Is there an easy way of testing the capacitors on a motherboard (without
elaborate equipment)? These are electrolytic caps on a computer mother
board(MS 6380E). thanks for your help.

Yes. The commonest failure mode of such capacitors is an increase in
the equivalent series resistance (ESR). It's possible to test this
in-circuit, with relatively simple equipment.

One possibility is shown at

http://ludens.cl/Electron/esr/esr.html

which is something you can breadboard together pretty easily... I've
built one and just have to stick it in the final case (maybe next week).

An even simpler approach is to use a function generator (you need a
sine or square wave at a few tens of kHz and at somewhere around a
tenth of a volt), a couple of resistors, and an oscilloscope.

See the page at

http://octopus.freeyellow.com/esr.html

for a simple schematic, and links to a bunch of other projects.

You can buy commercial capacitor ESR testers (complete or as kits).
I've heard tgood things about the AnaTek Blue meter (around $80 - see
http://www.anatekcorp.com/blueesr.htm).

The neat thing about all of these testers, is that you can use them
in-circuit - there's no need to unsolder the capacitors prior to
testing. Just make sure you've powered down the board and allowed all
of the caps to self-discharge safely.

Oh... if any of the caps are bulging at the top, or have started to
split at the pressure-relief seam and/or to leak fluid... you can
assume that they're bad.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
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