MS300 power supply

[Cohibaman]

Does the McIntosh welcome screen appear at all shortly after applying power? That should pop up regardless of HD condition.

[Haudio]

Nope

[Haudio]

Originally Posted by Cohibaman

Does the McIntosh welcome screen appear at all shortly after applying power? That should pop up regardless of HD condition.

As I don't get the welcome screen, I assume its absence suggests my MB is bad but the HD may or may not be OK.

Is there anything I can do to determine if the HD is OK and hopefully retrieve the data or should I take it to a computer repair person or because of the proprietary software and the absence of support from McIntosh and Escient I'm just out of luck.

Thanks for your help.

[sgbroimp]

As far as I know Panurgy is still the only "official" repair station for these, though some on this forum have discussed their "unofficial" efforts. Panurgy at the very least can most likely diagnose what is wrong. If it is an HDD, your chances are decent of getting parts, maybe not through them but somewhere. If it is a power supply, maybe Otis at FT Worth Audio can fix. If it is a main board......that is where the going gets sticky unless you can locate a working Escient machine of the E2 series and cannibalize its main board.

[bigpoppapump]

Has anyone had success with running two MS 750's off the same HDPLEX 100W ? one using the 12 volt and the other running on the 19 volt. Both units with Pico inside. Somebody tell me this works! lol

[Cohibaman]

Originally Posted by bigpoppapump

Has anyone had success with running two MS 750's off the same HDPLEX 100W ? one using the 12 volt and the other running on the 19 volt. Both units with Pico inside. Somebody tell me this works! lol

I've been running my MS300 from the 19 volt output while simultaneously running a PC from the 12 volt output. I just now verified that my MS300 also works from the 12 volt output. The MS300/750 draw less than my PC does. You will be ok running both.

[lwschwartz]

I have 5 of these servers. One of them has been back at McIntosh for over a year. The engineers looked at it and said that it would need a new motherboard. I explained the problem to them. The fault with these are the 17 electrolytic capacitors for the power supply sourced from an asian startup and it caused many repercussions throughout the industry with devices containing them. I had replaced hard drives, CDRW's, and had the motherboards reprogrammed over many trips and thousands of dollars to Panurgy. Once I found out the problem, I had the power supplies rebuilt and they have all been working great since. McIntosh is still supposed to send me the one that they have back. I am concerned that since they didn't know the problem, had the repairs outsourced to Panurgy who also didn't know what the problem was and just changed out parts, that they declared them End of Life and allowed the agreement with Gracenote to lapse.

None the less, they are still great units and all you really need is to have your power supply rebuilt to extend their life. I hope the registrations servers are not the next thing to be decommissioned. If so, even if the power supply is fixed, we may not be able to replace the hard drives.

Any thoughts? Do we know how many of these are left? If there are enough of us, McIntosh may be willing to keep them going since they have their name on them.

[sgbroimp]

The fault with these are the 17 electrolytic capacitors for the power supply sourced from an asian startup and it caused many repercussions throughout the industry with devices containing them.

This is a very provocative and if true most useful piece of information! We know those 17 are bad, but what is the source of your info that this is what is killing the mb's off? Just your experience or did some engineer really prove this on a lab bench? If true, very good news as it says any MSXXX can be "immunized" with a ps rebuild by Otis or similar shop.

[lwschwartz]

We had problems with some of our medical equipment so I did some research. As it turned out, the problems seemed to be capacitor related. So when others started having problems with their MSxxx units, I became suspicious. When mine started having trouble, I sent it in as McIntosh told me to do. Panurgy replaced motherboards, hard drives, CDRW's even multiple times on the same units. Even when McIntosh agreed to look at them, they did the same. The only thing no one had replaced was the power supply. So I decided that it must be the same problem as we had with the medical equipment. After some research and refurbing the power supplies, it seems that was the main culprit. Below is a link showing how widespread the problem is. It cost hundreds of millions to the computer companies. I used Otis and he did a great job.

How a stolen capacitor formula ended up costing Dell $300m | Technology | The Guardian

[sgbroimp]

I guess we could call that at least strong anecdotal evidence and enough to mandate that any owner in his right mind get his PS cleaned up ASAP....but now here is my question: If this is true, how could Panurgy take (many I guess) units in (like mine) replace the broken main boards and send them out with a large bill, having done nothing about the cause of the problem, the bloody capacitors in the power supply? That is no better than the garage mechanic that sells you a new car battery when in fact the alternator is shot.