Because these boards are from early 1994 and later, these boards are from the beginning. And they grow older and older. In April 2005 we got the first broken MAX 4000 with a burned off 8port V34 modem board.

The symptom was, the MAX did show slightly lightening lamps on the front (not full power) and it did no more boot up.

Here on the top picture you see one of the chips in its working version and below, you see its neighbour burned off, means almost exploded.

If you look closer to the chip, you see the broken and blown up plastic case.

In case of fault - check the LEDs on the front panel:

The fault killed the mainboard. It did no more boot and all the frontpanel LEDs did light with half intensity only.

Verify with this page here.