Burned mother board

<p>Hello ladies and gentlemen My question to the learned ones is what can cause a D300 mother board (for the lack of a better description) to burn or short out. Weather, moisture, dust, ruff handling is not a factor. The camera is a year old with less then 2000 actuation, at the time of the malfunction was using a battery pack Meika less then 2 months old I had about 40 pictures with it. The battery was I believe after market I had used the same with a D200. I was shooting indoors at a Reggy club using the pop up flash at times. My concern is the possibility of it reoccurring after the expensive repair. Its not in warranty. Thank you.</p>

<p>What is a Meika battery pack?</p>

<p>For a board to "burn" you need direct power of the battery - I wonder if there is no fuse either in battery packs or in the camera.</p>

<p>To "short" is something different from burning and can have millions of reasons from manufacture fault to mechanical impact or you name it. Looking at the problem from my desk I have a hard time to narrow down the cause in the camera that may sit on the repair desk at Nikon :-)<br>

Ask to have the board sent back with the camera.</p>

<p>Gary, how do you know exactly what happened to the circuit board inside your D300, i.e. burned? What are the symptoms and did you take it apart?</p>

<p>If the damage is caused by such third-party external power pack and battery, the warranty does not cover it anyway regardless of how old your camera is. If Nikon determines that is indeed the cause, I suppose it is a good idea not to use that power pack again.</p>

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<p>Thank you I took the camera to a independent camera shop he actually had pictures of the D300 board on his computer their is a obvious burned area at the lower right side.<br>

One more thing is it possible to test the battery pack and batteries. This is a great forum</p>

<p>did you ever have a computer that failed for no apparent reason? or any other type of electronic gear, for that matter? your imitation MB-D10 is probably not the cause of your camera's failure, so i wouldn't dwell too long on that. if i had one guess, i'd say you just got unlucky this time. your camera had a system board with a marginal component and after a year it failed. it could happen to anyone.</p>

<p>Could be Static Discharge......</p>

<p>i've never disassembled a D300 so i don't know what's on the "lower right side." i find it odd that your tech had a photo and not the actual burned board to show... i'm positive he didn't send it in for repair.<br>

given the board actually has a burned area, did you notice a burning smell while you were shooting, and before the camera failed? seems to me, if the grip were to fry the camera's logic board, it would do it all at once when first powered up; but then, if there's some fault in the grip and it didn't regulate voltage properly, it might slow-cook your D300...<br>

i continue to believe you are just unlucky this time. i didn't find any clamor on the web about that particular grip frying cameras.</p>

<p>"One more thing is it possible to test the battery pack and batteries." Why chance a $1,500+ investment over a $40 or $60 Nikon battery? If you want a camera to work over a long period of time, you may not want to save $$$s when you get a battery for daily use -- or to use for a back-up battery.</p>

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<p>Based on what I have seen on computers and monitors, you COULD have had a component fail, the resulted in a direct short, rather than an "open " circuit. If that were the case, some other part would indeed fry. Most often, you will smell it, when it happens. The most likely case is with voltage regulators. They get hot and need heat sinks to keep cool. If the power is coming from a battery pack, it could be sending too MUCH voltage to the camera. </p>

<p>Sounds a bit like a short, but if the battery was at fault, wouldn't the battery start to suffer damage too? The biggest risk with batteries seems to be overheating and explosion.</p>

<p>Thank you Mr. Schroeder, Mr. Cheung, Mr. Pahnelas, Zeeshan Ahmed, Mr.Litynsk, Mr. Williamsonand and Mr. Ojalai for your interest and taking time to answer my query Have a great week.</p>