Help/advice and hopefully a repair service.

[Flasheart]

To cut a long story short, I just realised that A500+s have batteries! All my machines have been stored for years and this one was used least as I had an A1200 which saw most use. Any way I forgot that the PLUS had a battery and it's leaked. This is bad, I have ordered a Vampire and Vampire case for is and this was going to be my new most used machine.

I have attached images so you can see the current state, I have de-soldered the battery and added a couple of shots without it too.

Is it fixable? It currently still works, but I know what a problem leaked battery acid can be. I don't really want to throw it away, there are less and less working Amiga's and I would rather this one didn't end up in a bin.

My soldering skills are limited to replacing micro switches in mice and de-soldering batteries (although sometimes too late :-( ) . I assume the green on the legs of the chips and the few resistors near the battery is from Acid. Can they board be put in some sort of bath to neutralise the acid?

Any help/advice/repair service greatly appreciated.

 

[Sardine]

Hi,

your lucky it still works,

you have dilema..


1:- the battery even though removed is still eating away at your board and you need to neutralize the Alkaline from the battery with acid from lemon juice or similar.
2:- you then need to clean the area of lemon juice where the battery damage has been neutralised.

this is the dilemma... cleaning the board can break the already eaten fragile tracks and you could stop the A500+ from working then requiring track repairs and/or re-socketing and cleaning the chips but if you don't clean the tracks in time they will break anyway.


the main targets are the SN7 chips, tracks around the rtc, ram chip controllers and trapdoor expansion port,.. but there is some good news. the latest Vampire 500 card when 3.0 is released will no longer require any of that. so you might get lucky

the latest 3.0 will give you sound and aga over hdmi, 2mb or more chip ram using the vampire so even a bog standard A500/512k can have 4mb chip + when released.

 

[Flasheart]

Hi thanks for the advice. I cleaned as much off as I could with brushes and cotton buds. What was left I then cleaned with white vinegar,I then cleaned that with isopropyl alcohol and then left to dry. I have no idea if I got it all, or if there's still some little bit somewhere eating away at stuff. I guess time will tell.

 

[Bryce]

It looks like you were actually really lucky and the computer was stored upside-down or at an angle that the acid didn't flow across the surface of the PCB.

As Sardine mentioned, lemon juice to neutralise and isopropanol to clean it up afterwards. I would suggest removing the ICs that had green legs to ensure there's nothing underneath them. Also the vias are the real danger. Make sure there is no acid left in these holes. This is where it gets inside the PCB and destroys the inner tracks. When that happens the computer becomes unsaveable.

Bryce.

 

[Daedalus]

This is where it gets inside the PCB and destroys the inner tracks. When that happens the computer becomes unsaveable.

I wouldn't say it's at all beyond saving if vias are destroyed - I've repaired plenty of machines with dead vias. The repair will take a bit longer and might require small wires to be added to the board to patch the circuit back up, which will add to the cost of the repair. Whether you feel it's worth the time/effort/money required to save it is up to you but it will be possible to get it working again. Bear in mind as well that the A500+ is only a two layer board so there are no internal traces to worry about.