Bombed SE/30: Is it dead, Jim?

[Jagmn]

I recently acquired a known dead SE/30 (my first such machine) and, as expected, the battery has done a thorough job on the logic board.


Usual suspects, from what I can tell: Rotted out VIAs, some of the '030 pins have been corroded through the board and who knows what else. And, oh yes, very sad caps.

So: any opinions? My first impression is that it probably isn't even worth cleaning the board. I don't (currently) have time to do a SE/30 reloaded.

The rest of the machine looks in okay condition, asides from the expected corrosion around the EMI shield and logic board slot. It even came with what looks like an Interware VDR-2A (1.00 ROM) in reasonable nick.

Apologies for the obscure reference to Star Trek's Dr McCoy in the title.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

It's dead Jim.

Your best bet at this point is going to be to transfer everything over to a reloaded board.
I suppose there is a chance you could fix this board, but it likely isn't worth the time. That's a pretty bad case of battery bombing.

 

[bigmessowires]

You may as well wash it clean and then start visually inspecting the battery area under magnification to see how it looks. How many broken traces and damaged chips are you willing to find and repair before it's no longer worth your while? There's no right or wrong answer. At least the damaged area looks somewhat localized to one edge of the board.

 

[joshc]

As with any bombed logicboard, it could be repairable but it depends how long you want to spend trying to fix it. There will come a point where it's not worth the time and effort necessary. It looks like a decent donor for building a new board using https://github.com/TheRealBolle/SE30

 

[Jagmn]

Thanks for the input, folks. I'll see what it looks like with the muck cleaned off but I'm not hopeful. I've still got a fair amount of IPA etc from bringing two Classics (I and II) back to life.

As for the rest of the SE/30; I'm wondering about holding out for a working LB versus attempting something like the Raspberry-Pi-driving the CRT approach. It'd be neat to at least start with a fully functioning original before going Frankenstein on it.

 

[joshc]

IPA alone won't get it all off - a vinegar soak and a good scrub may be effective on that.

 

[Juror22]

a vinegar soak and a good scrub may be effective on that.

...or two. I've found that multiple ones can be more beneficial than one longer one and help you control the effects better. One that I bought looked similar and made a great donor board!

 

[Jagmn]

Thanks for the input, folks.


This is the board after 1 round of vinegar, soap + IPA. There's still all lot of battery muck underneath the '030 and a few other chips. I'll have a go at desoldering the '030 to clean up underneath but, given the corrosion through some of the holes / along the pins, I'm not too hopeful that it'll be a salvageable chip. If I get the time to do a reloaded board, plenty of the other chips look okay.

PS: I've removed the remaining caps since these pictures were taken.

 

[bigmessowires]

The soldermask looks like it has tiny bubbles everywhere. Is that remaining water beaded on the PCB, or is it really bubbled like that?

 

[Jagmn]

Sorry, the boards hadn't fully dried out from the IPA when I took those.