Interesting stuff. I notice that the board date is July 2015, so this is a much newer version than the original release, which must have been nearly 20 years ago. I wonder if the original had similar capacitors, though they would have been lead type, not surface mount I imagine. You are pretty clever to have noticed this glitcsh in the board design. Obviously mth's vendor rushed this into production before adequate board testing.
grj, if you are reading this thread, what's your take on this?
Rod