Re: Lifespan of VFD displays

I still have VFD's and Numitrons in great working condition which are from the late 60's and early 70's. They are used 24/7 to display information about the RPM's of a wire-rod mill from 1964. Cleaning the glass once a year is enough to keep them going. Had a dead driver once and replaced it and the unit was working again. But i don't know how today's quality is, I susspect it's lower like everything else in the world of electronics ...

Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage

Picked up two Fujitsu Siemens panels this afternoon for free, owner mentioned "not powering up, PWR led is just flashing". Opend them and directly found seven bad caps. All branded with "Xunda" never heard of it before but they smell :P After recapping both panels everything's fine again.

Powersupply's are dated 07-2005 and branded by Mirage Electronic's Co. Ltd.
Type AD-1700TL3.

PSU :


Caps :...

Re: List of Bad Cap Manufacturers

Here in Holland at a service center we found another bad type of caps. They seem to be from a manufacturer that's called "United" . It are 470uF 16Volt caps. We found out about it when we started to get a lot of Nikkei NPRC-10 Portable cd/radio's back for repair. They all malfunctioned at the CD Playing part. The powersupply has 2 of those 470uF's in it and so does the amplifier. After replcement the set works fine again.

Most of the caps were leaking, lost capacity or just blew the top off. And that's just after 2 or 3...