I got this Classic of a friend's friend that's in really poor condition technically and cosmetically. Sure enough it showed the usual garbled screen. I recapped the logic board which is now working OK (tested in another Classic). But still the garbled screen. So a voltage check showed that they were way below spec. So time to recap the analog board. Still no luck after that. So time to investigate further. Here's what's going on:

- voltage on start up is about 11.4V and slowly ramps up to 12V and machine chimes and boots no problem

- screen wobbles but as voltages ramp up screen gets more stable

- pre-heating the board with a hot air gun reduces time to boot considerable (however I haven't tried applying localised heat)

- some components are running rather hot though (transistors, voltage regs, about 25degrees C hotter than in my good Classic)

- the main switching transistor (I think it is anyways, a IRFBC40 600V 6A MosFET) is running very hot (doesn't have a heat sink)

Just a few thought:

- there still is a bad cap / caps in there somewhere (replaced all of them except a high voltage one, but may be of dubious quality)

- rectifier problem

- switching MosFET doesn't turn on fully and therefor heats up or transistor is faulty

What do you think? Any advice would be much appreciated. I really need a "daily driver" to mess around with / mod and an old tatty one would be ideal.

Cheers!