Dead Fuel Power Supplies

[astouffer]

Anyone with a dead fuel power supply laying around? I will take it off your hands. USA only.

[kubatyszko]

Are you trying to repair ? have you figured it out ?

[astouffer]

Yeah I just repaired a dead Sparkle power supply.

[kubatyszko]

Interesting, would you share some experience from the repair ? Many of us would really like to know more

[astouffer]

If you're not comfortable working with electronics I wouldn't attempt this. These supplies are twice the parts density of a normal PC supply. In other words 10 pounds of shit in a 5 pound box.

There are two main boards with numerous daughter boards standing upright. The top output board had many leaky and swelled capacitors. I replaced them all with low ESR or low impedance caps. The height on a few are critical so make sure you match the dimensions otherwise that small fan board won't fit anywhere. There are a lot of smaller caps scattered around which I replaced as well. Don't bother with all the small black ones on the daughter boards. You'll need a good solder rework station for some parts due to the amount of copper on the boards. Forget that 25 watt pencil iron.

I checked a lot of components like MosFETS and diodes with a meter and all appeared well. You will read about 4 ohms to ground on the +5 volt bus. It has load resistors. The +5 standby board sits upright near the edge of the main bottom board. There is a 2 watt 220K resistor that was open on mine. Desoldering the standby board makes it much easier.

Some of the larger parts had a type of cement to keep them from touching other very close parts. I used some electronic grade silicon to secure them again and reassembled everything. Fired it up and was greeted with the l1 prompt. Parts were $20-$25 total.