Battery Disasters Averted!

[IIciNov90]

All of this recent talk of Maxell massacres and other battery explosion induced motherboard desolation prodded me into action over the last 2 days.

I have 2 SE/30s. One with an almost pristine outer shell and another that is deeply sunburnt and has a small chunk of the rear case missing. The sunburnt one always booted but the pristine looking one would make sounds but the screen would never energize. My plan has always been to recap both boards and then scrap out the burnt shell and then keep a set of spare innards for the one left.

All of these recent Maxell massacres woke me up to the potential danger my future SE/30s were in. So I broke out the T-15 with extension and got to case cracking!

(BTW, these pics are all pretty good resolution so you can click on them individually for a better look!)

SE30Board1.jpg[/attachment]

This board is out of the burnt one but I think that it is actually a newer board as seen from the better quality white plastic RAM tabs.

Safe1.jpg[/attachment]

December 1988! - Reagan was still the Prez when this guy got its start.

[attachment=1]Safe2.jpg[/attachment]

June 1990, While this battery is not as old but it is pretty darned close but all the more scary being a Maxell time bomb. The extended anode side of the battery is pretty weird on this guy. Hey! there's a UXO on my SE/30!

It appears the limit is (5) pics so I will continue this breakdown in a reply post.

Coming up: Capacitor status & a bonus PDS board!

Brian

 

[techknight]

Woooooo.. Every mac saved is a mac earned.

 

[IIciNov90]

Continuing on with my SE/30 analysis.

(As before, these pics are of decent resolution so you can click on them individually for a better look!)

Here are some closeups of the batteries before they were disarmed.

Board1LeakedCAPS.jpg[/attachment]

Shiny ICs are a surefire sign of leaky CAPS!

[attachment=1]Board2LeakedCAPSJuicyICs.jpg[/attachment]

Same for the older board as well but the worse dust may have actually helped by soaking up the CAP fluids.

Finally, the bonus PDS board.

[attachment=0]MacConAAUI.jpg[/attachment]

It's a MacCon AAUI connector type ethernet board.

Time to buy 2 sets of Tantalum CAPs so that I can treat my SE/30 boards to what I did for my Iici.

BTW, the power supplies were different for these 2 cases as was the shielding paint on the inside. The older one had a no-name power supply and a thick black dull primer-like black paint. The newer albeit much uglier burnt case had a Sony power supply and had the silvery inner plastic layer similar to the inside of my Iici that I have seen much more of. Is one particular PSU better than the other? I plan to use the best innards in the pretty case and discard the the burnt (chunk missing) ugly case and keep the leftover innards as backups.

Much work to do to prepare my SE/30 for its next 25 years!

Anyways, I hope you like these pics.

Brian

 

[IIciNov90]

BTW, I forgot to mention above that I have a sweet 32-bit clean IIfx ROM SIMM waiting for the SE/30 when the board is all completed! :b&w:

Happy New Year all!

Brian

 

[unity]

Question: Is it mainly the Maxell Reds that explode? Do any others? I have a huge stockpile of compact motherboards that I will be testing soon. I know none have the red battery, but should I be concerned?

 

[IIciNov90]

Unless you are actively booting them, as far as I can tell there is no real reason (other than accumulated laziness in my own specific case) for leaving them in. Exploded battery juice cannot hurt a motherboard when it is no longer there.

The horror stories from others here are what finally got me off of my backside and just in time perhaps too.

Brian

 

[onlyonemac]

Question: Is it mainly the Maxell Reds that explode? Do any others? I have a huge stockpile of compact motherboards that I will be testing soon. I know none have the red battery, but should I be concerned?

Apparently the purple ones can be bad as well, as can any battery really. So yes, others do explode as well.

