Full motherboard recap?

[fenarinarsa]

Hello,

I currently own two STEs, one Mega STE and a Falcon 030.

All PSUs have been recapped except for one STE (it's planned, but exxos doesn't offer a capkit for this one).

However there is also a lot of capacitors on the motherboards, and I'm wondering if a full recap is something to be considered.

I thought about this because I also have one Amiga 1200 that must absolutely be recapped because of the many CMS caps used.

To be honest, I'm not afraid of replacing the caps, but there's really a lot and I can't find any caps list so that means I need to unsolder them all to get the references (since they're radial, the refs can't always be read). On the first STE I opened I can see something like 30 capacitors in all, so that would take time.

What's your opinion? And is there somewhere a list of all capacitors for every motherboard revision? (two STEs, two revisions :p)

Thanks.

[exxos]

I don't think anyone has done a list other than IIRC the falcon motherboard. I could be wrong.

It should probably be done, the PSU is a must. The video circuit suffers from bad caps, so no doubt the rest of the system does.

[fenarinarsa]

Thanks for the quick reply

So unsolder and making a reference list it is, then.

I've always had video issues on my STE (French, RGB), even back in the 90s. There's echoes in the video signal that you can see when there's high contrats, like a moving bright 3D object on a dark (but not black) background. I assumed that all STEs had this defect by design, but maybe that was only mine?

I didn't really check on the other STE that I just got this week.

[exxos]

Like this ?

https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/last/ ... /index.htm


But there have been mentions of french STE's having this issue worse than other machines. I think it was @Steve who mentioned it.

[fenarinarsa]

Yup, exactly! Thanks for pointing me to the fix, I guess I will do this mod as well.

I also plan to fix the -12dB audio mixer issue

BTW I recapped my Falcon and STE with your PSU upgrade kits and one capacitor was missing for the Mitsumi SR98 PSU (C206). No big deal, I'm going to add it to the batch of components I will order.
Else than that they worked perfectly

[exxos]

Is that the tiny cap ? Its not in the kit as after investigation its better just to leave it alone..

[fenarinarsa]

Is that the tiny cap ? Its not in the kit as after investigation its better just to leave it alone..

Yes it is.

Some caps aren't worth changing?

[exxos]

Some caps aren't worth changing?

Unless its physically damaged then there is no point. If I find no advantages in changing something then I don't change stuff. Sometimes people change caps and make things worse. I've known people change PSU csps with cheap ones which make the PSU worse and can even explode. Nobody has done a proper analysis on motherboard csps like on the falcon either. Generally there shouldn't be a issue and its good to change old caps, but nobody tests before and after on various parts of the circuit to see if they actually made things worse or not. I do such tests and document on my site.

[Steve]

@fenarinarsa the last machine I experienced this video issue with was an NTSC STE. I did a full recap with the best quality capacitors and also did the video fix above, but the video quality didn't improve as expected. I have a theory it is to do with the RF modulator circuitry causing the interference. But it is just a hunch.

[fenarinarsa]

I have a theory it is to do with the RF modulator circuitry causing the interference. But it is just a hunch.

Okay, I'll let you know as soon as I do the patch. I only have RGB STEs without RF modulators so we'll see