On 5/18/21 2:05 PM, Mike wrote:
In article ews.com,
John Crane wrote:
Turns out these use the problematic Astec power supplies identical to
the ones used in the Osborne 01. There is a 0.1uF 250V polymer cap that
tends to blow.

Is it a RIFA Yellow/clear/foil looking thing, wired across Live/Neutral
as part of the incoming filtration?

Exactly! It is a RIFA.


If so, these infest other stuff, like ICL One Per Desk PSUs, Apple II+
PSUs, SYMBFile 5.25" external harddrive enclosures etc. and they fail
with a crackle, hiss, bang and smoke. In each case, removing the charred
remains stops the smoke and allows the device to work just fine. Replacing
them with appropriate modern caps is possible too, but not essential
to operation.

https://eevblog.com/forum/chat/old-r...isaster-story/

The Westwind, on the other hand, will not recognize the hard disk.
However the built-in ramdisk does work.

Did the power cut out suddenly when the capacitor went (blown fuse?),
or did you power off in a panic? Could unexpected loss of power have
upset an "old" hard drive (no time to head park?)



That's an excellent point. As soon as I saw the smoke, I hit the power
switch. I may have just lost the data and need to reformat. Of course,
I don't see any utilities to do that. So more exploration is needed.

-John