Aunt Sue's Obituary

Requiem for Rich

In 1950 my Dad contracted to have a new house built at 1171 Dover Avenue in Akron. We moved there with my new baby brother John; I vaguely remember the open fields across the street. In 1952 the lot directly across from us sprouted a new house, and I met the boy who moved in there -- Richard Robart Wimer.

Rich and I became good friends. We walked to and from Schumacher School together most days. Because of Rich, I remember the elections of 1952. Rich was rooting for Stevenson, but I liked Ike. We stopped by the voting booths that used to sit near the water towers (those are long gone, even!!) and warmed ourselves next to the coal-fired heaters inside.

Summers often found us "camping out". Rich had an old army surplus wall tent that we would set up in the lot (we called it "the field") next to his house, and we would tell scary stories until we fell asleep. We occasionally rode our bikes on distant adventures, riding to Fairlawn to "Wolf Cave" in what is now the Frank Boulevard Park, or to go swimming at White Pond.

Summers also brought out all the other kids who had nothing to do. Rich and I and a few other kids on our street formed the Dover Gang. We had occasional "wars" with the Winton Gang and the Hardesty Gang, in which "wars" we lined up and threw green apples at each other. That is where I learned the magic of the applestick, which could extend my throwing range significantly.

One summer the Dover Gang joined forces with the Winton Gang and the Hardesty Gang to do battle with the Hartford gang. Somebody in the Hardesty Gang had a contraption they called a "nail machine gun" which was spring powered and would shoot nails. It was mounted on a small platform in a tree on a vacant corner lot. Since I was the smallest kid on the block, I was chosen to climb the tree and guard the gun while the others went off to hunt for the Hartford gang.

While they were gone, the lady in the house diagonally across the intersection called the police. When the cruiser arrived, I slithered down the tree and ran around the block to find the guys but they had completely disappeared. Later Rich told me that they had found the Hartford Gang and went somewhere to play baseball.

The summer between second and third grade I found a new friend -- a girl who lived a block away on Hardesty. The details of that summer are a bit fuzzy, since I was mostly into cowboys and Indians, and hunting frogs and crayfish in Mud Run where it used to run through the woods at the northeast and northwest corners of Diagonal and Hawkins. She had a girlfriend she would bring to my back yard, and they wanted to play house and telegraph. When she told us that she was moving to Toledo, I was relieved.

Too soon. As we walked to school on what was to be her last day in Akron, she announced that she wanted to kiss me good-bye. I tried to run, but Rich grabbed me -- he was a lot bigger than I was -- and held me down while she kissed me. I sat there and cried, madder about the betrayal than the kiss. Rich thought it was funny.

That was our relationship. Like brothers, mad at each other one day, and eager to share adventures the next. Then, in 1959, the Wimer family moved to Copley. Dad and Mom took us to their new house that fall, and Rich introduced me to Mike and Andy Wineberg. In a few months, our new house was under construction right across the street from the Wimer's house, and I started 9th grade at Copley in 1960. Dad had to drive me to and from school for a few weeks until we were able to move in.

Rich and Mike built a small plywood "cabin" about a hundred feet from the Barberton Reservoir, and it was frequently used by all of us for sleep-outs and as a base for overnight fishing trips or skinny-dipping parties. It was heated in winter with an old army surplus woodstove, and there were bunks built against the walls. The door had a padlock, and the window was a chunk of hinged plywood.

Rich graduated from high school in 1964 and I followed the next year. He was drafted and was sent to Viet Nam. While there, he wrote me a letter describing his work as a boat driver on the Mekong River. He also was awarded the Soldier's Medal, but he never spoke of it, and I would love to be able to find the citation.

We drifted apart. When we lived in Edmonton, Rich stopped by on his way up the Alaska Highway. He had had a breakdown, and we were able to locate a car dealership that could handle the warranty work that was needed. After we moved back here, Rich and I occasionally crossed paths, but we never really spent any significant amount of time together.

