
Capacitor plague - llambda
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
======
ghshephard
This singlehandedly resulted in a company I was associated with not going
public [March, 2010], when we had to take millions of dollars in write downs
associated with our devices (which had some of these flakey capacitors)
failing in greater than expected rates. I don't think it's an exaggeration to
suggest that this problem materially changed my life, and altered the careers
of many of those who were in our Manufacturing and QA departments (for the
worse)

I also spent the better part of 2003-2005 replacing Dell Optiplex GX270s that
had failed motherboards - bulging capacitors - almost 50% of our desktops were
turned over.

Plague barely captures how bad it was.

[Edit: Apparently "Plague" was the word being used back in 2005 as well:
[http://news.cnet.com/PCs-plagued-by-bad-
capacitors/2100-1041...](http://news.cnet.com/PCs-plagued-by-bad-
capacitors/2100-1041_3-5942647.html)]

~~~
batgaijin
I remember on reddit somebody talked about making a serious fortune by
specializing in replacing those capacitors on numerous types of devices.

~~~
zackmorris
I made about $6000 in 2011 resoldering the capacitors in iMac G5s and selling
them. It was only feasible because I had about 40 broken iMacs from my old
job. But that was enough to pay rent for 6 months in Idaho. For everyone with
dreams of VC capital and incubators, I highly recommend just scraping out a
living any way you can if it's a stepping stone to your dreams. You can make
as much in an hour as other people make all day, and use the rest of the time
to code. It worked great until I ran out of inventory, now I mostly work from
elance, odesk and freelancer. Taught me some valuable lessons though.

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w1ntermute
OT: is this a recently added Wikipedia feature?:

> On 18 May 2013, Capacitor plague was linked from Hacker News, a high-traffic
> website.[0]

Does anyone know the rationale behind adding this? It doesn't seem like
they're auto-locking/semilocking the article to prevent inappropriate edits
when an article is linked to from a high-traffic site.

0: <http://i.imgur.com/LWwRQXF.png>

~~~
ojiikun
I've seen a similar banner for years when /. links to wiki pages. It is just a
template that someone pastes on to warn editors that traffic (and thus edit
velocity) will be up for a day or two.

~~~
w1ntermute
Ah, I see. I thought it was added automatically when a lot of traffic from one
referrer was detected.

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aeturnum
I always use this incident as an example whenever corporate espionage comes
up. When you talk about security procedures, there can be a lot of eye rolling
about how serious it is, but it can be pretty damn serious.

~~~
Cushman
So you tell them to always make sure to steal the whole formula?

~~~
aeturnum
And do your best to test the damn thing. Stealing it can be almost as hard as
inventing it (if turns out to be harder, fire your industrial spies).

------
hcarvalhoalves
Most motherboards and PSUs from this period had these faulty capacitors. I had
a computer going bad because of this twice, once in the motherboard (Asus),
then the PSU (Thermaltake). Luckily I learned about this and replaced the caps
my self, but fixing electronics isn't the norm.

Think about all the electronic junk piled up because of this espionage slip.
All the hidden costs and environmental impact caused. I'm sure even software
faults could be attributed to that (at least the famous BSODs giving Windows a
bad rep, I'm sure). Something impossible to calculate.

------
vibrolax
Perhaps the electronics industry would be in worse shape if our devices did
not have these built-in self-destruction mechanisms.

The Viewsonic LCD 1600x1200 panel (2005) that I am reading this article on
right now was a victim of the capacitor plague. Acquired it from a colleague
who was going to put it on the curb. $5 and an hour of my time replacing 3
caps in the switching power supply (and an SMT fuse on the inverter board)
restored it. I did it to add to my skills.

Paper dielectric capacitors were a scourge of older electronic devices, with
service lifetimes even shorter than electrolytics. It is amazing how easily
many ancient electronic devices may be restored to better-than-new operation
just by replacing electrolytic and paper capacitors.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_capacitor>

~~~
dia80
I had a pair of viewsonic VX922 that both failed with in 6 months of each
other. Quick youtube how to and a visit to maplin (uk electronics store) got
them back on their feet.

------
cmos
This singlehandedly almost and should have killed my startup. And the problem
was so evil.. not all mainboards got it at the same time.. it was a bell curve
distribution, and it started with simple lockups that a reboot could fix
(which required a customer service trip). Then the lockups would increase with
frequency until it no longer turned on, at which point my company had to
replace it with a new mainboard and sometimes chassis for free.

Worst 4 years of my life.

------
rdl
A similarly annoying thing are whiskers from early lead-free/RoHS solder :(

~~~
bitwize
There is at least one U.S. military contractor whose main line of business is
reballing RoHS-compliant SMT components with good ol'-fashioned leaded solder.
Because the military depends on electronics that HAVE to work, for a long
time, in hostile conditions, and could give two shits about the environment.
The Army fires _depleted uranium_ into the earth, you think they care about a
bit of lead?

~~~
bcoates
To be fair, they're probably not aiming at the Earth.

~~~
derleth
You're aiming at whatever is in front of your barrel. Never point a firearm at
anything you're not willing to destroy.

Besides, in this specific case, the whole point of DU is massive penetration,
so _of course_ it's going to eventually end up in the ground.

------
Tomdarkness
Was there any legal action in relation to this? If I bought capacitors from a
company and used them in manufacturing my products only to find I have to
replace large amounts of said product because I was supplied with faulty
capacitors then I'd be looking for some compensation from the company I got
the capacitors from.

------
snarfy
I've recently taken up a hobby of fixing dead LCD and plasma TVs. So far, I've
fixed every TV/LCD I tried, and so far, 100% of the issue was a blown
electrolytic capacitor. It's kind of sad that a 50 cent part kills a $1500 TV.
It doesn't take very much expertise. I didn't test the boards. I just looked
for bulging caps and replaced them.

