Haha! Careful what you assume! Learned my soldering skills 40 years ago, so I'm not concerned about accomplishing the task at hand. Just happens my projects
have always been on new (or fairly new) kit, so intimate knowledge of aging faults in capacitors is an area that escapes me.
I've seen other sites where people swear by re-capping 100% of the time, but thought I'd post here for maybe a bit more
insightful engineering opinion.I only just recently started getting some retro kit. So far an Apple II, Leading Edge Model D, and now this Compaq. Leading Edge had some battery leakage damage to repair, but haven't seen any caps on any of the systems that seem in bad shape visually. Not sure if the re-capping thing is mostly hype, or sound advice and want to make sure that if I do it, I go ahead and do the types of caps that need it and not leave any out or do a bunch unnecessarily.
As I mentioned, the system boots most of the time after it's been off a while, but will sometimes not boot (no video, nothing but fan - which I think runs off the primary), if it's a quicker power-cycle (like off for 30 seconds or less). I've just noticed that when it does this, the 5v rail is 0v, so looks like I may end up with a PSU issue anyway.
Also the keyboard mystery is resolved... none of the foam pads are conductive anymore, and the foam is rotten. Apparently common issue with this system. I've ordered replacement pads but the underlying keyboard electronics are working.
I've also successfully booted from one of the floppy drives. the one that was connected as drive A throws the error, but the controller and the second floppy are good.
Overall, it's in pretty good shape