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My Pulsar 2 started to give me troubles and now I believe it is gone forever. I am looking to replace it with another Pulsar2 or Scope Pro. If anybody knows if it can be repaired that would also be appreciated. I can't see any physical damage. It began working intermittently recently and I tried everything: reseating, switch STDM cables, cleaning all the contacts with 99% alcohol and sometimes it would work for awhile and then I could reseat it and sometimes it would come back but now it seems like it just finally died. I know it's not the PC because I moved my Scope Pro into that slot and all is well. I could probably get by without it as I don't see any keys associated with it, but things are just not the same as I am very nostalgic about it. I have had my cards since 2003.

Check the caps and ask Gary for options on repair

They all look good to me. Is there anything special I should look out for?
I did notice, when I went to remove the small board, to clean the contacts, that one of the four plastic screws had the head missing, but the other side was fine. No problems I can see on that one either. I decided to give it one more try and this is what I get:

The first message I get is "Pulsar2 (board 0) not found". Then the above screens.

The drivers reinstall no problem. Separately and with a full Scope V.5 reinstall. The reinstall is a hassle because I have to recreate my screens and delete anything Pulsar to work. On the bright side, it's one less IRQ to deal with!

it's probably caps. you can't tell by looking at them. you can shotgun them....

As in a Railgun?

I'm not familiar with the term other than with regards to clay pigeons and burglars.

a shotgun sprays pellets in a general direction, unlike a rifle, which puts a bullet in one specific place.

in electronic repairs, "shotgunning"is just replacing all the suspect parts that you can think of, and then seeing what happens.

I got the shotgun part. There's no way I'm going to source and replace all those caps with the risk it might not even work.

I think I can test a capacitor using a digital multimeter without removing it from the board. If there is zero resistance it is dead. I'm more comfortable with that but it will take some time to test each one so I will put it off to when I have the patience to do it. Meanwhile the system is functioning without the board. I don't use much DSP so far. I never maxed it out over the years.

caps are cheap.
it's the big caps that are mostly along the edge of the card that are in question, probably around the dsp that is not responding properly.
de-soldering/soldering them on the board without further damage is the hardest part.

a multi-meter may not help that much. it's difficult to test capacitors unless they're shorted.

Hmmm. I only see two big caps along the edge. Are those the only ones I need to replace? If so, I'm pretty sure I can carefully do that.

Gary, I appreciate the quick relies, as usual.

there are a bunch of them. some look like silver cans, and some are more traditional looking blue caps. it depends on the age of the card.

There are like 20 of them of which the two on the edge are bigger. I connected a digital multi meter across the contacts and got a reaction from all but 3. I don't know if that's a good test. None of them were shorted but it seems to me, while very inexperienced in testing capacitors, those might be bad. There is no short across the leads but they all read 60 except the 3. I have no clue what that means but they are the only three that don't give any feedback. I drained each one before the improvised test, I hope I didn't cause more damage. I'm confident I can replace those three pretty easily with the soldering tools I have.

ronnie,

In case you don't have success fixing yours, Berny has a P2 for sale

https://forums.scopeusers.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=36278

Caps typically loose their capacity over time due to drying electrolyte, especially when their environment is quite hot.
You cannot measure a cap with a multimeter directly.
The best way is to remove one leg of the cap and measure the capacity with a multimeter that can measure capacity. ( this is not present with cheap multimeters).
There are also devices that measure the ESR of a cap, which indirectly tells about its health.. but this also requires to disconnect one leg, although some claim this works without, which just isn't true.

If you're lazy, you can add additional caps over the existing ones. For buffering caps, you just need sufficient µF in total.

I also got a scope card, which had a leg of one DSP disconnected due to mechanical stress during shipping. You could also check them for damage.
Repair of a DSP leg is possible, if you know how to solder SMD.