On Labor Day, Rich and his wife went camping. He was not feeling well. Things got worse, and when he got home on Wednesday, he was admitted to the hospital. Exploratory surgery was done on Thursday; the doctors found that his appendix had burst and peritonitis had destroyed him. Rich never woke up; the ventilator was disconnected last Friday morning. He will be buried tomorrow.

Farewell, old friend.

T'mater Juice

Ya puts the seeds in the ground, ya transplants 'em, ya waters and weeds 'em, and God makes little green t'maters that grow up to be big red t'maters. Then ya mooshes 'em an' strains 'em an' biles 'em an' cans 'em. M-m-m-m-good!


Work to be done tomorrow.

Book-Burners R Us

I'm going to go ahead and say it. Based on the commentary that I have been picking up regarding the proposed burning of a Koran by a preacher in Florida on September 11, the United States has lost the War on Terror. Because Mohammedans around the world are violently protesting that man's actions, condemnation by governments, religious leaders, ordinary citizens, and even the commander of U. S. forces in Afghanistan, due to fear of Mohammedan retaliation, has fallen on that man's head.

Without a doubt, his proposed action is designed to spit in the eye of any practicing Mohammedan. This post is probably similarly offensive; those who follow Mohammed's teachings dislike being called Mohammedans because, they reason, they are not really following Mohammed. If that confuses you, think how they must feel. But, I digress. A follower of Jesus might offend someone by virtue of doing what Jesus taught, but will not perform an action solely for the purpose of creating an offense. The preacher in Florida is being perverse.

That said, I can start unknotting my shorts.

As a Christian, I find no problem with disposing of a Bible by burning it. It is the respectful way of disposing of copies which have become unusable through wear or other damage. I understand that burning is also considered to be the proper way to respectfully dispose of worn out copies of the Torah. Burning certainly beats dumping them in the trash to be buried in a landfill.

There is another consideration, though. The Bible that I read is printed on paper. The words are visible through the medium of the ink. What I consider as the Word of God, however, transcends ink and paper and abides forever. If all the Bibles in the world were burned, I believe that God's Word would still live in His people through the agency of His Spirit. I feel embarrassed for someone whose god is so small that his words must be so jealously guarded because they might be lost if all paper copies were burned.

As an American, I find no problem with disposing of a United States flag by burning it. By law, that is the respectful way to dispose of worn out flags. I sneer (not very Christlike, but I am human) at those who so disrespectfully fly the flag in inclement weather, at night without spotlighting, from the antenna of their pickup truck, or wear it as an article of decoration. I am struck by the imbecility of those who do such things and who then rage at someone who burns a flag in protest of something or other.

The flag of the United States is the symbol of our nation; the banner of our Constitution. It has been shot to pieces on the battlefield, but the Constitution that it represents has lived on. If all the U. S. flags in the world were to be destroyed, the Constitution would live on as long as the citizens of our nation were willing to preserve it at the costs of their lives, fortunes, and honor. If the will to preserve the Constitution should die, the flag would be meaningless.

And another thing. There are a whole lot of people out there uttering nonsense about bookburning somehow being an act of repression. If I took a book from you and burned it, that might be repressive. However, if I burn my own copy of a book, how is that repressive? I am simply exercising my right to dispose of my own property. If the preacher in Florida were to take copies of the Koran from someone else and burn them, I would be first in line to tell him to end his thievery. If he goes to the store and buys a Koran and burns it, what business is that of mine or anyone else?

Let me ask another question you may never have considered. What is the respectful way to dispose of a copy of the Koran? If I have a copy I want to get rid of, and do not want what I consider to be perverted teachings to be spread about, do I throw it in the dumpster, bury it in my garden, use it instead of a Sears catalog -- or do I treat it with the same respect as a Bible or a U. S. flag, and burn it?

So the bottom line is this : what price freedom? To all the officials in our government who are more concerned with world opinion than with the right of an American to dispose of his own property, I say, shame on you. To all the generals who have forgotten that they swore to uphold the right of citizens to exercise freedom of expression, even at the cost of their lives -- and nobody forced them to take that oath -- I say, shame on you. To all those who writhe in terror at what Mohammedans might do as a result of this man's burning of his copy of the book Mohammed wrote, I say, shame on you.

