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<title>RE: [rescue] Help me rescue my Sun Ultra 10 (2x)</title>
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<p style="padding: 0; margin: 0; min-height: 11pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Ideally I'd like to replace as few caps as possible, mostly because it seems to be just wasteful (and potentially dangerous) to replace more caps than are necessary.</span></p>
<p style="padding: 0; margin: 0; min-height: 11pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="padding: 0; margin: 0; min-height: 11pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">I did do the old 'finger test' on all caps and none of them get appreciably warm. And visual inspection doesn't show any obvious failures either. They are also all brandname caps, so maybe they are just... fine? The 8 big caps next to the CPU are all dead on at 1.90 volt with no fluctuation, but there are the 5 other caps that I could not measure, and only did the finger test/visual inspection on.<br /><br />I don't really have a good way of doing this with the SMD caps, and replacing those should also be a bit gentler on the board than the thru-hole ones, so I'm a bit less worried about yanking and replacing those.</span></p>
<p style="padding: 0; margin: 0; min-height: 11pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="padding: 0; margin: 0; min-height: 11pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">But your point is well taken. I should probably be prepared that it might not work, and that I might have to replace the 13 big cans too, maybe also the the 2 "audio grade" caps on the CPU carrier board... Finding replacements for those might be a problem...</span></p>
<p style="padding: 0; margin: 0; min-height: 11pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="padding: 0; margin: 0; min-height: 11pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">- HP</span></p>
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<blockquote style="border-left: 2px solid #325FBA; padding-left: 5px; margin: 0px 5px;"><span style="font-family: tahoma,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">-----Original message-----<br /><span><strong>From:</strong> John Hudak via rescue <rescue@sunhelp.org></span><br /><span><strong>Sent:</strong> Monday December 15th, 2025 16:03</span><br /><span><strong>To:</strong> The Rescue List <rescue@sunhelp.org></span><br /><span><strong>Cc:</strong> John Hudak <jjhudak@gmail.com></span><br /><span><strong>Subject:</strong> Re: [rescue] Help me rescue my Sun Ultra 10 (2x)</span><br /><br /></span>
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<div>You may want to consider checking the PS caps with an ESR (Equivalent Series Resistance) meter. High ESR caps can cause voltage drops, internal heating that changes the capacitance and filtering effectiveness at high frequencies. In many cases one can check the ESR with the capacitor in place but it is best to have it disconnected from the circuit. The caps on the MB can also be checked. OTOH, given the age of the boards and PS, you might want to just replace them all.</div>
<div>It sort of depends on your vision of the future for the system.</div>
<div>Good luck</div>
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<div class="gmail_attr" dir="ltr">On Mon, Dec 15, 2025 at 9:45\u202fAM HP van Braam via rescue <<a href="mailto:rescue@sunhelp.org" target="_blank" title="mailto:rescue@sunhelp.org
Click the link to open the URL in a new window." rel="noopener">rescue@sunhelp.org</a>> wrote:<br /></div>
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<p style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; min-height: 11pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Okay, I have measured voltages on all of the big caps, and they all have cromulent and stable voltages. So that just leaves the forest of SMD caps in the bottom right of the board.<br /><br />I'll be replacing those on Wednesday on one of the boards... Wish me luck... :)</p>
<p style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; min-height: 11pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; min-height: 11pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">- HP</span></p>
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<blockquote style="border-left: 2px solid #325fba; padding-left: 5px; margin: 0px 5px;"><span style="font-family: tahoma,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">-----Original message-----<br /><span><strong>From:</strong> John Hudak via rescue <<a href="mailto:rescue@sunhelp.org" target="_blank" title="mailto:rescue@sunhelp.org
Click the link to open the URL in a new window." rel="noopener">rescue@sunhelp.org</a>></span><br /><span><strong>Sent:</strong> Sunday December 14th, 2025 1:27</span><br /><span><strong>To:</strong> The Rescue List <<a href="mailto:rescue@sunhelp.org" target="_blank" title="mailto:rescue@sunhelp.org
Click the link to open the URL in a new window." rel="noopener">rescue@sunhelp.org</a>></span><br /><span><strong>Cc:</strong> John Hudak <<a href="mailto:jjhudak@gmail.com" target="_blank" title="mailto:jjhudak@gmail.com
Click the link to open the URL in a new window." rel="noopener">jjhudak@gmail.com</a>></span><br /><span><strong>Subject:</strong> Re: [rescue] Help me rescue my Sun Ultra 10 (2x)</span><br /><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr">I think that is a valid problem. </div>
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<div class="gmail_attr" dir="ltr">On Sat, Dec 13, 2025 at 6:43\u202fPM Dan Moisa via rescue <<a href="mailto:rescue@sunhelp.org" target="_blank" title="mailto:rescue@sunhelp.org
Click the link to open the URL in a new window." rel="noopener">rescue@sunhelp.org</a>> wrote:<br /></div>
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<div dir="ltr">I have a 3/80 that is flaky in a very similar way, I'm suspecting on-board caps at this point.
