I friends Thomson SpeedTouch 536 died a horrible death a few weeks ago, and I helped setup the replacement modem. I was given the old modem, and later on a gave it a look. I noticed 4 bulging caps, and thought that I’d give a shot a replacing them.
Today I went to Dick Smith and bought four 470uF 25V caps. I quickly desoldered the four caps and soldered the four new caps onto the board. Guess what? It worked. The modem booted up fine, without going into it’s endless loop of red flashing lights.
The total restore cost me $2.20, and now I have 4 backup modems.
And also four backup capacitors.