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My habit of swapping caps without checking ESR first bit me hard on a Commodore 64 repair last Saturday
Had a power supply I recapped three times and it still hummed, then an old-timer on Discord pointed out my cheap meter couldn't read ESR under load, so now I borrow his Peak Atlas every time.
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milaw149d ago
Three caps later and a borrowed Peak Atlas is your new best friend. Guess I'll keep mine in the glovebox for now.
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jennifer_jenkins9d ago
Just leave the tester in the toolbox where it belongs and buy new caps every time. At $3 a pop for decent electrolytics you can shotgun replace half the board for what a Peak Atlas costs. Half the time the tester just tells you the cap is bad anyway which you already figured out when the amp started humming like a fridge. Plus keeping the glovebox clean means you don't have to dig around for it when you actually need the tire gauge.
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