Itona VXL Thin Client Repair
Thanks to a friend, I received 11 non-working Itona VXL thin clients. All exhibited the same symptom, no power. While disassembly is a little more involved than other thin clients, the repair only requires a soldering iron and ~$10 in parts.
The Itona VXL thin client consists of a Gigabyte P3VB-VXL mini-ITX motherboard and a custom 50 watt power supply. It uses a fanless VIA C3 800 Mhz CPU with a VIA VT8601T northbridge and a VIA VT82C686B southbridge. It has all the usual computer ports (PS/2, serial, parallel, game, VGA, audio, USB & LAN). These particular units have 256 MB of PC-133 memory and a 256 MB IDE flash drive with Windows XPe.
Remove two screws from the back and the top cover slides off.
Inside we see the mini-ITX motherboard to the left and the power supply to the right. Checking the +5vdc standby power (purple wire, pin 9 of the 20 pin ATX connector) showed zero volts. To eliminate the possibility of a motherboard short killing the +5vdc standby, I unplugged the ATX connector and retested. Still zero volts. The problem is in the power supply. Time to pull the power supply out!
The first step in removing the power supply is removing the three nuts circled in red. The bracket around the CPU heatsink will then lift off.
Next the plastic front cover needs to come off. Gently press the two tabs and pull forward. Once removed, the forward heatsink is revealed. Remove the eight screws circled in red and the forward heatsink will come off.
Unplug the ATX power connector from the motherboard and remove the single screw from the back of the Itona. The power supply will now slide forward and lift out. It is a tight fit so some wiggling may be required. To disassemble the power supply start by removing these two screws.
The cover with the ac power connector comes off next. Remove the two screws from the top and one screw from the bottom. Unfasten the plug with the brown/blue wires.
The power supply board will now be visible. Remove its four mounting screws and the board will slide out. Once again, the fit is tight and some wiggling may be required.
The power supply consists of three boards. The main board supplies +5 vdc and +/- 12 vdc. The small stand up board supplies +3.3 vdc and the large stand up board supplies +5 vdc standby. Looking closer at the +5 vdc standby board reveals a leaking capacitor.
Every Itona VXL I opened had this capacitor leaking. Some units also had other capacitors bulged and/or leaking. A large percentage of the capacitors also had a high ESR reading. To prevent future problems, I replaced all the capacitors in the power supply. The Teapo and Ltec capacitors used in the power supply are poor quality and have a known high failure rate. For replacements I went mainly with Panasonic and Rubycon. The replacement capacitors must have a low ESR and high ripple current rating, general purpose capacitors will not work! Replacing the capacitors in the power supply fixed all 11 Itona VXLs.
- Main Board
1) 100uf @ 400vdc replaced with Panasonic ED series
3) 100uf @ 25vdc replaced with Panasonic FM series
5) 1000uf @ 16vdc replaced with Rubycon MB series (some units have four 1000uf @ 16vdc and one 470uf @ 35vdc. Replace all with 1000uf @ 16vdc.)
- +5vdc Standby Board
1) 2.2uf @ 400vdc replaced with Nichicon PW series
1) 47uf @ 25vdc replaced with Panasonic FM series
3) 100uf @ 25vdc replaced with Panasonic FM series
- +3.3vdc Board
1) 100uf @ 25vdc replaced with Panasonic FM series
2) 1000uf @ 6.3vdc replaced with Sanyo WG series
12 Responses to “Itona VXL Thin Client Repair”
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[...] capacitors in the power supplies. Since these came with custom 50W power supplies, he opted to simply replace the caps instead of replacing the supplies themselves. Now he has 11 fully functional units. There are great pictures and lots of info on his site, but [...]
Great post and the detailed photos are great. Thank you. I do have a question though… is it just as easy as un-soldering and re-soldering new caps? I am a beginner regarding “fixing” a pre-existing problem on pcb’s… I have been told, it’s “not as simple as that” due to ground planes, multi-planes pcb’s, etc. Should I be as hesitant to do this on a dead dell motherboard with blown caps? (I already have the replacement caps)
It was that easy when I replaced the capacitors on my old p4 motherboard.
You have to ensure that they’re the same values, and get the polarity right, but yeah, it’s that easy.
The circuit board in the Itona power supply is single sided/single plane. With it just having circuit traces on the bottom of the board, unsoldering these capacitors was very easy. Your Dell motherboard has multiple foil layers and large ground planes. Recapping it requires a little more effort.
Here is a good guide to recapping your motherboard: http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=485
Man that’s awesome!
I’ve got to find one somewhere to bring back to life and play with.
If you want to sell one feel free to contact me.
Thanks for the information! I actually bought a kit, specifically to replace all of the caps that were in question on the system ($23 for 32 caps, shipping included) I verified each value and drew the board layout, placement, and polarity of the caps that needed replaced. I just haven’t pulled the trigger yet.
I meant to post my last reply under Jim’s post.
Well your project sure lit a fire under my arse.
I’ve found a thin client of my own to play with, (a Maxterm 8300B) and plan on sharing my own little project with HAD.
Props, and best of luck with re-capping!
I do similar work with industrial control hardware and it’s pretty easy, although admittedly I’m a veteran.
hiya!
thx for this detailed repair manual
it looks very much like your thin clients use a PS similar to the ones that get put into
NEOWARE (bought by HP) and older IGEL thin clients.
and almost all of the power supplies fail after a couple of years because
of faulty caps.
it’s mainly the SP9919 and SP9919A in our thin clients.
(similar to your SP20112)
Best Bytes®,
Harry
Thanks for the info. Bookmarked in case any of mine go south.
A few years ago I picked up a small stack of these. Although, think I only got 5 of ‘em.
All but one had a dead motherboard and the one that did work had a bad keyboard port. Of course, this was verified with a known-good PSU. No PSU problems that I know of out of all of them.
It shouldn’t be surprising, but at the time these were manufactured, the bad-cap plague had spread everywhere (even in non-computer electronics). It might be worth it to recap the motherboard as well.
I’m in desperate need of a TC3921 M52
Anyone know how much of power takes this board in the iddle ?