Hello guys, I need some advice from you/
So today I got old IBM CGA video card by mail and wanted to check it in my 8086 machine.
Upon power up, one of the capacitors blew up!
Back of the board:
This is one of the three-legged tantalum capacitors that were popular back in the day, right?
Original was 16V 10mf.
Can I just replace it with modern two-legged capacitor 25v 10mf I have?
Yes but you need to check which is ground, most 3 leg Tants the outside legs were ground and the middle was positive (not sure why they did 3 legs since the grounds were typically internally shorted except to use as a feed thru). Use a Digital ohmmeter and check that the outside leg holes are truly ground, should be 1 ohm or less. Then you need to wire the two grounds together and attach the new cap.
Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun
I'd recommend using a 10uF 25V tantalum cap as the replacement. It'll keep the card looking more authentic and will be better suited for smoothing out high-frequency switching noise than a generic electrolytic. It's not difficult to find a suitable (2-leg) tantalum.