You have forgotten what America is all about.

Wanted : A Wise Electorate

Once upon a time there was a nation that was founded on the concept that the citizens of that country would choose people to represent them in a Congress which would meet periodically to deliberate laws pertaining to the common good of the inhabitants of the several states which formed that nation. It was a unique concept -- "We the People" would be the government; the representatives would simply find ways to avoid conflicts between the independent States that comprised the nation.

The gentlemen who cobbled that system of government together came out of a background wherein the rulers had favored one ideology over another. Those gentlemen had a common concept that there was a God who ruled in the affairs of men, but had disagreements as to the technical details as to how that was accomplished. They realized, from their own history, that any group which attained complete freedom would be tyrannical toward any other group. Thus, they agreed to limit their own freedoms in order to share common liberties.

With the passage of time, the thrill of being free diminished. "We the People" became somewhat lazy, allowing the representatives to act as independent agents on their own behalf. Additionally, there was the growth in the population of immigrant groups jealous of their own beliefs and customs, and unwilling to limit their Old World identity. Finally, there was a smug self-righteousness that expressed itself in the doctrine of "Manifest Destiny"; a doctrine rooted in the belief that ultimately the entire world must share the same type of government which "We the People" possessed, even as that form of government became warped by it own evolution.

The federalism that drove the westward expansion of the country through the use of military power also led, in the War Between the States, to the destruction of the concept of the people of each independent State ruling over its own affairs. That same self-righteous federalism then reached out beyond the continental shores to entangle "We the People" in the Spanish-American War, two World Wars, the Korean and Viet Nam Wars, and currently the Southern Asian Wars (Iraq and Afghanistan). "We the People" have forgotten that in order to be maximally free, we must limit our own freedom, and in doing so, must avoid trying to remake other nations in our own image.

If "We the People" are to regain maximal freedom, we must restore the concept that in order to be free we must subject ourselves to the basic rules of our Constitution. The wise gentlemen who drew up that document were students of human nature, well acquainted with the perverseness which dictates that individuals have the greatest freedom within small groups. To limit the possible tyranny of the Federal government, they ordered that the independent States, through appointing Senators concerned only with the interests of their own State legislatures, should have a form of veto power over the popular democracy of the Congress; the 17th Amendment needs to be repealed to restore the rights of the states to protect their own interests.

Those wise gentlemen believed that the Congressional representatives should represent only their local constituents and decreed that the "Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand"; the unconstitutional Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 must be repealed to restore the power of representative government.

Both cures will be difficult to effect. Both will require amending the Constitution. Both will be opposed by interest groups which politically and/or financially benefit from the deviations which have taken away the power of "We the People". Both are vital changes, and without them, the Union will either dissolve into open civil war, or will descend into tyranny unimagined by those gentlemen who so bravely risked their new-found freedoms in the Great Experiment.

Ahm Tarred

Unfortunately, the A/C on the ZX2 is back to not-working mode. Jesse definitely thinks the clutch has to be replaced. The 90+ degree days are making it tough out there; I saw about 130 parcels yesterday but only about 90 today. Part of that was spending an hour at a horse boarding place looking for structures that were demo-ed, replaced, or simply mis-described by people in the past. The property owner was stunned to find out that there were two non-existent in-ground pools listed for his property. The saving grace was that both were given values of $0. Go figure.

So I tells ya, go on-line if you can and look up your tax card for your house. Read what somebody has said is there.

Tonight Jesse came over and tore apart Nurse Mixy's dashboard and replaced the burned out dash lights. She's been driving for over a year with no lights in the dash -- when she wanted to see how fast she was going, she would open her cell phone and read the speedometer from the glow.

Ingenuity. My kids exercise alternative strategies. Chips off the old blockhead.

Derumbler

I guess the iMac can stay on 42/7 now. One thing for sure -- the Apple 20" display is much crisper than the Samsung 23" display on the Mini.