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<div>Dan.</div>
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<div class="gmail_attr" dir="ltr">On Sat, Dec 13, 2025 at 3:40\u202fPM HP van Braam via rescue <<a href="mailto:rescue@sunhelp.org" target="_blank" title="mailto:rescue@sunhelp.org
Click the link to open the URL in a new window." rel="noopener">rescue@sunhelp.org</a>> wrote:<br /></div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid #cccccc; padding-left: 1ex;">Hello all,<br /> <br /> Well I guess I celebrated a bit too early... The Ultra 10 worked for a<br /> day or two but today it was running VTS while I was having dinner, I<br /> came back to it on the ok prompt, presumably having crashed.<br /> <br /> When I tried rebooting the machine now I'm back where I started. With<br /> the power led staying off when booting the machine. I've tried moving<br /> my now one new NVRAM chip to the other board, but this also does not<br /> work.<br /> <br /> The same thing happened as the first time too. Earlier today the<br /> machine booted but complained about NVRAM contents. Then I re-did the<br /> whole nvram mkp stuff, and `banner` was happy again. But later the<br /> machine did fail again.<br /> <br /> Now, I did use a 48T58Y and not a 48T58 (without the Y), is there any<br /> chance that that just didn't work right? <br /> <br /> Thanks! <br /> <br /> - HP<br /> <br /> On Tue, 2025-12-09 at 20:18 +0000, HP van Braam wrote:<br /> > Hello!<br /> > <br /> > I have two Sun Ultra 10s with the same fault, and they came to get<br /> > the same fault in the same way.<br /> > <br /> > They both did the following:<br /> > <br /> > * Started to get IDProm errors<br /> > * Used the "normal" instructions for fixing this<br /> > * Some time later after a reboot things started to go wrong<br /> > <br /> > This sort of worked for a moment, but now when I apply power to<br /> > either machine the power led stays off (most of the time) in the very<br /> > rares time when the power led does turn on I can't succesfully boot<br /> > the machines. Sometimes they end up booting into Solaris but they are<br /> > not stable.<br /> > <br /> > For instance even dtlogin will just start and cycle on and off until<br /> > ultimately the system hangs entirely. At this point pressing stop+a<br /> > and resetting usually doesn't boot correctly.<br /> > <br /> > Swapping around ram/CPUs/power supplies between the two systems has<br /> > no effect. Removing the AFB doesn't really seem to change anything<br /> > either.<br /> > <br /> > It seems kind of unlikely that both computers have the same obscure<br /> > hardware fault in the same component, I hope this is all just the<br /> > IDProm fucking up.<br /> > <br /> > I tried both of the IDProm chips in my minipro reader and they seem<br /> > to not really read that same each time. And writing data to the chips<br /> > doesn't seem to "stick".<br /> > <br /> > Help would be very much appreciated! Thank you! <br /> > <br /> > - HP<br /> <br /> _______________________________________________<br /> rescue list - <a href="http://sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue_sunhelp.org" target="_blank" title="http://sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue_sunhelp.org
Click the link to open the URL in a new window." rel="noopener">http://sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue_sunhelp.org</a><br /></blockquote>
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_______________________________________________<br /> rescue list - <a href="http://sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue_sunhelp.org" target="_blank" title="http://sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue_sunhelp.org
Click the link to open the URL in a new window." rel="noopener">http://sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue_sunhelp.org</a><br /></blockquote>
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_______________________________________________<br /> rescue list - <a href="http://sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue_sunhelp.org" target="_blank" title="http://sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue_sunhelp.org
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