New Zealand Vintage Computer Forums

Does anyone know of or can repair motherboards after a battery leak?

Just got myself an Amiga 2000. On opening the case I found a gvp scsi controller with 2 Simms attached, a pc bridge board ( 8088 version), and a display enhancer.

But after further investigation I found the battery has leaked and corroded some tracks. Have cut the battery out and cleaned as best I could then tried powering it on. Power light only no display or drive access.

Would love to get it up and running if possible but may be beyond my time/skills.

I might have access to a schematic and service manual if that helps

Ouch, not nice.

I remember reading about battery acid damage once in the vintage computer forums. I just had look but couldn't find the posts. They are there somewhere. People had tips on how to clean up the board. It was to wash it with a dilute alkaline solution (say with baking soda) OR with a mild acid like vinegar DEPENDING on the type of battery. From memory if it was an alkaline-type battery you would use the vinegar, if it was your more conventional acid battery, you'd use the baking soda solution.

I have heard of folks repairing damaged boards quite successfully.

yep, I have a 2000 waiting in the queue for my time/workbench.. battery leak also. Will let you know how I get on when I find some time but yes.. neutralize the acid first, worry about repair once the damage is slowed/stopped.

blah now you guys have me nervous
going to need to pull mine out on the weekend and make sure it is not being eaten alive.

I have the A500/2000 tech ref guide also, so I can look up stuff in that to help if needed.
I've accidently aquired (damn bulk lots) about 5 different scanners, so am sure I can scan some bits in - just need to know what.

yours works, chances are it's not leaking or not bad yet.

I gave up on this board as it was too far gone. To much damage to the tracks.

I got hold of another A2000 from Europe with a 68030 board in it. Trouble was that although it worked in 68030 mode it would refuse to work in 68000 mode. Yet another board failed due to battery damage.

Anyway I managed to get a couple of replacement motherboards off Amibay and now have two working A2000's.

Out of the 2 old machines there were 4 SCSI drives off which only one still works. Thought for a minute there I had the SCSI curse as all my spare SCSI drives turned out to be dead as well.

Even my SCSI to IDE adaptor wouldn't work properly as it would detect the drive and format but after reboot I would get error's. In the end I got 2 1GB SCSI drives off eBay which I have running in one machine.

Both have been upgraded to kickstart 3.1 and last night thanks too my Amiga Forever disks and the HxC floppy emulator I installed WB3.1 onto the 030 machine. Now I just need to get the CD drive working in it.

Sounds like it's getting there.

The Amiga 2000 is on my "might-be-interesting-to-have-but-only-if-dirt-cheap" list. A bit like the Apple IIGS. My brother used to own one, and he loved it!

Glad to hear you've had some success!
I'm still too nervous to reinstall mine, worried about what I might lose.

Don't forget kids, remove your nasty old drum batteries before you start writing off Amigas with them! Culprits also include the A501 memory expansion, the A500+, the A3000 and A4000. The 1200 does not have an inbuilt RTC setup, don't think the 600 does either.

Save your Amigas, remove your drums.

"Don't forget kids, remove your nasty old batteries before you start writing off any computers that have them fitted! Culprits also include cached SCSI cards, y2k hardware fixes, the Acorn Archimedes/RISC PC, the huge range of apple Macintosh computers, pretty much every PC after 1984... The A500 does not have an inbuilt RTC setup, don't think the A600/A1200 does either, but then most 'real' computers don't.

Save your vintage tech, pop the top off, if you see a battery, remove or replace it before you start to play."

(there, fixed it for ya ;o)