Hi!

Further circuitry damage can often be a consequence of failing smps
secondary-side electrolytics.

Every cap in the switch's SMPS was fine, and the outputs were right on. A
large (filter?) cap on the main board blew its top. It looked like it had
been working up to this for a while. It had been working great up until the
moment it fell off the wagon.

A replacement cap didn't help much, and I sure couldn't complain about six
years of service from a used switch that I paid all of $10 for. I saved the
SMPS for later use and recycled the rest. A new D-Link switch replaced it.
What struck me was how the components have shrunk. The SMC switch had
several large ICs, two of them responsible for switching and one that
appeared to be a sort of processor (for what I have no idea, it was not a
managed switch). There were some artifacts near the processor for RAM and
ROM, probably used to add management functionality?

The D-Link switch is based on a Realtek platform. It runs cooler, performs
just as well and is a simpler design.

William