Hey, all. Just thought I'd reach out and bother everyone to see if there's anyone else out there who's dealt with a dead Personal IRIS PSU. Apparently they pretty much all go eventually, but I haven't been able to find anything about what the common failure modes are. Hoping there's someone with some thoughts or experience, because I'm massively a novice when it comes to power supply diagnosis.
Hello, Step #1, replace all the electrolytic capacitors. They dry up over time. 105c Nichicon or Panasonic from a source like Digikey, Mouser, AVNet, Newark is top of the line. Can go with cheaper 85c caps from the same sources. eBay and Amazon might be fakes. The Indigo2 power supplies fail from 4 certain caps that go bad. Not sure about the Personal IRIS machines but tons of vintage electronics suffer problems from them and it's usually a general first check. A low rent want to test them is warm it all up with a hair dryer and sometimes they will start to work, but that isn't a given just a hack. - Ethan
Hey, all.
Just thought I'd reach out and bother everyone to see if there's anyone else out there who's dealt with a dead Personal IRIS PSU.
Apparently they pretty much all go eventually, but I haven't been able to find anything about what the common failure modes are.
Hoping there's someone with some thoughts or experience, because I'm massively a novice when it comes to power supply diagnosis.
Have you found a schematic diagram for it?
Mike Rosen
Did a lot of searching and came up with bupkis
The Indigo2 power supplies fail from 4 certain caps that go bad. Not sure about the Personal IRIS machines but tons of vintage electronics suffer problems from them and it's usually a general first check.
Yeah, probably something I should just do anyway. There's a very fun spot where there are four caps soldered directly into two rails of sheet metal that I don't particularly look forward to dealing with... Thanks for the info, on the Indigo 2! ________________________________ From: Ethan O'Toole <telmnstr@757.org> Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2021 4:07 PM To: Joseph Marlin via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> Cc: Joseph Marlin <j.marlin@outlook.com> Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Personal IRIS PSU repair Hello, Step #1, replace all the electrolytic capacitors. They dry up over time. 105c Nichicon or Panasonic from a source like Digikey, Mouser, AVNet, Newark is top of the line. Can go with cheaper 85c caps from the same sources. eBay and Amazon might be fakes. The Indigo2 power supplies fail from 4 certain caps that go bad. Not sure about the Personal IRIS machines but tons of vintage electronics suffer problems from them and it's usually a general first check. A low rent want to test them is warm it all up with a hair dryer and sometimes they will start to work, but that isn't a given just a hack. - Ethan
Hey, all.
Just thought I'd reach out and bother everyone to see if there's anyone else out there who's dealt with a dead Personal IRIS PSU.
Apparently they pretty much all go eventually, but I haven't been able to find anything about what the common failure modes are.
Hoping there's someone with some thoughts or experience, because I'm massively a novice when it comes to power supply diagnosis.
Herb Johnson of VCFed has in the past done this work, he may have the parts and he certainly has the expertise if you want to hire him for the job. Bill On Wed, Feb 17, 2021 at 4:22 PM Joseph Marlin via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Have you found a schematic diagram for it?
Mike Rosen
Did a lot of searching and came up with bupkis
The Indigo2 power supplies fail from 4 certain caps that go bad. Not sure about the Personal IRIS machines but tons of vintage electronics suffer problems from them and it's usually a general first check.
Yeah, probably something I should just do anyway. There's a very fun spot where there are four caps soldered directly into two rails of sheet metal that I don't particularly look forward to dealing with... Thanks for the info, on the Indigo 2! ________________________________ From: Ethan O'Toole <telmnstr@757.org> Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2021 4:07 PM To: Joseph Marlin via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> Cc: Joseph Marlin <j.marlin@outlook.com> Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Personal IRIS PSU repair
Hello,
Step #1, replace all the electrolytic capacitors. They dry up over time. 105c Nichicon or Panasonic from a source like Digikey, Mouser, AVNet, Newark is top of the line. Can go with cheaper 85c caps from the same sources. eBay and Amazon might be fakes.
The Indigo2 power supplies fail from 4 certain caps that go bad. Not sure about the Personal IRIS machines but tons of vintage electronics suffer problems from them and it's usually a general first check.
A low rent want to test them is warm it all up with a hair dryer and sometimes they will start to work, but that isn't a given just a hack.
- Ethan
Hey, all.
Just thought I'd reach out and bother everyone to see if there's anyone else out there who's dealt with a dead Personal IRIS PSU.
Apparently they pretty much all go eventually, but I haven't been able to find anything about what the common failure modes are.
Hoping there's someone with some thoughts or experience, because I'm massively a novice when it comes to power supply diagnosis.
Yeah, probably something I should just do anyway. There's a very fun spot where there are four caps soldered directly into two rails of sheet metal that I don't particularly look forward to dealing with... Thanks for the info, on the Indigo 2!
