[mythtv-users] EPIA Failure from bad caps

[Jerry Bett]

I went though the upgrade cycle on my backend (2.8 Gig p4) and my
frontend (EPIA-M) to
Ubuntu Hardy Heron.

I was having a lot of trouble with the EPIA rebooting on its own. I
chalked it up to the new Ubuntu,
downgraded back to Gutsy, but continued to have the random reboot
problems. A few searches
on google referenced these boards failing with bad capacitors.  Sure
enough, my EPIA-M had the
tell-tale signs of bad caps-swollen tops and brown crust leaking from them.

I chunked the board in the junk bin - but the next day, I came across
www.badcaps.net. Some
enterprising individual has started a side business fixing  these
motherboards. See www.badcaps.net
for more.

Figuring I had nothing to lose...but being too impatient to order the
cap kit from badcaps, I found some
old power supplies with the caps I needed to replace.  All told I had
5 caps that were swollen or
leaking.  I pulled the caps from the power supplies and, after a fair
amount of difficulty removed the
bad caps and replace them on the via board.

Knock on wood, but the board came up in the bios and has been running
the "health status" screen
for about half an hour.  I'll reload Hardy and myth on it tonight and
see if I'm back in business.

Just thought I would pass this along in case you are having
spontaneous reboots or stability problems
on your Via board. I love these boards, but with 7 of them in service
I expect I haven't seen the last of
this problem.