Help with ID and replacement of surface mount capacitor?

[John Goggan]

I have a small circuit board from an OPI (Outside Pointing Interface) meter
for use with satellite dish pointing. It is a simple pass-through repeater
that displays signal strength data that it gets from a PC at the other end
(i.e. satellite dish feed to OPI to PC). It is no longer functioning properly
(always displays the same value regardless of the data). Looking inside,
there is a surface mount capacitor that appears fried/damaged.

It has no markings on it. Is there anything I can do to try to determine what
I can replace this with?

Basically, I'd like to find some non-surface mount equivalent and solder that
in to replace it. There are decent points (actual nice holes through the PCB)
to solder to for both ends, so I don't feel the need to replace it with
another surface mount component if I don't have to.

Any thoughts/hints on what I might do?

Thanks!

- John...

 

[Watson A.Name - \Watt Sun, the Dark Remover\]

I have a small circuit board from an OPI (Outside Pointing Interface) meter
for use with satellite dish pointing. It is a simple pass-through repeater
that displays signal strength data that it gets from a PC at the other end
(i.e. satellite dish feed to OPI to PC). It is no longer functioning properly
(always displays the same value regardless of the data). Looking inside,
there is a surface mount capacitor that appears fried/damaged.

It has no markings on it. Is there anything I can do to try to determine what
I can replace this with?

Basically, I'd like to find some non-surface mount equivalent and solder that
in to replace it. There are decent points (actual nice holes through the PCB)
to solder to for both ends, so I don't feel the need to replace it with
another surface mount component if I don't have to.

Any thoughts/hints on what I might do?

Some thoughts and educated guesses. I assume this connects to the coax.
This keeps the power and signals separate. You may have had a high
voltage on the coax that caused the smoked capacitor. You should make
sure this has been fixed, or won't happen again, unless you want to keep
on replacing the caps.

Also using a physically bigger cap will allow you to use one with a
higher voltage rating, so that it will have a better chance of not
burning up in the future.

If the cap fried, replacing it may not fix the equipment, there may have
been other components damaged by the 'incident'.