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Okay, so I've recapped a ton of monitors before, but now I'm going through a pair of XM29s. More boards, more components, and unlike arcade monitors where there's a big filter cap sometimes, there are a dozen or two very large caps.

Should I be worried (beyond fitment) that I get the same size caps physically, or is it a non issue?
 
Generally - the larger the cap, the more farad capacity it has... As long as you match the values, I think you should be good. Let's see what other smarter people say :)

Matt
 
Brand matters. Try to stick with top tier brands such as Panasonic, Nichicon, Rubycon.

As long as ratings are the same size won't matter outside of physical space restraints. Voltage should meet or exceed what you're replacing.
 
I knew the brand bit.

And that's what I've done as I've pulled them and made my list. Just written down values.

Some have SSP on them. Which is something I haven't seen before. As well as PR(M).

Do I need to pay attention to those?
 
Voltage can be higher but capacity needs to be the same. You'll find that the same value caps come in several sizes, as long as they're the same value it's not an issue.

I recapped a Dreamcast so it would work on 240v, Rubycon caps were too tall but Nichicon (which the DC uses for all its caps from the factory) fit fine. Same value, same voltage.
 
I knew the brand bit.

And that's what I've done as I've pulled them and made my list. Just written down values.

Some have SSP on them. Which is something I haven't seen before. As well as PR(M).

Do I need to pay attention to those?
Pretty sure those are just the series, most capacitor brands have dozens of different series.
 
ECOS1HP103EA.jpg

The [M] with the curved legs is the Panasonic logo.

I think UP would be the series. CE I just read means Electrolytic Capacitor, just in french. I feel like i'm being trolled from a post from 2010 but I got nothing else. (M) I think is the tolerance, +/- 20%.
 
Are you making a list of what capacitors you are replacing? It would be handy to have. I have a NEC XM29 with a few problems.

1.)Excessive blooming on certain white flashes
https://www.repairfaq.org/samnew/tvfaq/tvbloom.htm


2.)Color Bleed

3.)Brightness Fluctuations, sometimes solid colors like on metroid blue will be lighter on right than left.
https://www.repairfaq.org/samnew/tvfaq/tvbccltras.htm


From my google fu and reading my bets are something in the psu section especially the bloom part. Video amp capacitors might be another possible cause.

I still need to reseat everything to see if it fixes #3 first issue with brightness flickering. Its like someone is turning the brightness just a tiny bit all the time. I've seen the same thing happen to my MS9 when the ribbon cable was dirty and not connected well.

Might be related but my contrast sucks at 75 ohm. It is fine at high though but doesn't go high enough on 75 ohm. Haven't messed with the insides yet but plan to as I want to increase the horizontal width and tweak other stuff.

On a related note I know for capacitors voltage can be the same or slightly higher, capacitance has to be the same. But what about low esr? I've read its critical for switching power supplies.Tl;dr if you are replacing regular capacitors with low esr ones are there any corner cases in which you wouldn't want to? Or just grabbing high temp caps good enough?From reading online it seems like there might be. Just curious on people's opinions.
 
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Don't have answers to most of that. But I've already written up a cap list for every board in the monitor. I don't have the + versions, so if you do you're likely going to have to do your own for at least some boards unfortunately.

One of mine works fine but whines like mad when it has no signal. Like deafeningly. And it's coming from the PSU PCB.

The other will take 480i and 480p+ but not 240p. It worked fine until I plugged in a BNC cable for PS1. It didn't seem to work, but worked with my OSSC flawlessly. After using that I've lost the ability to sync to 240p somehow. Possibly coincidence but I'm not plugging it into the other set to find out.

The one thing I've learned is it's pointless to work against aging caps, so I'm going to do those and see what is what after that. May even fix my whining unit, but not likely to help the sync issue.

Figured if I'm doing one I should just do both to save the trouble down the line.
 
Yeah mine is the regular one as well. Any link to the capacitor list?

Also here is a link to the supplemental pamphlet that the NEC XM29 manual omits. It wasn't listed on the NEC shmups thread but should come in handy. The guy who took these pictures plans to make it into a pdf/clean it up but he has been busy. In any case this will work for now.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/175Gmcap7LF14l7zD3p0uLfFFPK8t5ZM8
 
I've recapped probably 30 or so chassis by now. Naturally it's a smart thing to do as capacitors age. However, from my experience it will only fix issues that are noticeable when turning on the monitor. Like the picture going from small to large, or the picture folding over. Not once have I noticed better colors, static geometry or overall image quality after a recap.

Voltage can be higher but capacity needs to be the same. You'll find that the same value caps come in several sizes, as long as they're the same value it's not an issue.
I disagree with this. There's a reason for the size difference. More than likely it's impedance. See my post in the Sharp Image Repair thread:

Sharp Image Repair (CRT Repair service in Las Vegas, USA)

If you're replacing a large capacitor with a small capacitor with equal voltage and capacitance, something is off. Electrolytic capacitors haven't become smaller in the last 30 years. Low impedance caps were already a thing back then too.
 
They're not different sizes, they're different dimensions. The Rubycon cap is taller and thinner and the Nichicon is the opposite.
 
@nem
I've had some different experiences than you it seems. I'm also somewhere around 30 monitors. Maybe 5-6 of those were brought back from no picture at all, and a good number of them a recapping fixed ridiculously bad geometry.

Good information in your post. Disappointing that now I have to go back and see what can be figured out in regards to ESR, but I'm sure it's for the best. I'm sure at the very very least it's important for the power supply boards...
 
Quick Google suggests I need an oscilloscope to measure ESR.

Can I just note the dimensions and order accordingly, under the assumption that larger caps are lower ESR, or am I better off abandoning this until I've got a better toolset?
 
@nem
I've had some different experiences than you it seems. I'm also somewhere around 30 monitors. Maybe 5-6 of those were brought back from no picture at all, and a good number of them a recapping fixed ridiculously bad geometry.
That's true, I've had a few Wells Gardners that have come back to life just by recapping the power section. What I tried to bring forth with my post was the kind of image quality related issues that you can fix by recapping, and from my own experience recapping can fix the kind of geometry issues that usually fix themselves as the old caps warm up. Leave the monitor on for a few hours and the ridiculously bad geometry usually rights itself.

Quick Google suggests I need an oscilloscope to measure ESR.
I use this tool recommended by @invzim:

BSIDE ESR02 PRO- cheap tool recommendation

No idea how accurate it is, but it should give a ballpark figure if nothing else. Costs like 20 bucks, so super affordable.
 
The bside esr02 is fine from what I see for basic checks. Any of the small 328 base tester will do fine and can be very inexpensive. I blew one up on charge cap (my fault) so I bought another for testing other thing (yoke, transistors, etc). Too cheap to not have in toolbox. Since there is no input protect and I do lot of cap I got Atlas esr70+ which is nice but much more pricey. Has auto discharge and sound alerts to make it nice. With esr02 you have to discharge each religiously so only do few caps is just fine, doing hundreds caps many time slower.

When cap fail ESR it usually very high magnitude more so getting exact accuracy not overly important which why esr02 can serve just fine from what I see. For instance not as common to see ESR supposed to be 0.3 and it fails 1.2 or something. Can happen but normally ESR would fail 40+ and usually obvious.
 
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