 

[IIciNov90]

Some Progress Today:

The 2 motherboards had their warm Alconox bath today. I mixed a warm bath in a 5 gallon bucket and then dunked and lightly brushed both boards with a plastic bristle large glassware brush. All of the capacitor goo was cleared and the boards immediately began to sparkle. Even the offending aluminum electrolytic CAPs were rendered shiny. I rinsed under a deionized water tap and then double rinsed them again immersed in deionized water. I then dried the boards using nitrogen. (yes, I work in a Lab)

The 2 boards came out looking great. I am more partial to how the newer board (from the crappier sunburnt SE/30 case) looks. It has a highly glossy smooth finish that is comparable to that form my Iici, if it had metal clips for the SIMMs it would be absolutely perfect. That warm yellow region in the lower right center is just an artifact of the light or the camera's flash. The other older board from the nice looking case has more of a satin finish to it and seems a bit more irregular. The backsides of both boards looked fine.

Here is a relatively high resolution side by side of my results go ahead and click on it for the zoom-in.

[attachment=0]Alconoxed.jpg[/attachment]

I sent a PM to trag like I did almost 4 years ago on my Iici to score some Ta replacements. One thing that looks promising is that unlike on my Iici, the old CAPs here may not be glued in addition to the solder. That would definitely make the upcoming job easier. I plan to buy my own hot tweezer iron for this job instead of borrowing one last time.

I can't wait to see what will happen when I go to do the boot up. I will even take the checkerboard or stripes. With the great knowledge base here I am confident these boards will be tackled. I plan on playing a nice game of columns or the original Mac Solitaire from 1984.

In the meantime I plan to do some iMacG4 rehab (also CAPs) while I wait for the new Ta CAPs...

Brian

 

[Ike]

Aah now those cleaned up nicely! Congrats on saving two more Macs from the dead. Especially since they are both SE/30's

 

[IIciNov90]

Thanks!

I won't quite consider them saved until both are shown to boot up but hey, it's a start!

The Alconox never fails! It is great as a grease & chemical residue removing soap as well as having the ability to remove oxidation. If you use it in a heated ultrasonic bath it can even remove deep rust from steel leaving behind a silver gray albeit pocked finish though that takes considerably longer than the 2 minutes or so each that was needed for the motherboards by hand in the 5 gallon bucket. As the name implies, it is alkaline so I made it a point to really thoroughly rinse with the DI water.

Of the two, I especially love how pristine the newer white SIMM board looks. It is definitely a beautiful thing.

Unless I could somehow score a really nice intact and non-sunburnt Platinum case, I still plan to just have one SE/30 with all of the remaining inner parts from the second unit as backups. The sunburnt, chunks missing, cracked case is just too awful to use though its inside was much better. It just goes to show, appearances can be deceiving!

I will definitely test both boards, and assuming they both will work, I can't decide on whether to use "Glossy" (the newer white SIMM slot board) or "Satin" (the older board with the black SIMM slots). I could "use" Satin for all she's worth while keeping "Glossy" in an antistatic bag inside a steel box with desiccants for the long haul. Satin's SIMM clips are harder and more brittle and will definitely break before Glossy's will. I was lucky to get all of the SIMMs out of Satin without any breaks. Metal retaining clips like the ones on my Iici would be so much better but I could never imagine soldering one of these guys (let alone 8 of these beasts) in!

I will ultimately decide which one to use based upon what happens after recapping when I install the new RAM prior to booting.

Hey! I just heard from trag. He still sells the CAPs! It's on!

Brian

 

[bibilit]

Satin's SIMM clips are harder and more brittle and will definitely break before Glossy's will. I was lucky to get all of the SIMMs out of Satin without any breaks. Metal retaining clips like the ones on my Iici would be so much better but I could never imagine soldering one of these guys (let alone 8 of these beasts) in!

I have got a SE/30 myself, that i am recapping as well, and 4 of the SIMM clips are black and all plastic... while the other bank is white with metal clips.

 

[IIciNov90]

4 of the SIMM clips are black and all plastic... while the other bank is white with metal clips.

Wow! A hybrid! I never knew these ever existed. Half metal is better than no metal at all. Count me in as half jealous!

