my empeg is dead
i think there is a short somewhere. when i apply power, nothing happens (nothing on display, no hd-noise, no red led on mainboard) besides a faint clicking noise (i think it's the "self-healing" fuse in the lower left corner).
visual inspection showed a slightly discolored capacitor on the upper right corner of the SAA...-chip (see picture).
can somebody tell me the correct value to replace it?
any idea why this capacitor could be broken?
or if it this is not the problem, where should i search next?

i hope somebody still reads this forum. i go on vacation on sunday and would love to have music in my car...

This forum is quite active... I'm sure help is on the way.

I wouldn't worry too much about the colour of the cap. You mention a short but don't have anything to confirm that. A simple multimeter across the cap will confirm a short if it's there but I doubt it. It doesn't look like a bypass cap - even if it was shorted, I doubt the whole empeg would stop working.

The clicking is probably the hard drives trying to move heads or spin up. Are you sure your power pack is OK? I'm not sure the self-healing fuse will necessarily click.

CH

> You mention a short but don't have anything to confirm that.
you're rignt,i didn't measure it. i myself didn't find anything wrong on the board, so i gave it to a friend of mine who is much better at fixing things. he suspected this capacitor. he'll unsolder it an check then if there's still a short.

>It doesn't look like a bypass cap
what makes you think so? it's right on the corner of this SAA...-chip and i think the pcb-traces to it are wider than normal...

>The clicking is probably the hard drives trying to move heads or spin up.
i disconnected everything, so no hd connected, no frontpanel, no lose screws lying around
and as i said the clicking is _very_ faint. you have to put your ear right above it and the red led on the mainboard is off. so i really think there's no power.

>Are you sure your power pack is OK?
no, but the symptoms started in the car, then i took it home and it's the same with the ac-adaptor. i think, it's unlikly that both power sources are broken.

thanks for your hints. we'll measure things, so we're shure what we're talking about

> You mention a short but don't have anything to confirm that.
you're rignt,i didn't measure it. i myself didn't find anything wrong on the board, so i gave it to a friend of mine who is much better at fixing things. he suspected this capacitor. he'll unsolder it an check then if there's still a short

Shouldn't have to desolder to check for a short. If it's shorted it will show even while soldered in

>It doesn't look like a bypass cap
what makes you think so? it's right on the corner of this SAA...-chip and i think the pcb-traces to it are wider than normal...

Just it looked different to the two above and above left of it. I didn't look at the traces really. It's possible it's simply a different value to the others.

>The clicking is probably the hard drives trying to move heads or spin up.
i disconnected everything, so no hd connected, no frontpanel, no lose screws lying around
and as i said the clicking is _very_ faint. you have to put your ear right above it and the red led on the mainboard is off. so i really think there's no power

Can't argue with that.

Are you sure your power pack is OK?
no, but the symptoms started in the car, then i took it home and it's the same with the ac-adaptor. i think, it's unlikly that both power sources are broken

Again - fair enough.

my empeg is back alive!
it really was this capacitor. unsoldered, it had a resistance of 30 ohms -> almost short curcuit.
i don't know the original capacity, so i replaced it with a 100nF. if somebody knows the correct value please tell me.

Good work finding that. But, do you have any idea what caused it? That would help the rest of us avoid the problem.

Random luck probably.

Seriously, overvoltage would have killed the DSP too. The other big killer of capacitors is excessive temperature/time during soldering, but I wouldn't suspect that after so much time.

Don't sweat it. It's not likely to have been caused by anything identifiable, or likely to start happening to other players en masse.