For the past several weeks the ZX2 has been making squealing/rumbling/grinding noises. Since the A/C was not working, I blamed that on the A/C clutch. Jesse, however, pointed out the other day that the water pump pulley was wobbling.

The water pump was replaced just 8 months ago, when the new timing belt was installed. Whooda thunk it would go bad so quickly? At least it was under a 1 year warranty.



So we replaced it. The engine is again quiet. And, Jesse tapped the A/C clutch with his finger, and the A/C kicked in. It is also still working. We have a few 90 degree days scheduled for this week -- the A/C should help.

iMac iSBack

This afternoon I pulled the power supply out of the iMac G5 and went after the last of the capacitors that have been identified as potential troublemakers. It was the 10mf 50V part that had its leads soldered right next to a bunch of surface-mount components. Being a shaky sort of fellow at my age, I was a little afraid to stick that 1/4 inch wide 80W tip into the midst of all those nearly microscopic pieces-parts, but the job went surprisingly easily.

After putting the power supply back into the case, I plugged in the cord and was rewarded with a steady green light from the power indicator LED - the one that had been lighting up and then fading away. It stayed green, so I pressed the internal diagnostic switch and watched the next two lights take off to the accompaniment of the chime.

It's been running for about 3 hours now, and is barely warm at the top vents, fan almost inaudible. I'll leave it running overnight.

I have not been able to migrate my iCal files back -- the Mini logs into all the other machines on the local net but they can't seem to connect to the Mini. That will be the next adventure.

Bad Eggs

The Biology teacher in me shakes his head, mutters, laughs a little, then shakes his head again.

Congressional hearings are to be held on the link between the Great Salmonella Egg Recall and the farms where the eggs were produced. The CEOs of the companies that produce and sell the eggs must appear before Congress to explain. Why has no one called for a Congressional investigation of the American public, questioning how it could possibly elect such morons?

OK, chicks, time for your Biology lesson review.

Subject : Birds. Birds are not people. Birds are not mammals. A bird is a super-modified winged snake, and can also be viewed as a type of warm-blooded toad with feathers.

Birds, snakes, and toads reproduce by laying eggs. Chicken eggs are unborn chickens. If your mommy and daddy gave you the "birds and bees" lecture on human reproduction, you probably have some of your facts wrong.

Human females have separate plumbing for reproduction and pooping. Human females hatch (yeah, that's a stretch, I agree) their eggs inside and the babies are laid from the front orifice. When they are finished digesting food, they poop out the waste from the back orifice -- the anus.

Chickens, however, are single-oriface critters. Their plumbing has a cloaca (Latin for sewer) which exits at their anus. When they lay an egg, they poop it out through the anus. When they finish digesting food, they poop that out through the very same anus. Disgusting as you may think that to be, it is what it is.

Therefore, people who handle chicken eggs carelessly, or eat them raw or even inadequately cooked, subject themselves to potential danger. That fact is understood by every little kid that grew up on a farm. It is understood by every informed adult. It is not understood by Congresscritters. Anything coming out of a chicken's anus is likely to be contaminated. Simple common sense.

One final word. This post will undoubtedly earn me some fan mail about using the word "poop". Too bad. It is a perfectly good English word, and when it is used, there is no mistaking what is meant. If "poop" offends you that badly, try going a few days without it.

Now I know I'm in trouble...

Simplifying...

We will now see how well this works. I added the button for posting this blog to Facebook. Rather than logging in there to see what is going on, I'll just hit the button when I think I have something important to say. Or not so important. Whatever. Then anybody who sees it on Facebook can email me or write a comment if they are so moved. Arrogance on my part, I will admit, but I really do need to cut down on the frittering away of my time.

Late August

I have to admit that FaceBook is addictive. It is a very good way to keep in touch with oodles of poodles. Unfortunately, it is also a fantastic way to waste time as you read all the news you really didn't need to know.

