Date : Mon, 15 Oct 2007 23:48:45 +0100
From : dominic@... (Dominic Beesley)
Subject: Issue 4 freezes in old age
Hi Daniel,
Sounded at first like it might be the electrolytic capacitors in the PSU.
These go bad with age though the symptom of getting worse with use does not
fit this (quite often capacitors can be coaxed back to life by the simple
expedient of using them!)
I'd still advise replacing the capacitors in the PSU (or get somebody to do
it for you if you're not comfortable with mains voltages and soldering). In
old radios, tellys and computers its usually the capacitors that give the
most trouble and the most random symptoms!
Capacitors aside in olden times when I still used it my Electron used to
behave a bit like this until I fitted a heatsink made from tin foil,
toothpaste and a pile of 2p coins! - (still did but could usually get about
three more launch/fight/land/trade/save iterations in before the inevitable
freeze up).
Dom
----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Beardsmore" <public@...>
To: <bbc-micro@...>
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 11:22 PM
Subject: [BBC-Micro] Issue 4 freezes in old age
> I've had three separate Issue 4 BBC Micro Bs that all experienced this
> problem, and I wonder if anyone recognises it knows the cause.
>
> To begin with, the computer will run for hours just fine. One day, after
> an
> hour or two, it will soft hang: pressing break will reset it but your
> work/game is of course lost.
>
> If you use the machine routinely, the time between hangs will decrease
> each
> day until it's down to half an hour, and keep decreasing until it won't
> even
> switch on -- it crashes during POST.
>
> The longer you leave the computer without switching it on, the longer it
> will run for between hangs. Leave it turned off a few weeks and it will
> work
> again relatively normally.
>
> Anyone know what causes this? Is there a fix?
>
>
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