[sdiy] Fixed it!

[Tim Ressel]

My beautious HP3456 went sideways. Measurements were off. Made me sad, 
so I tore it apart and poked around starting with the power supplies. I 
found huge AC signals on one of the rails. Turned out to be a voltage 
doubler making about 33V. So I removed the 35+ year old caps and 
replaced them with (much smaller!) new ones. I hit a few of the old caps 
with an ohmmeter to see if they would charge. The main filter cap was 
okay but others were just plain open (dry?). Anyway, the meter works 
once again!

The moral of this story is: Don't be afraid to crack it open and check 
under the hood. It cost me less than $6 to fix it! Re-capping is not 
just for amps as it turns out...

-- 
--Tim Ressel
Circuit Abbey
timr at circuitabbey.com