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Controller board fried on a 20 year old Otis last Tuesday
Had a MCA-2 board just smoke out on a high rise in downtown Portland, spent 4 hours tracing a short in the hall call wiring before we found the real issue was a bad capacitor that had bulged, anyone else seeing these old boards fail more often now?
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camerona7919d ago
...and the funny part is I had a similar thing happen last month but it was a MCA-1 with a capacitor that looked fine on the outside but tested bad. I spent two hours on a Friday afternoon swapping hall buttons and checking door locks before I finally threw a meter on the power supply and saw the ripple. Old boards are like old cars, you can fix one thing and something else pops up the next week. I've got a stack of spare MCA-2s in my garage but I'm starting to wonder if it's even worth keeping them around anymore.
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wren9762mo ago
Honestly, "a bad capacitor that had bulged"? That's wild. I can't believe you spent four whole hours chasing a short in the hall call wiring only for it to be a capacitor issue. Those MCA-2 boards are getting so old now, I'm not surprised stuff is starting to pop off like that. A bulge in a cap is usually a dead giveaway once you see it, but man, tracing a short first is just brutal. I've seen a few of these older Otis boards just give up randomly too, like they know they're past their prime.
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kai_west2mo ago
Four hours on a short trace just to find a bulged cap? That's ROUGH. Those old boards are getting CRANKY.
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