"EL" wrote in message
...
Yeah, I've already tried the "solder joint" thing - inspected every d**m
one in the PS, touched-up about 50 of them (although
none really looked bad). Will definitely have to take a look at the caps.

It's a really nasty problem since it can't be reproduced on the bench.
The pj is normally mounted on the ceiling
(upside-down) and will start maybe 1/3 of the time. Remove it from the
ceiling and turn it right-side-up and it starts 3/4
of the time. Put it on the bench and take the covers off and it starts
100% of the time no matter how it's oriented!

Seems like a mechanical issue to me but so far I've had it completely
apart twice and haven't really found anything.

Eric Law


Did you ESR the caps? I fixed a fluorescent ballast that had the same
problem, it was caused by a bad capacitor in the bootstrap circuit for the
ballast IC. They had used a 160v cap to filter the B+ on a chip with an
absolute max rating of 30v.