I wonder if there are any all metal SIMM clip SE/30s out there. Most Iici boards I ever saw had the black or dark gray plastic SIMM clips. I only saw one or two others other than my own with the metal clips.

I hope your board cleaned up as nice as my 2 boards did.

Brian

 

[IIciNov90]

Progress!!

I received 2 capacitor sets from trag and got to work! The toughest part of all was the negative terminal on that large 470mF cap that must have been to the boards ground. I had a hard time getting enough heat in for it to even come out. The older dull board was probably easier to remove the CAPs as they were not glued. The newer shiny board had a dab of glue under every cap and they were harder to wiggle off. I needed up using the 2 hand 2 iron method. My hot tweezers just did not get hot enough and the angle was not always right. I connected up both boards to the same system and they both booted with the 7.5.5 that was left on that system. It is an old original Quantum 40MB that is one heck of a whiner.

Here are the recapped boards side by side:

[attachment=2]Recapped.JPG[/attachment]

Here is the glossy board up and running with the satin finish board on deck to the right!

[attachment=1]GlossyBoard.JPG[/attachment]

Here is the older satin finish SE/30 board running fine with the glossy board to the right!

[attachment=0]SatinBoard.JPG[/attachment]

My goal was to get one working but I lucked out and got a twofer!

I have 2 more pics to post and the limit is 4 I think so I will reply to myself and continue!

Brian

 

[IIciNov90]

Continuing on...

Since it appears I have 2 happily working SE/30s I am going to go 2 ways:

The satin finish board is the older board so I am going to go old school with that one. I am going to make it a System 6 with 8MB of RAM that would be the envy of 1988!

The glossy board I am going to go 1993 with that one and have it run System 7.1.1 Pro and have 32MB or RAM with my spare IIfx ROM installed so that I can avoid the whole Mode32 thing.

I have already made progress with my 1993 config:

[attachment=1]GlossyWith7.1.1ProIIfxROM.JPG[/attachment]

Here is a closeup of my 1993 System. The System heap is much too big for my liking and I need to do some system pruning. I will definitely lose the PowerTalk...

[attachment=0]7.1.1ProIIfxROM32MB.JPG[/attachment]

Also next is I need to do the Omega SANE activation to wake up the FPU. This system will get a MacCon ethernet board and maybe a Daystar 50MHz 68030. The first time it booted the garbled looking picture when it was probably doing the memory check caught me off guard but other posts indicate this is normal when you run with the newer ROMs.

Both of these systems are done for now though I need a new front Bezel for the "burnt" looking SE/30 as there is a chunk of it missing on one side.

I plan to have a summer solstice retrobrite party where both sets of plastics will be hopefully reverted back to their prior glory.

In order to get some of the files I needed to this older system, I had to fire up my bridge system which is a PowerMac 7600. I have not started it for over a year and it looks like I found more restorative work that I will be having to do. This saga was a story in and of its own right and I will post this to the Powermac boards. I will give a hint: Processor Daughterboards with electrolytic CAPs like so many other old Mac cases have a limited shelf life!

Brian

 

[bibilit]

Wow! A hybrid! I never knew these ever existed. Half metal is better than no metal at all. Count me in as half jealous!

Here it is :

[attachment=0]pict0360.jpg[/attachment]

I hope your board cleaned up as nice as my 2 boards did.

Yes pretty clean, thanks.

 

[IIciNov90]

Nice board! Mmm... metal SIMM clips! I also like the orange Tantalums. I think that I like the orange Tantalums better because they are a much more obvious way to show off restored boards vs. the plain black ones. My fixed up Iici has the orange ones.

Brian

 

[bibilit]

they are a much more obvious way to show off restored boards vs. the plain black ones

Black seems to be slightly bigger in size, and maybe easier to weld back.

BTW congrats, very nice work.

 

[IIciNov90]

Thanks,

It was a productive day for sure and I learned that bad/failing electrolytic CAPs may be the #1 enemy of our PCI Powermacs as well.

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=22844

Brian

 

[bibilit]

I know what you are talking about :

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=18228



My 7600 is finicky as well.