Serious question, why does everyone say you need to replace all the capacitors on an old Apple II?

I got a perfectly working Apple II from a garage sale in Phoenix about 6 months ago. Everyone online said the first step was a 'recap' of the entire board. I opened it up, checked each one with my cheap meter, and only ONE was actually bad out of the 15 on the main board. I swapped just that single 10uF cap for a new one, and it's been running fine for 3 hours straight. I think telling people to blindly replace everything causes more damage from soldering mistakes. Has anyone else had a board where most of the old caps were actually still good?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_rowan19d ago

Same here, my board only needed two caps replaced.

ivan21119d agoTop Commenter

Lucky you. My last board looked like a capacitor graveyard. Had to replace like eight of the little guys. They were all bulging at the top like tiny batteries about to pop. Spent more time with the soldering iron than the actual computer that week.