Michael A. Terrell wrote:

Pinching pennies reduces reliability, like the several years of crap
computer motherboards that were built with substandard crapacitors.

They were NOT built with substandard capacitors. They were built with
BAD capacitors. At the time a Japanese company famous for their capacatiors
had a Chinese engineer who was studying their production methods.

Not trusting him, they allowed him to learn everything EXCEPT a preservative
in the electrolyte.

He left the company, went back to Tiawan and helped start a capacitor
company. This company offered significant discounts (I've heard 50%)
over their Japanese competitors so all of the Tiawanese computer companies
started buying from them.

Their products worked flawlessly for about 6 months and then started to
leak and fail. By that time there were millions of computers in the field.

It took several years before the last of these capactitors were used in
production, some companies made consumer goods with 90 day warranties and
were willing to take their chances with capactiors that lasted about
6 months of constant use.

They also found their way into 2005 vintage Apple computers, so it must
have been more pervasive than people thought.


I ran into a conflict in 2002, with a vendor who had supplied 14 computers that
all failed at about the same time. I wanted them to come in over a weekend
and replace them all, they wanted me to ship them one a week until they
were all fixed. Since the vendor was a friend of the CEO's brother in law,
you can guess who won.

Geoff.


--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, N3OWJ/4X1GM/KBUH7245/KBUW5379
It's Spring here in Jerusalem!!!