repair PS2

It's VERY likely that the board is dead.  While it's possible to replace the capacitor, it's unlikely to revive the board.  The 5V boards were infamous for dying for no apparent reason.

More importantly am wondering what could have caused that to happen, and while yes, it is true the 5v boards die for no reason, what exactly could have been the reason for the “pop”.

I had one do exactly that plus shorted some of the FET transistors ! just what John said is correct not worth the effort. the wincap capacitor were well know to blow like yours!

Alan

I would almost bet if you cut the blown capacitor out and read the side of the cap it will say wincap ! any time you see the capacitors on the side of the board and they look bulged up top and even on side sometimes there very ready to POP, and I don't mean popcorn they literarily explode with paper bulging out just like your did!

Many times a diode inside the board stack can fail and put AC on the cap.  If that's the case, they'll pop in a flash.

Looks like a have a Dummy engine now. I only paid $60 for this a took a gamble on it being a good one and it was for about 30 seconds. Thanks for all your input.

I have a MTH Dreyfuss that the cap blew. When asked here for help, David Zucal recommended taking the chance of replacing it. I'm not that good of a solderer, so I had him do it and it worked. The engine runs fine. Contact him and give it a try.

That's a longshot for sure, but there's nothing to be lost by trying.  I've seen a bunch of these, and for the first few, I tried replacing the cap, never revived one.  I have replaced that cap when I saw it bulging and several times I was able to rescue a board.