I set up the FaceBook account as a means of reaching out during my primary campaign for Congress. However, as noted above, it has turned into a time consumer, and ultimately has made me less productive in terms of articulating my ideas. Ha! We are now all less intelligent due to my use of FaceBook -- contagious stupidity has struck.

So, since there is now a FaceBook app that allows blog posts to show up, what I propose to do is severely limit my FaceBook visits and instead spend more time with this blog and with hRubik's hRramblings.

Update time. I have not been able to spend any additional time working on the Speedex. The swarm of bees weakened and has died out; that has me puzzled, but I think part of the problem was a leaky feeder and attacks by robber bees. I did spend some time on the raised beds; that should pay off in seasons to come.

The iMac is still in the morgue, very dead, but I have hopes for its resurrection. Meanwhile, a new Mac Mini has been doing the work, displaying to a 23" Samsung HDTV. That is a very sweet combination.

It is raining right now -- a steady, thorough soaking rain, the first like this we have had in weeks. In fact, it has very much the feel of a fall rain. Even though it is late August, the leaves have been starting to turn. The days have been hot, but the nights very cool; tomatoes have had trouble ripening.

Stay tuned for more.

Good Medicine

Last time, we left the hive to drink the potion. Opening it up two days later, we see that for the most part, they have ignored the syrup for fresh nectar that is available all over the countryside. Still, they have been sampling the special hooch...



...but we need to provide more ventilation, and the mite treatment needs to be added. Taking off the feeder and the inner cover, its obvious that the crew is at home.



I found a partial package of Apistan™ in my bee supplies; I'm going to try using that package up before I open the new one. It has been cool, dark, and dry in the closet, so the strips should still be OK. One strip is in the lower left corner, between the frame bars, and the other toward the upper right. The bees come into contact with the strip, and the Varroa mites die.



Since this colony is small to begin with, and the queen is going to be laying at top speed, treatment right now is critical. The mites attack the larvae; by the time they have matured, it would be too late to treat. It will be almost three weeks before the new workers emerge, and the older workers -- the original swarm -- will be weakening and starting to die off. If too many of the new bees have "crooked wing" because of the mites, the colony will not be able to maintain itself.



A different inner cover has been modified with screened holes for ventilation. It is hard to get too much air flow through the hive. As the bees bring in nectar, they change it to wax, for the comb cells, and honey. In the process, huge amounts of water need to be evaporated. If the moisture cannot be vented quickly enough, the result will be sick bees. Even in winter, air flow is critical. The colony can maintain 95°F around the queen in sub-zero temperatures, but must vent the moisture that is produced.



Everything is back together and its work, work, work as usual.

The Doctor is IN

Thursday morning Jesse called, asking if I was willing to pick up a swarm in Tallmadge. I was, but it would have to wait until evening; that was OK with the swarmees. About 7:30 PM I arrived at the site. The swarm was roughly the size of a big football, clinging to a chemical tank about six feet off the ground. I had a super stapled to a bottom board with a screen in the opening; I sprinkled some sugar on the top frame bars and brushed the ladies into the box. Most of them went in like a waterfall. A small group, about the size of a baseball, refused to play, and after checking thoroughly that the Boss Lady was not in their midst, I left them there to die. Nothing else to be done for it.

Arriving at home, I waited until almost dark, then pulled the screen from the entry. In the morning, the little buzzers got themselves oriented to their new location, and went nectar-hunting. Yesterday I noticed that there were some Nasty Bugs around; I watched one yellow-jacket go into the hive and then beat a quick retreat. I grabbed an entrance reducer and closed down the doorway.



This morning I headed out to Queen Right Colonies, where Denzil sold me some Apistan™ for the mites and some Fumagilin-B™ for nosema. Just under $50 for vet supplies. Imagine what the cost might be if I were running feeder cattle again!

I decided to start the feeding right away to build up the hive numbers, so I mixed up a half-gallon of sugar syrup with a half teaspoon of the antibiotic and set up the feeder. Opening the top, the bees were clustered to one side. Not a whole lot of them home -- it was a small swarm -- but my guesstimate is that at least half of them were out foraging at the time of the portrait.



