New Zealand Vintage Computer Forums

I have a unused factory sealed card for an apple that appears to have slight battery leak signs are a little
green on the resistors surrounding battery for the real time clock

This card adds 1meg of ram, real time clock and high speed z80 CPU to your apple


Damage appears to be minimal so I expect its not to late to save it

My question is what is best for cleaning up the green stuff and neutralize the acid?

I'm gonna whip out the battery then clean it up, then add a new battery holder

My understanding is that it depends on pH or somethin as to how you neutralize the acid?

Yes, it depends what type of battery it is as some leak acid (so something slightly alkali like a baking soda mix might be good) and some leak alkai (so vinegar is good). I don't know which battery does which.

tezza wrote:Yes, it depends what type of battery it is as some leak acid (so something slightly alkali like a baking soda mix might be good) and some leak alkai (so vinegar is good). I don't know which battery does which.

You could perhaps use a cheap pH test kit from a garden centre. You could even make your own from red cabbage and a coffee filter.

Yeah I was going to do a pH test but couldnt think off the top of my head where to get them, thanks

dog gone battery has been removed

Looks like a great upgrade for an Apple IIc, resulting in a duel CPU, 1.25 meg ram & real time clocked Apple IIc

I really like the portability of these little machines no bigger and about the weight of a modern laptop (almost)

[update]

After a little reading it seems there are two kinds of battery, alkaline and lithium, the alkaline batteries leak all over your circuit board
and ruin it, the lithium batteries are the ones to get

I have a lithium battery in front of me out of an Apple, expired 1990, no leakage what so ever !, says it all

im going to try a baking soda and water paste to clean up, not that there is much to clean up, so fairly lucky its hardly noticable.