It’s not the first fix of an EIP counter here, and I have to say, these units are still very useful tools around any RF and microwave workshop, despite their age. The unit under repair, judging from the date code of the parts, is about 25 years old.

The symptoms – the EIP is just not counting. Showing 000000 zeros in the display, but no count. To confirm, you can use the build-in test function 01, by pushing test-0-1, and normally the counter will show “200 000 000”. But no indication of any counting activity for the current unit.

First thing you do, checked all the rails, and turns out the 12 V rail is dead. Starting from the right, removed all boards inside. And soon the defect was traced to the A107 board, gate generator assy.

Checking with the schematic, there are several ceramic and one tantalum cap.

Desoldered the tantalum, and it is no cap any more, just a short.
With all the various tantalum shorts repaired in the past years, there seem to be to cases, some tantalum go fully short and activate the power supply protection circuit, with little powder dissipated over the tantalum. This is the good case. Some other tantalum seem to develop a short with some resistance, leading to considerable power dissipated in the cap, causing stench and risk of fire. The latter more seems to be more common with SMD tantalums, for reasons unknown. Also, the tantalum story is one of the many reasons why you should design current limit circuits, and power supply protection circuits, even in low power equipment, especially, if there are any valuable components that you might want to protect from a power supply failure.

The 10 uF replaced, with a new orange cap, but same “drop” style.

After carefully installing the A107 assy back into the counter (take care not the damage any of the wires), all is good. Counting at 200 MHz with the test function 01 activated.