A friend gave me one of those 36" inkjet printers (DesignJet 1050C) a long time ago which had a similar PSU issue. Hair dryer to the PSU board brought it up. Then I just kept cutting the problem in half... which side of the board, which side of the half of the board, etc down to the one small cap that was at fault. Depending on the wiring/form factor if you can carefully bring it up easily you can replace some caps, test it, then go further. Usually the huge ones on the AC input side aren't replaced as part of a repair. My SGI Indigo had an issue that it was always reporting that the AC power was lost, which spams this message to console. In order to poke at the PSU I had to use one of those PC ATX power extension cables to get the power supply powered on outside of computer. Luckily even though it's not ATX pinout it's the same connector and I was able to use that to test. I figured out the fix, posted it to Nekochan and the site went down a few days later. - Ethan
Agreed, unless you’ve noticed something else failing, just assume bad caps and go from there. For the effort and marginal cost, I am just replacing all of them when I have a PSU apart. One problem I’ve had on the IBM RS/6000s are case cooling fans that are stuck or slow - this causes the PSU to trip and it isn’t obvious this is happening. (Super fun when it’s VCF morning.) So if you have 3 or 4 lead fans, check those too. The most tedious part so far has been just building the order - checking each old part, measuring dimensions, repeat. I have an Apple Xserve PSU apart on my bench still where I didn’t get perfect fits and now I have to figure out adjustments. Also my new Hakko desoldering gun has been a revelation after 30 years of doing it the hard way. :) -- Jameel Akari
On Feb 17, 2021, at 5:08 PM, Ethan O'Toole via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Yeah, probably something I should just do anyway. There's a very fun spot where there are four caps soldered directly into two rails of sheet metal that I don't particularly look forward to dealing with... Thanks for the info, on the Indigo 2!
A friend gave me one of those 36" inkjet printers (DesignJet 1050C) a long time ago which had a similar PSU issue. Hair dryer to the PSU board brought it up. Then I just kept cutting the problem in half... which side of the board, which side of the half of the board, etc down to the one small cap that was at fault.
Depending on the wiring/form factor if you can carefully bring it up easily you can replace some caps, test it, then go further. Usually the huge ones on the AC input side aren't replaced as part of a repair.
My SGI Indigo had an issue that it was always reporting that the AC power was lost, which spams this message to console. In order to poke at the PSU I had to use one of those PC ATX power extension cables to get the power supply powered on outside of computer. Luckily even though it's not ATX pinout it's the same connector and I was able to use that to test. I figured out the fix, posted it to Nekochan and the site went down a few days later.
- Ethan
Also my new Hakko desoldering gun has been a revelation after 30 years of doing it the hard way. :)
100% endorse this opinion. I recently bought a Hakko FR301 after years of putting it off because of the expense and I'm kicking myself for not doing it sooner. It made re-capping a breadbin C64 almost an enjoyable experience.
There is an ATX replacement for the Personal Iris: https://hardware.majix.org/computers/sgi.pi/atx.shtml http://archive.irixnet.org/sgistuff/hardware/tipstricks/pirispsu.html I know of at least 2 people that have done this. Much better than fighting those PSUs, or at the very use this allows you to use your SGI while you fix the original PSU. -andy
On Feb 17, 2021, at 3:37 PM, Joseph Marlin via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Hey, all.
Just thought I'd reach out and bother everyone to see if there's anyone else out there who's dealt with a dead Personal IRIS PSU.
Apparently they pretty much all go eventually, but I haven't been able to find anything about what the common failure modes are.
Hoping there's someone with some thoughts or experience, because I'm massively a novice when it comes to power supply diagnosis.
I wish they had this for Octanes. I have a dead PSU I would like to get working. On Wed, Feb 17, 2021 at 8:01 PM Andrew Diller via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
There is an ATX replacement for the Personal Iris: https://hardware.majix.org/computers/sgi.pi/atx.shtml http://archive.irixnet.org/sgistuff/hardware/tipstricks/pirispsu.html
I know of at least 2 people that have done this. Much better than fighting those PSUs, or at the very use this allows you to use your SGI while you fix the original PSU.
-andy
On Feb 17, 2021, at 3:37 PM, Joseph Marlin via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Hey, all.
Just thought I'd reach out and bother everyone to see if there's anyone else out there who's dealt with a dead Personal IRIS PSU.
Apparently they pretty much all go eventually, but I haven't been able to find anything about what the common failure modes are.
Hoping there's someone with some thoughts or experience, because I'm massively a novice when it comes to power supply diagnosis.
participants (7)
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Andrew Diller -
Bill Degnan -
Christian Liendo -
Ethan O'Toole -
Jameel Akari -
Joseph Marlin -
Mark Whittington