Hello there,

So, the recap performed at the start of this thread never sat well with me. I couldn't stop thinking about those huge tantalum capacitors sitting on top of a poor soldering job. I wasn't happy with my improvised method of stretching out the solder on the cap whose pad I lifted. So, after I handed in my PhD thesis on Tuesday, I decided that the next thing that needed my attention was a re-re-cap. Let me just say a hot air reflow machine makes cap removal so much easier. Also, like Uniserver, I too feel that smaller ceramic caps are sometimes the way to go. I decided to run a trace wire this time rather than rely on a glob of solder to make the connection from the cap to the mobo. Any feedback on the ultimate result would be appreciated. Pleased to announce that the computer runs smoothly and passes its Apple diagnostic tests with flying colours. I'll leave it on all night just to give it time to break itself in.

Regards,

LazarusNine