[Nottingham] Digital cameras & capacitor plague -- Oh my!

[ForkBombFluf]

On Tue, 18 Nov 2008, Martin wrote:

> ForkBombFluf wrote:
> [...]
>> One of the first photos he took with it was of the motherboard of an iMac
>> in our (poorly lit) office, (no tripod, extra lighting, etc.) and I
>> thought the detail you could garner from the board (considering the
>> circumstances) was pretty good.
>>
>> He's kindly sent it to me, and I've temporarily stuck it up at:
>>
>> http://fluf.chaosnet.org/sickimac.jpg
>
> Five bulging smoothing capacitors about to blow... If not a scrapper,
> was it fixed with some low ESR replacements?

ROFL... I was sitting here counting sheep, waiting for you to mention the 
blindingly obvious problem.

We don't do many component level repairs (unless they're on our own 
personal equipment, or *very* quick and easy)

These were unfortunate victims of the capacitor plague, which had made it 
into a series of Apple iMacs.  If you caught the problem early enough (we 
didn't) they offered free no-quibble replacement of the boards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

It's been awhile, but if I remember right, the outcome was that extensive 
delicate negotiations with Apple and our favoured resellar/service centre 
got us a free motherboard replacement.

l8r,

-Stef