AIW 9000 interesting findings during recap

[aramkolt]

I ended up fully recapping an AIW 9000 Pro since I was getting some sort of odd feedback during captures the moment the VCR was plugged into the AIW card (could tell because the audio played back fine without the video connection and immediately the audio went back to normal when unplugging from the capture PC. I later found out that unplugging the monitor from the AIW card also caused the same resolution of symptoms - so I'm thinking it is the monitor actually introducing the feedback/noise that is messing with the VCR - I have a new monitor arriving today to verify it was indeed the monitor causing all this.

However, before I thought to try unplugging the monitor, I fully recapped the AIW 9000 and after the fact found that every single 22uf and 47uf SMT capacitor had out of circuit ESR of around 7-8 ohms (and there are around 25 of them) which is way above what they should be I would think. I also saw what I thought was old leaked electrolyte underneath most, but could also be that was some sort of flux residue from manufacturing.

Though, of note, ESR charts seem to state that 6V variants of those caps can still be good at those values.

For reference, the new caps I replaced those with had ESRs of less than 0.5 ohms so I assume that they'd have been 1 ohm or less when the originals were new, though I also suppose that depends on the capacitor series/manufacturer.

So my question is, anyone else ever recap their AIW cards and if so, see similar results or did those recaps cure any specific issues the card was having?

[aramkolt]

Received the two AIW 9200 SE's from here which I ordered as backups: https://www.ebay.com/itm/134310655636

Pretty reasonable price at $25 each shipped, seller has many available. They were packaged well in individual antistatic bags and plenty of bubble wrap.

Anyhow, the Atlas ESR70 in-curcuit meter read a lot of the caps on both of those as potentially leaky while in circuit and most were not after removing. They did however have ESRs ranging from 6 to 20 out of circuit. Given that the 6 ohms was the least I saw on any of the 3 AIW cards I recapped, it seems they either all aged to rise in ESR roughly equally, or they weren't using very low ESR caps to begin with. All of the through-hole caps (470uf 10V) were testing as good or better than my replacements at 510uf with 0.08 ohms ESR. I ended up replacing them anyway since I had the parts.

I conclude that there could be some benefit to recapping AIW boards, particularly the lower capacitance 10/22/47uf caps on that era of AIW 9000 series cards. The 9200's only have like 10 of those caps which I think makes it a good choice for a starter AIW card compared to some of the others if you can find an AGP motherboard and are thinking of doing your own recap.

As a reminder, the 9000 series use the common $10 shipped purple ATI cables for breakout input which is nice as well since a lot of the other AIW have rather obscure cables that you just can't find easily. Just do an ebay search for "purple ATI" and sort by lowest price first.

Also of note, one of the used 9200 SE cards I received had already had a couple of SMT caps replaced at some point in the past, so it seems that SMT caps failing on them is not all that uncommon.