduce this issue. again, just the bad design of the slot.

Also, i'd stop trying that nvidia board and toss it before it REALLY fails and does your motherboard dirty.

those original slim caps often fail, more so than regular sized caps. jam them in there as best you can and put some hotsnot on them to keep them from flapping in the breeze. They will likely outlast your setup now. I've even resorted to bending the legs at a 90 degree angle and mounting them that way... some hotsnot and it's fine.

Thanks lilshawn, but I think the whole motherboard is toast now. (Have not tried the NVidia card again.)
I was trying to find what pins on the connector go to the power switch and couldn't get any of them to turn it on.
I reset BIOS and plugged AC back in and it auto powered on and booted up fine (After I set bios).
Left it on all night.
Today I shut it down and tried to find the power switch pins again, couldn't get any of them to power it on. Tried resetting bios and power on again and now that's not working 
Tested power supply and it tested fine. Tried another ATX power supply I had lying around, same problem.
I wonder if there is a fuse on this thing somewhere? Cant find one, unless the tripod looking thing in the photo below is one. Never seen a device like that on a motherboard, if its a fuse I cant figure out how it is released. (Maybe soldered?) Have you ever seen a part like this?
Ive got another mother board from a IBM thinkcentre  got it hooked up to the HD and monitor, etc. It seems to be working ok, and the connector on it has the power switch pins clearly marked.
Guess Im going to have to use it for my project.
Just sucks I have invested so much time in the Dell MB. 
I searched online a couple of hours today, trying to find a pinout diagram for the dell FP connector. Couldn't find any useful info.

[ed12]

the fuses and yes there will be some
can be either 0ohm chip resister pkg >little black resister<,
or will be same thing suface mount expect white and the board should clearly mark it as such,if no marking's on the board,just look on top of the surface chip componet
to see a mark like 3 or 5,they may be your main fuses :meter them: for dead short
same with the 0 ohm chip resister's

ed

[DaOld Man]

the fuses and yes there will be some
can be either 0ohm chip resister pkg >little black resister<,
or will be same thing suface mount expect white and the board should clearly mark it as such,if no marking's on the board,just look on top of the surface chip componet
to see a mark like 3 or 5,they may be your main fuses :meter them: for dead short
same with the 0 ohm chip resister's

ed

Thanks ed
There is a small SMC with a 5 on it next to the FP connector, but it reads 0 ohms, so if it is a fuse Im thinking it is ok.
The board came out of a dell desktop 4550. and has "E210882" printed on it. What little info I can find I think this is made by IBM for DELL, but could be wrong.
It has a pent. 4 2.0 ghz cpu but no onboard video, so the video card is necessary. Do you think I fried something on the board when I fried the AGP card?

[ed12]

no i do not
i think u playing trying to find a button that dose not exist on them board did it
u see some dell came olny with a hardwired power switch to the power supply
and the option in the bios of what to do if power off,ie restart once power is appiled
or wait for a key like f1 or such.
i would tend to look in the area of where u were looking for power pin's
u may find a down stream smf resister marked 0 open

ed

[lilshawn]

that 3 legged thing is probably the oscillator crystal for the RTC. maybe not. hard to tell from your angle. they often stand them up and use a plastic holder to support them.

triple check you haven't inserted any of the caps backwards. lord knows it's easy to do, even i've done it a couple times... especially since some manufactures mark the - side (like you are supposed to) and yet others mark the + side. A backwards cap will certainly prevent power up.

trolling around the web netted me the following info on the front panel connector...

Power Switch - Pins 18 & 20
HDD LED - Pins 5 & 22
Power LED - Pins 4 & 23

(this info was from an 8200 but likely uses the same connector, as it's basically the higher up model of this one...but most of the parts are interchangeable for quick assemblies sake)

[DaOld Man]

Thanks lilsawn.
The capacitors are inserted correctly, and it ran fine after that.
I agree that that tripod thinngy is probably a crystal, I was thinking an inductor, but crystal makes better since.
Thanks for the pinout info, I gained a few more grey hairs yesterday trying to find it.
Pretty sure I shorted those two when trying to find the magic two, that's why I think I could have fried something.
I will try to put it all back together today and try it again, testing pins 18&20.

[JDFan]

In looking at that dell #E210882 on ebay there is a MOBO from a dimension 3000 that looks the same a your pic for sale @ $10 + $12 shipping with a 2.8GHz. P4 CPU ( http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Dimension-3000-0N6381-N6381-Motherboard-E210882-w-Processor-/291317172675 ) was going to say you might be better off ordering a new one from Arrow Direct (they have a dimension 3000 complete system for $31.50 that would have been really cheap with the 60% off the other day (about $12) but just checked and the sales all finished -- The only decent thing is the shipping is still free and the "10offany" code gets $10 off so for $21.50+tax you could get a replacement MOBO with a new case, PSU, CDRW drive, 40GB spare HDD,256MB Ram module,and an upgrade to a 2.8Ghz CPU. Which at this point may be cheaper than trying to repair the one you have ! (or wait for the next sale and you might get it cheaper if you don't need it right away - they most likely will have some holiday sale fairly soon - though the free shipping and $10 off isn't a bad sale as is !)

