Is the extent of that damage due just to leaving it on a garage floor? Or did this guy's car leak various fluids all over it? The concentration around the battery implies to me that the battery was much of the culprit. I am surprised that the capacitors on that board hadn't leaked yet. My SE/30's caps leaked a few years ago making a big mess.

There is a capacitor there - C12 - that exploded. A lot. :p

I must be hard of seeing because I don't see C12 anywhere. But I was referring to the smaller silver topped caps.

The remains of C12 are right up there between the battery and the PDS, next to the ROM SIMM. It's kinda hard to see in a 2D photo, it looks like a scorched cinnamon bun. 😜 The silver caps look better in the photos than they actually are, a couple are really dodgy but yeah, most of them are surprisingly intact.

Nah, it wasn't a cap that did that; those old Maxell PRAM batteries like to puke their guts out if they're left in storage too long. I have an SE that did the same thing.

The surface mount electrolytics in SE/30s do leak, but they wouldn't cause anywhere near that much damage.

Yes, caps do leak. I just recapped a SE30 board for somebody and there was green corrosion on pins and one pad was eaten away. Thankfully it is 100% working and even looks nice.

I couldn't get my SE/30 working last I pulled it out. It is showing symptoms similar to problems with the analogue board, but replacing the analogue board didn't fix it. The replacement could have been bad too though. I don't know you people keep these things working. Did you find a new replacement part for the flyback transformer?

Here's what the board looks like after some attempt at clean-up. Sadly, I'm calling time-of-death. The battery holder disintegrated when I pushed on it. Some of the pins of the video ROM were so brittle they broke when I tried to remove it and UJ3 & UJ4 just came off in my hand.

[edit: image removed]

There are some decent parts in this thing that are still in good shape, like the RAM & ethernet card, so maybe bits of it can live on to save another SE/30. Looks increasingly like mine is gonna be a case-mod project if I can find the time. I've got something vaguely in mind to do with it.

Well, since you mentioned the Ipad docking mod. I thought about an old hack I saw about that certain machine.

http://spritesmods.com/?art=macsearm