------
pyoung
This is crazy, are there any comprehensive lists of devices that were affected
by this? I am a little curious to see what devices, of many that have failed,
may have been affected by this. Not that it would really change anything at
this point.

~~~
zdw
Basically it's a good deal of the devices in the "iMac G5, Athlon XP,
Pentium-4 with HyperThreading" era, or at least that's when I saw it the
worst.

Laptops generally weren't affected, as SMD capacitors generally aren't
electrolytic.

~~~
fein
I used to do desktop support for a University, in which my daily job was
reclaiming and sifting through hordes of gx270's and gx260's to find working
mobos.

I swear they made the cases on those things out of razor blades. I probably
could have replace the electrolytic material in most of the blown caps with my
own blood.

------
sleepydog
I got pretty good a soldering around this time. Scored a free "broken" monitor
and spent about 75 cents for new capacitors :)

~~~
omegant
How do you test for a broken cap? Is there any tutorial on desoldering and
soldering them?

~~~
bragh
The easiest test is visual: if the surface is bulging even just a little
and/or the capacitor isn't standing straight (this one doesn't apply to Soviet
electronics), it has failed. There are lots of tutorials on the net, there is
definitely something on <http://www.eevblog.com/> But the way I learned it was
to just take an old PSU, try to get a component out and then solder it back
on.

[edit:] Some googling found this thread for capacitor testing:
<http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=17592> I found the badcaps
community pretty good when looking for a new PSU, there seemed to be many
knowledgeable posters.

------
emiliobumachar
I was once able to fix a failing motherboard by cutting out the "bulging top"
capacitors and soldering new ones of the same spec on the parts of their legs
that remained on the board.

That was after almost ruining it by attempting to actually unsolder the
original caps from the board. Those things are soldered hard! I tried to apply
too much force, slipped, and made a big scratch on the board with the
soldering iron. Didn't go through the varnish though.

------
px1999
In 2006(ish?), I worked for a subcontractor doing hardware swaps on Dell
machines, and these capacitors single handedly accounted for maybe half of all
repairs that we had to do during the time (and that's against even trivial and
common stuff like laptop keyboards breaking). It really doesn't surprise me
that it cost Dell $400M+ to fix these systems - it had the sort of impact that
could definitely destroy smaller companies outright.

------
revelation
This seems to refer to a specific "bug", a bad electrolyte, but doesn't this
eventually happen to all electrolytic capacitors?

~~~
marshray
Many of us have electronic devices from the 1980's and early 90's that haven't
failed.

Until Congress sold the television spectrum and the FCC ordered broadcasting
to cease, many of us still had non-HD TVs.

~~~
btilly
_Until Congress sold the television spectrum and the FCC ordered broadcasting
to cease, many of us still had non-HD TVs._

Um, I still have mine.

I only use it so that the kids can watch DVDs. There is still a good enough
selection of DVDs available. I'll upgrade when it breaks and is irreparable.
But not until.

------
elliott34
If this happens to your Samsung LCD TV, it is a pretty fun project to fix
yourself! the only thing you need to is to order to the parts, youtube, and a
soldering iron.

------
uslic001
I personally had two motherboards with this problems and one monitor. I also
had 3 graphic cards. Only two of the graphic cards were still under warranty
so I had to eat the cost of most of these premature failures. We also had
numerous Dell computers at work fail but they were all out of warranty by the
time they failed. Knock on wood but my last item failed in 2011 (graphic card)
so hopefully this is over.

------
baddox
I completely forgot about this, but in high school I did IT for my small
school district, and I definitely remember having to replace a huge number of
motherboards due to failed capacitors around that time. I think they were all
HP computers, and at the time I just assumed it was one bad run from HP's
factories, but it must have been this.

------
jhawkinson
I'm really unconvinced that this continues to be a current problem, and the
Wikipedia article is definitely not clear on this. If there are recent
examples of this that are clearly documented, it would be great to see some
good hard data or sourcing, either here or perhaps the Wikipedia article's
talk page.

~~~
ghshephard
In the introductory paragraph, at the very top of the Wikipedia article,
citation included:

"As of 2013 the problem seems to have receded, with the last major surge of
complaints being reported in 2010.[7]"'

[7] [http://www.ronhoutman.com/the-capacitor-plague-strikes-
again...](http://www.ronhoutman.com/the-capacitor-plague-strikes-again/)

------
mrbill
Yep, had an iMac G5 with this problem. Apple shipped me an entire replacement
system board assembly. Later they started having people take them into Apple
Stores for the repair.

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrbill/62059256>

------
sqqqrly
I still have a Compac 450 workstation that probably would blow up if I turned
it on. Got it from BBN when I worked there. Many of the others back then died
this death. The thing is a tank! Which is mostly the reason I still have it.

------
droithomme
I've had several devices blow up or catch fire because of bad capacitors in
recent years. These were not very old devices. I'm surprised there haven't
been more serious consequences than what has been reported.

------
rocky1138
Is this the same problem that affects first-gen Xboxes?

[http://www.jaguarsector.com/index.php?showtopic=33652&hl...](http://www.jaguarsector.com/index.php?showtopic=33652&hl=xbox+capacitor)

------
beachstartup
i had an original apple airport (UFO style) that blew a cap. this happened my
freshman year of college, which was 01/02. wow. memories.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=apple+airport+ufo&safe=o...](https://www.google.com/search?q=apple+airport+ufo&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=UgSXUaTOFqG1iwLSz4CQAg&ved=0CEIQsAQ&biw=1434&bih=786)

to apple's credit, they replaced it without cost. seems like they sent me a
refurbed unit with "good" caps.