( http://arrowdirect.com/dell-dimension-3000-2-80ghz-p4-desktop-40gb-256mb.html )

[DaOld Man]

Thanks JDFan, that sounds like the best way to go. I have wasted so much time on this board that if I had to pay myself for my time I could have bought a top line I5 by now.
The ole motherboard looks as if it is bound for recycle heaven. (Forgot to mention the 20 cents each on the new caps.)

Edit, just looked at the one on ebay and that's not exactly like the one I have, but it is the same number. That board is probably used in different variations for other PCs too.
Here is a pic of mine:

[lilshawn]

Thanks JDFan, that sounds like the best way to go. I have wasted so much time on this board that if I had to pay myself for my time I could have bought a top line I5 by now.
The ole motherboard looks as if it is bound for recycle heaven. (Forgot to mention the 20 cents each on the new caps.)

such as it is these days with our throw away world.

welp, save the ram and processor, you never know when you might need some old stuff.

peel off the heat sinks too. they come in handy.

[JDFan]

Edit, just looked at the one on ebay and that's not exactly like the one I have, but it is the same number. That board is probably used in different variations for other PCs too.
Here is a pic of mine:

Looks like it might be a different revision of the MOBO but the Ebay one doesn't have the AGP slot (and maybe a few other differences - NUmber of PCI connectors, Ram slots, etc.) - IF you look close you can see the connection points but they have a habit of not putting everything on their MOBOs to save the couple pennies and limit upgrades and they do not tell you which a specific system comes with and they have the same # !! (one of the things I hate about most prebuilt system builders)

[Malenko]

not for nothing, but you can get a pretty swell deal on a PC from arrowdirect and just scrap what you have.

[lilshawn]

Edit, just looked at the one on ebay and that's not exactly like the one I have, but it is the same number. That board is probably used in different variations for other PCs too.
Here is a pic of mine:

Looks like it might be a different revision of the MOBO but the Ebay one doesn't have the AGP slot (and maybe a few other differences - NUmber of PCI connectors, Ram slots, etc.) - IF you look close you can see the connection points but they have a habit of not putting everything on their MOBOs to save the couple pennies and limit upgrades and they do not tell you which a specific system comes with and they have the same # !! (one of the things I hate about most prebuilt system builders)

Dell is famous for that. had to buy some replacemnt boards for the dels usedin big buck safari and up machines...

exact same board can be had with...

4 sata ports, 1 IDE port, 1 floppy port.

3 sata ports, 0 ide port, 1 floppy port.

2 sata ports, 1 IDE port, 0 floppy port.

2 sata ports, 0 ide port, 0 floppy port.

oy vey. 

[DeLuSioNal29]

I have tons of old parts that you are welcome to have.  I may even have an AGP MB with ram and processor installed.  I'm not sure what the speeds are, I will have to look.  Shoot me a PM and I'll give you more details.  I'll ship them out for free if you need them, knowing that they'll get some use.

D

[JDFan]

Just got an E-mail from arrow direct with a new code for Dell products if you wanted to order a new system ! :

SAVE a full 50% off all DELL Products at ArrowDirect. Use coupon code DELL50 at checkout to save big on all DELL Laptops, PCs, and monitors!

Shop all DELL laptops here.
Save big on a DELL desktop PC here.
Check out our monitor selection.

Supplies are limited! The "DELL50" 50% Off Coupon is available to retail customers only through Sunday 12/14/14,

[DaOld Man]

I have tons of old parts that you are welcome to have.  I may even have an AGP MB with ram and processor installed.  I'm not sure what the speeds are, I will have to look.  Shoot me a PM and I'll give you more details.  I'll ship them out for free if you need them, knowing that they'll get some use.

D

Thank you DeLisional, that is a very kind offer.
But I do have another board that I have hooked up to my monitor KB and mouse, and it seems to working fine on the games I have, so it's not like I have nothing to use.
Im still thinking about ordering one of the cheap Dells from arrow direct, to have for next project or backup. But I must say I am not that crazy about dell computers, mostly due to their propriety parts they use.
Its not always easy to swap out standard parts for dell parts, for instance the mother board mount holes in the metal back plane will not match up to other motherboards.

[DaOld Man]

I started a new topic in Automated Projects about hooking up a button to turn on the motherboard.
I see this question pop up from time to time on here and it would be good (I think) to have some useful info on this that is located in one easy to find place.
I am asking for everyone's help by posting pics of their motherboard and what pins (for that type of motherboard) are used to attach the button to.
I plan to post the picture of the dell MB I have been monkeying with, along with a close up of the FP panel connector, identifying the pins that LilShawn identified as the PWR switch connections.
It's a shame I cant confirm it, but I will take LilShawns word for it.
Let me know if this is a good idea or not.

[lilshawn]

there is no stupid info (except misinformation)...

so there is some stupid info, but mostly not and it's better to have it and not need a gun than to have a gun and no one to shoot with it.