[Coco] Fwd: Re: Died from old age?

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 22 December 2014 14:43:27 Chester Patterson did opine
And Gene did reply:
> I don't know about the rest of you but here Gene's contributions to the
> list often get printed up and put in my "General Electronic Messing
> Around" three ring binder. Below is a good one. My hat (and I DO wear
> hats, fancy cowboy hats mostly. But not boots, too hot here for that)
> is off to you Mr. Heskett. Live long and prosper.
> 
> Chester
> TI2/KJ4HLT
> Costa Rica
> 
Thanks for the flowers Chester, they are always welcome, but they also 
tend to make my head grow. ;-)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gene Heskett [mailto:gheskett at wdtv.com]
> Sent: Monday, December 22, 2014 11:42 AM
> To: coco at maltedmedia.com
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Fwd: Re: Died from old age?
> 
> On Monday 22 December 2014 11:35:56 Chad H did opine And Gene did reply:
> > -------- Original Message --------
> > From: Chad H <chadbh74 at hotmail.com>
> > Sent: Monday, December 22, 2014 10:34 AM
> > To: ooogalapasooo at aol.com
> > Subject: Re: [Coco] Died from old age?
> > 
> > Well I have a ESR meter so I shouldn't have any problem pulling
> > capacitors and testing them.
> 
> Why should you have to pull them?  The only ESR meter I have any
> experience with uses only 85 mv of AC voltage at 100 khz to make its
> measurement with. This is so low that it does not turn on any parallel
> semiconductors it may be attached to circuit wise, so the caps are
> checked while still in circuit. Because of its time and part saving
> measurement ability when measuring surface mounted caps in DVC-PRO
> broadcast VCR's, it saved me at least 2/3rds of the time to repair and
> put back in service for many of the electronics bits & pieces of a
> busy TV station for several years.
> 
> Its called a Capacitor Wizard, and sells for about 2 bills, made in
> Omaha originally but I think the guy has moved to KC sometime it the
> last 20 years.  FWIW, caps suffering from ESR are often easily, but
> temporarily fixed, by giving them a charge or discharge at a high
> enough rate to form a micro-weld across the ESR causing aluminum oxide
> at the internal to external terminal connection points.  Quite a few
> of the other so called ESR testers do use enough voltage to "heal the
> cap", for a day or so.
> 
> IMNSHO, this particular device is the only one that measures them all,
> and does it accurately and in circuit. ANYTHING else just wastes your
> time lying to you.
> 
> Expensive enough at $200 or so that I do not personally own one, but I
> know where one is that I can use anytime I need it.
> 
> > I just don't know about the DIP
> > switches.  I also need to identify the thing underneath the crazy
> > heat sink.  I think its some sort of power transistor.  Here are
> > pics of the board ... tinyurl.com/ko5dxy7.   Still looking for a
> > service manual for this model.
> 
> That is a more or less std Si, NPN power transistor in a TO-3 case. 
> Never had one fail, but a strong magnifying glass may disclose a
> micro-crack in the solder around the pins on the bottom of the board. 
> Its cheap solder, so suck it or solder-wick it off & replace it with
> decent, modern silver bearing solder.  Use a temp controlled iron,
> needs 700F to remove that junk, but only about 625F to 650F for modern
> silver bearing solders. Rosin core of course.
> 
> Lead free solders need more heat. 750F maybe. But I haven't used any of
> that roll I bought with a new soldering iron 2 years ago, and now the
> iron has failed & no help from the american dealer in Lincoln NE, its
> out of warranty and I feel screwed $200 worth.  But guess what? I have
> a 54 year old weller WTC that I pulled off the shelf, and it still
> works perfectly at whatever temp is stamped on the button on the back
> end of the tip.  Old faithful. Newer ones aren't so good, with fairly
> rapid heater failures when subjected to on in the morning, off
> whenever the bench lights go off for the night duties.  That one
> worked under such conditions at KOTA-TV for several years, and is my
> emergency goto iron.
> 
> 
> Cheers, Gene Heskett
> --
> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
>  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
> -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
> Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
> US V Castleman, SCOTUS, Mar 2014 is grounds for Impeaching SCOTUS


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
US V Castleman, SCOTUS, Mar 2014 is grounds for Impeaching SCOTUS