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PowerBook 3400c Repair Stories

Then it's a board problem for sure.  You need to clean the remaining corrosion (pretty much broadly the area between the power connector and the PCMCIA enclosure.  I again recommend foaming Scrubbing Bubbles if that exists in Austria.  That's what brought my board back to life.  But techknight may be right - the vias may be rotted out.

 
I did some more cleaning above U4 (after taking the pic), but these corrosions are really small and I should be an ant to find them all. :(

 
Alkyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride ... 0.096%

Octyl decyl dimethyl ammonium chloride ... 0.072%

Dioctyl dimethyl ammonium chloride ... 0.036%

Didecyl dimethyl ammonium chloride ... 0.036%

Inert ingredients ... 99.760%

So basically it's various compounds of ammonium chloride and then 'other' - which might just be water and carbon dioxide mostly.

But MikeatOSX, perhaps you can find something similar that is cheaper.

(Totally forgot to edit the previous post... my bad...)

 
Last edited by a moderator:
It's the ammonium chloride doing most of the stripping. Got alcohol (methanol) and a benzene also doing their thing. And a Base (probably a Calcium based lye) adding to the stripping of the corrosion.

Interesting stuff.

 
Thanks!

I'm sure there is something similar. Scrubbing Bubbles for sure is copyrighted and therefore is imported directly from the U.S. That makes the price. :)

But what to do with the corroded vias?

Could some of them disappear when cleaning the board?

 
Well... remove the corrosion and see what happens.  If the vias or traces are bad then that poses a bigger problem.  But again - my board did not originally have video, and washing it -scrubbing bubbles and eventually the dish washer- well ultimately fixed taht.

 
Is there a size cap on uploading photos?  It's not a big deal it's just somewhat awkward to keep downloading.

Also, your board's main damage is surprisingly far to the right.  I've pointed out (above) some damage farther left, but just keep in mind that whole area (like the upper left quarter) probably needs to be clean.

 
"far to the right"

Do you mean the left or right picture (upper or lower side of the board)?

"size cap"

In my experience many forums reduce the size of uploaded pics, so a reduced picture doesn't help anybody, as it's only a colored something when zoomed in. :)

 
I got a new PowerBook 3400c/200 (my second) - the Kanga must wait some more days, as it has more bugs. :)

So the 3400c was said to have a buggy keyboard, nearly all keys don't work...

The truth was, the PRAM battery leaked and dripped down around the keyboard connections. So I disassembled the whole PB, additionally repairing some different bugs (missing rear feet and feet housing etc.).

Then I carefully cleaned the board, keyboard connectors and flex cables. After that the keyboard worked 90 percent. So I swapped it with a 5300 keyboard and now only 3 rightmost keys don't work.

One of them is the return key, arrrrrrgh!! :(

So, do you have any ideas, what to do now?

 
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