Re: Can dust inside an Apple IIgs catch fire?

[osgeld <kevin@hackaday.com>]

its easy and you wont need to know what it actually does to replace it if that is what is going on (though from your description I would agree)

In a nutshell you need a equivalent replacement part (stats are on the side of the part) a soldering iron, and maybe a half day to tear things down, do a quality job and put it back together

if it is the input cap, heres what it does... you have AC power coming from your wall that sort of looks like

mmmmmmmmmm

it gets rectified to DC though a series of diodes to look like
~~~~~~~~~~

the cap smooths out those lumps so it looks like
__________


will it continue to work, eh maybe, it might cause weird glitches, it might cause other components to fail, it might just puke out and kill your system

a appropriate capacitor by the time you have it mailed is only a few bucks, a basic soldering iron is around 10, some solder may be 3-5 bucks more

so for some time, little effort and maybe 20 bucks you can fix a machine that would cost much more to replace

course to assure thats what needs to be done requires you to crack open the power supply. Before doing that I would unplug it, hit the power switch a few times and let it sit a few days, those high side caps can and will give you a jolt.