D.G. Nova update -- crapacitors strike again

[Jules Richardson]

On Fri, 2005-04-01 at 00:32 -0800, Tom Jennings wrote:
> Well I identified the failure, fixed it, and the disk pack is
> formatting right now. Whew!
> 
> Another crapacitor -- looks like a tantalum, but it's only .01uF,
> a dipped-looking bright blue axial part, about the size of a 1/8W
> resistor. I think these were discussed recently; not necessarily
> tants, but some short-lived process.

That's one thing that bugs me about old kit for which there aren't
schematics around - tantalum caps often completely explode. If the value
was critical for some reason, then that creates a problem!

I've started taking lots of photos of any rare boards I have these days,
just in case. Once a cap explodes or a resistor burns out it might be
impossible to tell what the right part should be (well, without serious
circuit analysis and/or guesswork)