• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

What happens when you get in a hurry

RJBJR

Experienced Member
Joined
Feb 17, 2011
Messages
453
Going through stuff that I stored 10 years ago, I know better but didn't look both ways.
It was a 386, now only good for parts. Don't be like me.
 
You can probably fix it wiring point to point on the bottom side of the board. I fixed a few leaking boards that way. Generally just the keyboard section and the removable battery port are affected, in your case maybe some power traces also. Anything affected on the bottom side?
 
Going through stuff that I stored 10 years ago, I know better but didn't look both ways.
It was a 386, now only good for parts. Don't be like me.

Canned evil...

I pull those batteries on any motherboard I owned of that era...
 
You can probably fix it wiring point to point on the bottom side of the board. I fixed a few leaking boards that way. Generally just the keyboard section and the removable battery port are affected, in your case maybe some power traces also. Anything affected on the bottom side?

Thanks for the suggestion but this is going into the trash after I pull the chips. I had just gone through a dozen 8088 boards that don't have batteries and was on auto pilot when I powered this on.
 
Woah--you mean that happened only when you powered the board? Nothing to do with the battery, I think. Maybe you should offer it for shipping to someone with an itchy soldering iron.
 
Shame, stuff like that I love trying to fix... fixing traces isn't all that hard. Could make some good soldering practice! Real shame if its a DX and not SX board.
 
Woah--you mean that happened only when you powered the board? Nothing to do with the battery, I think. Maybe you should offer it for shipping to someone with an itchy soldering iron.

I'm with chuck on this one. thats not a battery issue, that looks like someone plugged the power supply cables in backwards...
 
It's a great reason to take some packing tape or glue and stick the two connectors together. I don't know why this wasn't done on more power supplies. There are comparatively few motherboards that separate the power connectors rather than put them side by side.

You could even take a couple of cable ties and tie the inside black wires on the two connectors together, so the mistake doesn't happen.
 
On closer examination the battery corroded the power-in traces, the keyboard plug and even some of the jumpers. The corrosponding traces on the back of the board
are burned/melted. Lots of pretty green oxidation everywhere. I may have toasted the keyboard but don't know yet, the back of the keyboard plug-in is an ugly black melted mass surrounded by corrosion. Shorts to ground tend to get hot fast. I just put this post up to remind people to look at stuff before plugging it in, even if it was properly stored since the last time you saw it. :)
 
I've done something similar once, but the board still worked after, sans a working keyboard controller. After some trace repair, and a swap of the keyboard rom, all was fixed. Fast forward 4 years later , and this is what I got for my hard work...

imag0960.jpg


Dunno if you can see it, sorry bad shot I guess, but beautiful green corrosion only on the pins of the last few isa slots. Its so bad, i lost a few pins handling the board, they just fell out... :crazy:

On the right, you can see where I had to rebuild the pcb somewhat due to the leaky battery. It even took out the crystal, which I replaced. Meh...
 
Luckybob : Agreed, but if you look carefully, the last few pins also have corrosion. This could have caused a short when powered on. The amount of juice a keyboard port is more then likely over 1amp, more then enough to fry a trace if say shorted to ground...

Board still looks repairable to me though. I'd clean off the corrosion best I could , oil that part up with wd40 or some sort of electronics goop and toss it back in a bag for a rainy day... Could make a good project in the future! =D
 
Board still looks repairable to me though. I'd clean off the corrosion best I could , oil that part up with wd40 or some sort of electronics goop and toss it back in a bag for a rainy day... Could make a good project in the future! =D

Yes, it might make a good project. I've always regretted throwing out this board. At the time I thought it unrepairable. I'm a lot more technically skilled now and maybe I could have saved it. It would have made a nice project to try anyway.

Tez
 
If you can get a replacement cheap then I wouldn't bother. Unless the board is rare and valuable fixing it is not worth it other then gaining the skills needed to do such repairs. The first motherboard I bothered to clean up from a bad battery leak was a locally sold (by a small company who's BBS I used to be a member of) IBM 486slc66 (chip soldered to the board). These are not that common so I spent the time to repair it (pretty easy actually just needed 2 lines jumped on the bottom side of the board for the keyboard port to work again). Some repairs might not be economical, but the pride in making something run again is worth it sometimes.
 
Back
Top