Need repair advice for C15 on an A500

[JimS]

Actually, it's unlikely that a capacitor that size is polarized. It's just a noise decoupling capacitor. It's good practice to put those from 5v to gnd close to the chips. You'd probably run OK without it anyway.

[JimS]

OK, here's something else to stir the pot.... I just looked in my 500 schematics, which cover the rev5 and 6/7 motherboards. On the 6/7 boards, they changed the decoupling capacitors - including c15 to .33uF.
In any case, you should be able to find something that works at the local Radio Shack.

[JimS]

Ooooh... dunno about that, here's a wee pic of one I had to replace in an old Hi Fi about 3 weeks ago... (very rarely do I come across one's that aren't polarised)...

Interesting.... I can't recall coming across an electrolytic capacitor smaller than 1uf...

[JimS]

On the subject of Radio Shack...

You'd have a hard job doing doing that here...

They shut down all the Radio Shack stores (TANDY) in the UK back in the late 90's ...

Well, Michael's in Tennessee, so there ought to be a Shack around somewhere that still has components... usually wedged into the back corner as you Brit's would say inside a disused lavatory with a sign saying "Beware of the Leopard". ;-)

Point taken about the hobby market not being what it once was.... we used to have maybe a dozen hobbyist magazines, now it's down to maybe 2 or 3 and one of those is an import from the EU.

[JimS]

Elektor, by any chance? Fantastic magazine that is.

AH

That's the one. They recently started a US edition in partnership with Circuit Cellar Ink.

[JimS]

Good luck... the value of the cap isn't all that critical. Either of the two values would work. As someone mentioned earlier, they often changed stuff like that on the fly depending on what the factory had on hand.

At least you won't have the problem I did with using Radio Shack parts... back in the 70's/80's I worked repairing the big mainframes... multimillion dollar big iron.... I made the mistake once of telling the customer that I went to Radio Shack to get a resistor we didn't have on hand.... oops ;-)

[JimS]

Wow, that was a trip down memory lane. It's weird to read messages you wrote so many years ago.