Interesting findings recapping Sega 32X

[Xaranar]

So I thought I would put this here, just in case anyone was wondering. A while ago, I recapped my 32X as I do with all my consoles that have wet electrolytics, and all has been fine and dandy ever since. However, recently I discovered that one particular cap on the board - the Sanyo 100uf 10v one - was actually special, insofar as it was actually a polymer low ESR os-con cap, and I replaced it with a regular electrolytic. Learning this, I figured I had better put another polymer one there in its place, as the 32X is nothing if not finicky. Sanyo were bought out by Panasonic some time ago, but Panasonic still make the os-con line of caps, so I replaced it with a Panasonic os-con 100uf 16v, and no sooner did I do that, it actually caused some weird interference on the picture, not just on the 32X generated parts of the picture, but on the Mega Drive when used as a passthrough as well. I took it out and put an electrolytic one back in there, and the interference went away again. Weird huh? Is it possible that polymer caps have improved over the years, and now they provide too low an ESR? Who knows.

[Bratwurst]

From what I have read it seems there isn't really a standard for what low-ESR should be among the varying capacitor manufacturers; the frequency/resistance of the new Panasonic os-con line could be different than the original Sanyo. Also as you've alluded to capacitor manufacturing improving over the decades it is possible the electrolytics of today being physically smaller are now in line with what the 32X circuit requires. You could try different brands of low-ESR caps and eventually find one that matches the original spec, maybe even try a solid cap like tantalum which was probably not used originally as a cost saving measure.

I consulted with daddums and his decades of electronics work on this and he suggested you measure the frequency of the original os-con while it was in circuit so that you'd know for sure what to match it with.