A piece of baseboard was chosen as a riser for the feeder. The relief cutout on the back will allow some air flow for cooling, at least until the bees plug it up. The feeder is a plastic mayo jar with some 1/16" holes drilled in the lid, and works like a poultry waterer.




Tomorrow or Monday I'll open it back up to check the syrup level and at the same time install two of the mite strips.



Its good to bee back in operation. I'm going to do my best to keep this harem happy.

Speedex S19 Project

It was time already to get the old Speedex out of the shed and get to work on restoring it.


It's a neat little tractor, with all kinds of real tractor features.


The Lawn Chief towed it to the top of the hill, flat front tires and all.


The front hitch point, where I hope to be able to attach the snow plow in winter.


The 8 horse Briggs 190407 engine, with its 12V electric starter. Mice packed the space behind the flywheel with maple seeds, and possibly messed up the wiring to the capacitor. I cleaned out as much as I could, added a new muffler, replaced the gas line, and drained and replaced the oil. Wouldn't start. No spark at all.


Here's the PTO linkage, in case I want to add a mower deck or use a sickle bar.


The rear hitch -- a sort of three-point arrangement. It is a manual lift, though. No hydraulics on this machine.


The gearbox and rear pulleys. These are terribly misaligned. But then, so are the front pulleys. Replacing and aligning the sheaves ought to be simple, and I'll need to create a replacement belt cover and battery cover. I've already straightened some of the sheet metal on the hood.

As this project moves forward, I'll post more pix of the progress. Main thing for right now is to get it running.

Spoke Too Soon

iMac just when "Ptht" and turned black. The restart was quick and smooth, so it has to be the MOBO caps this time. Ah, well. One item at a time. I have the MOBO caps here already -- they only cost $12.00 plus shipping.

Ah, It Feels Good!

It took long enough to get all the pieces together, but the iMac G5 is back up and running -- very quietly, I might add, with less fan noise than when it was new! -- for $3.95 in parts and a lot of frustrated work getting the lead-free solder to melt in the capacitor removal phase. It took hours of work to get those little thingies out, and about a half hour to solder in all the new caps. With 60-40 lead-tin solder, of course. Lead-free is for masochists.

Still have to remove and replace all the caps on the motherboard, but the power supply seems rock-solid right now. I'm looking for a narrower tip for the Weller 80W iron; 3/8" is simply too wide when you are working in close proximity to surface mount components.

Gotta get inside the Bondi Blue iMac's upper case and check to see if it was the same kind of problem.

Yip-yip-yippee!!

Pieces Arriving...

The order from Computek arrived today. Also an email from Allied saying they shipped today.

Took the Bondi Bue iMac mostly apart last night, but then decided I'd better quit while I was ahead since the instructions I was following were on-line and the lightning was a-flashin' outside. Sure 'nuff, I was mostly back together when the power went out for a second.

I'll try again later. I am really curious if that machine died due to a capacitor problem in its power supply.

Gettin' It Together

Today I took a little trip down to PhilCap to see if they had the caps I need for the iMac repair. They had one - a 10mF 50V 5x11mm -- for $1.64. Back home, I started looking for a cap supplier on-line, and stumbled across Allied Electronics. The prices were right, and the cap manufacturer that predominated was Illinois Capacitor. I ordered enough to do 2 "C" style power supplies, including another 10mF 50V 5x11mm for $0.11. Live and learn.

The order from Allied came to $9.76 plus $5.00 handling plus they will charge OH sales tax and probably about $6 for Priority Mail. Then I went to the Computek site and ordered the motherboard caps. Needed 25, but had to order 40 (minimum 20 of each type), which came to $28.55 including shipping and handling.

Picked up the Artic Silver Ceramique heat sink compound at Radio Shack for $6.70. I decided not to use lead-free solder on the installation; I have lots of 60-40 resin core in my toolbox. I'm ready to go when the caps get here.

