A brief history of hardware epidemics

Summary

Living creatures aren’t the only things to be ravaged by epidemics. Computers, even Macs, can die prematurely when there are widespread manufacturing failures. I’d like to unearth a couple of mass graves from the past that have surely contributed to landfill around the world: capacitor plague and lead-free solder, and a recent problem with butterflies. Capacitor plague 1999-2007 Capacitors or ‘caps’ have a chequered history. Acting as temporary stores of electric charge, they’re used extensively in most computer hardware and other equipment, such as ‘starters’ or ‘ballast’ for fluorescent tube lighting. They consist of conductive materials sandwiched with substances of low conductivity, or electrolyte. When manufactured to high standards they should last for 15 years or more, but cheap components are prone to overheating, electrolyte leakage, and in the worst case even fire. With manufacturing driven to minimise the cost of components, some who procured supplies of capacitors have saved a few pence using cheaper sources. Many have turned out to be duff, so-called counterfeit capacitors: in the early years of this century, a series of fires in mainly industrial and commercial premises were blamed on catastrophic failure of strip light ballasts. Computer motherboards and other components, including some batches of iMac G5 and eMacs, have also suffered ‘capacitor plague’ when counterfeits have somehow entered the assembly plant. Since first reports in 1999, successive waves have cost major manufacturers hundreds of millions of dollars to rectify. An ABIT VP6 motherboard with a blown capacitor alongside others that are bulging or leaking (2007). Image by Ethanbrodsky, via Wikimedia Commons. This PC motherboard from ABIT has one blown capacitor obvious just to the left of centre, among others that are starting to bulge and leak. Fortunately, Apple’s products were among the least affected, and since 2007 very few problems have been reported, although failed capacitors and...