It is a broadly identified downside with roots in city legend: Units with motherboards failing within the early 2000s with a sudden pop, a ugly spill, or typically a burst of flames. And it was allegedly all resulting from one man who did not copy a stolen components appropriately.
The “capacitor plague” of the early 2000s was actual and pretty widespread amongst units, even when nearly all of these units did not go dangerous on the similar time and even in the identical 12 months. The story of this widespread failure, passing between business insider tales and media reviews, had a selected perpetrator, but in addition a broad narrative concerning the shift from Japanese to Taiwanese producers and about outsourcing typically.
The Asianometry channel on YouTube lately dug into the “capacitor plague” in a video that asks, “What happened to the capacitors in 2002?” and involves some knowledgeable, broad, and layered solutions. It explains the specifics of what is taking place inside each a working capacitor and the defective fashions, relays the reporting on the businesses blamed and affected, and, crucially, places the plague within the wider context of hotter chips, advanced provide chains, counterfeits, and, positive, some industrial sabotage.
“We are going to by no means know what precisely occurred, however let’s attempt,” the host says at the beginning. It is strongly recommended you comply with alongside.
“What Occurred to the Capacitors in 2002?” by Asianometry.
With out replicating an excessive amount of of the video and bigger mythos, the fundamental story is that, in accordance with numerous disputed timelines, electrolytic capacitors put into electronics between 1999 and 2003 or so failed in dire methods from 2002 by (maybe) 2007. Boards and computer systems purchased from Abit, HP, IBM, and, infamously, Dell, amongst others, suffered these defective capacitors and have been dealt with with remembers, repairs, or, typically, silence.
A finely balanced cocktail
The “Low equivalent series resistance,” or “low impedance” aluminum capacitors at challenge, contained an electrolyte answer that, when doing its job, served as a cathode and saved the paper separating two recordsdata contained in the rolled-up capacitor saturated. As a result of the electrolyte is roughly 70 p.c water, and the capacitor may tackle wider fluctuations of voltage, it grew to become an affordable, in style part in lots of units.