Replacing A1200 Caps with Solid State Caps

[tone007]

I powered up an IMSAI 8080 with the cover off that hadn't been on for years and one of the tantalum capacitors exploded and shot a chunk of itself across the garage and bounced loudly off of the door.  It was very exciting.

[tone007]

Are you sure it was tantalum capacitor?
Not Aluminum electrolytic capacitor?

100% sure.  It's not the first exploded one I've seen, either, just the first I witnessed exploding.  The molten orange streak and projectile are something I wouldn't expect you could get from an electrolytic, though I've never tried.

[tone007]

As far as I know there is no tantalum capacitors inside IMSAI 8080... :confused:
Only aluminum electrolytic capacitors were used.
Unless someone did an extensive upgrade.

...maybe you've only seen empty ones?

Not a heck of a lot of anything in just the case. (and no, it wasn't one of the giant power supply capacitors that exploded.)

Start adding an assortment of some of the hundreds of various boards to make the system run, however, and you're bound to run across some tantalum capacitors.



I believe the one that blew up in mine was on a memory board.