The power supply is sitting on my desk, disassembled. Last night I whittled away all the silicone goop that Apple injected around the capacitors. They are ready to be extracted.

Maybe by the weekend I can be back up and running.

New Post

I thought I needed a catchy title for this post; there it is.

Progress on the iMac is nearly non-existent. Lots of other stuff to do. I miss having that machine running 24/7, with Mail open and Firefox just a click away. Not having access to iCal and Quicken is definitely inconvenient.

Bought a new soldering iron at Ace Hardware today. They kindly sent me a coupon to take $5 off any purchase over $20, so I used it. Its a Weller 80W with a 3/8" chisel tip, develops 900 degrees. That should be plenty of heat for the led-free solder on the boards.

Now I think I should also pick up a de-soldering iron from Radio Shack, and practice with it.

Still have not ordered the capacitors. I may be able to find some of them at the Shack or at PhilCap; if they don't have them, there are some on-line sources that have what I'll need. I did not order from J West Sales because they will accept payment only through Google checkout. Since I have no desire to give Google the right to run a credit report on me -- my credit is none of their nosy business -- I'll just find the parts elsewhere and use the normal payment process.

Fixed one lawnmower today. Tore apart the carb, cleaned everything out, and installed a new carb cable. Fixed the shredder (sort of). Tore off the head, scraped out all the carbon and cleaned the valves, and it starts easily and runs fine. Needs some major welding on the other parts, though.

'Nuff fer this post. Iff'n I write any more, the borer bees might get into it.

iMac Blues

My iMac G5 was purchased as a refurb from Apple, and it was a good thing that I bought the 3-year extended service plan. Almost immediately it had to be worked on; the Superdrive was refusing to read/write DVDs. Some time later, the computer died, and the power supply had to be replaced. Finally, just before the 3 years was up, it died again, and once again, the power supply was replaced. A few months ago (back last Fall), it suffered a hard drive crash, and I installed a new hard drive.

We've had a number of brief power outages, and several weeks ago I called home and the phone rang continuously; the fax modem did not pick up. Sure enough, when I got in, the iMac was dark. Following SOP, I tried a restart. After the chime, the Apple came up, and then suddenly the machine shut down. I tried again. The second time, the desktop picture came up, but there were funny squiggly lines across it, and when I clicked on a widget, the machine crashed. The third startup seemed stable, and the machine ran for several days before it began having problems again.

Diagnostic testing using the diagnostic LEDs seemed to point to the power supply again. I started looking for a replacement on-line. Then I came across a site which described fixing the power supply. It also had instruction for repair of the motherboard.

It seems that Apple, and a number of other manufacturers, in looking for a cheap supply of capacitors, had bought from a Chi-Com manufacturer that had cranked out defective units. The problem is so widespread that there are distributors on-line which sell replacement capacitors specifically to tackle this problem.

I now have the instructions for the fix, and started collecting the necessary tools. Here are some shots of the problem:


Motherboard, showing bulging caps (red marker added by me)


The bulging is evident here and in the next picture


While only 2 caps appear to be damaged, the advice is to replace all 25 of them.

The real problem, probably the cause of the failure of the MOB caps, was in the power supply :


Here you can see that one of the caps is leaking. That is NOT marker on the top of that capacitor; it is capacitor juice. 8 of the 11 are bulging


The scorch marks on the PS cover show how hot this got.

The cost of replacement capacitors is about $60. The cost of a replacement motherboard and power supply is more than the value of the computer (well over $700). I picked up a T-10 Torx security bit today (for opening the "No user serviceable parts inside"), and I'll be getting an 80W soldering iron. One supplier I found sells the caps for about 50 cents each, but you have to order in multiples of 20, and that supplier doesn't carry all the caps for the power supply.

For anybody with a 17", 20", or 24" iMac (Intel versions as well), sooner or later you will need to either replace the power supply or replace its capacitors. I'm curious now whether that was the problem in Maria's G3 Blueberry iMac. When I'm feeling real fixy I'll have to peek inside that one. It would make a nice email machine for Granny.