Recapping questions

[Acill]

tantalum can explode as electrolytic can too... they are wildly used now, and some amiga extension card use them for more than 20 years now without any problems (CV64 - 64/3D, blizzard, cyberstorm... for exemple)
tantalum is an old technology, late 70's early 80's...

And they were designed with them. I refuse to not use the components the circuit was engineered to use. If you want better you use higher spec parts,  not different parts than intended.

[Whaka]

they were designed with, yes. they should have put classic aluminium instead to reduce costs. they did this choice because they wanted durability.

you can replace without any problem aluminium electrolytic by tantalum. the major difference is... price.
tantalum are best than aluminium on every aspect. they could work at higher temperature (125°C) without reducing lifespan. they have less leaking current, more precision in capacity, ect...

[Pat the Cat]

(shrugs) Any type of component or capacitor can fail.

Typically A500s, A2000s fail less, but no component lasts forever.

The thing with capacitors is, they can go bad on you, and you don't even notice.

Other times you certainly do. My Rev1B A1200 is looking quite healthy so far but it's early days yet, the keyboard is half dead at least, but I have the means to bypass that little issue...

[blanghorst]

Thanks guys!  Acill, I'll send you a message in the next couple of days.

[asrael22]

Hi.

So, I think it hasn't been explicitly mentioned.
Do PSU's need recapping? I'm mostly interested in A500/A600/A1200 PSUs.


Manfred

[RetroPassion]

I have done an FAQ re reapping that may answer some of the questions:-)

https://www.amigapassion.co.uk/recapping-faqs/

Steve

[thebajaguy]

From personal experience, it is a good idea to do the GVP Spectrum 28/24 boards' caps.  Particularly the two (typically yellow) parts below the clock part, to the right of the unused ROM socket.  I know of two instances where they fried (one was mine).  Replacing them with high quality SMD Hybrid Electrolytic is sufficient.  They are for digital noise filtering.

GVP's earlier boards used TH electrolytic axial caps for noise filtering, and they don't seem to have any issues.  The mini TH ceramics by each TTL IC are no issue, nor are the similar SMD mini ceramics on the later boards near TTL chips.  The later SMD boards started to get the larger-value ceramic or tantalum caps parts in a few places, and they should be done.  If the board is strictly digital (CPU, memory, SCSI, basic I/O) and has them for basic noise filtering on the power planes near the edge connector or close to a clock chip, go with SMD Hybrid Electrolytic replacements like above. 

The parallel-port audio digitizer module, video TBCs, IV-24, and anything that is on the output signals of an A/V product, I would replace them with identical parts.