Yes, if the part had only two leads you can easily replace it yourself. Just pull gently (sideways) as you heat the solder joint or you may pull the copper pad off the board. My advice is, don't remove the old part until you have the new one at hand. You may forget the polarity. Furthermore, you don't have to replace it with a surface mount part, you can use a standard leaded part of nominally the same electrical specifications. Surface mount is used only because it is far cheaper to manufacture a board with surface mount parts, but pretty much only for large production runs. The board itself is cheaper - no through-holes necessary for component leads, but most importantly the processes of placing and soldering surface mount components are much more easily automated than can be done for leaded components. Untouched by human hands. Finally, in my experience you can always replace an aluminum electrolytic with a tantalum elelctrolytic of equal or even considerably lower capacitance. Just observe the polarity and voltage rating.- Christopher Bardin __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo http://search.yahoo.com