Almost two years have passed, and during this time two new toys have found their way to my home lab: an oscilloscope and a digital microscope.

From time to time I like to pull some board from the "dead" box and give it one more try, maybe using the above tools which I hadn't available when first trying to repair the respective board. Few days ago it was this Soltek's turn for this treatment.

The oscilloscope helped me to determine that all the clock signals are present and have the right frequency.

As there was a mention of the possibility of broken solder balls under the NB, I checked the resistance of each data bus pin vs. ground, no CPU installed, and found them all identical, so no breakage - at least on the data bus.

Then I had another go at visual inspection, using both the microscope and a strong magnifying glass. Ironically, it was the magnifier that helped me spot something that eluded me since the beginning. A hairline crack in a 680 ohm resistor network (RN12), near the CPU socket, in the area that received the most damage. Transplanted a identical one from a scrap board, again keeping the expectations low, ...BUT..., as you can see:

Fitted a matching heatsink on the NB (original was gone), board ran flawlessly through Phil's DOS benchmark pack and other DOS diagnostic tools. I'll test it under Windows later on, but I don't expect other trouble.
All in all, a happy retro day 😀

That board is gorgeous. Congrats on reviving it.

Excellent news!! It's always great to see old broken hardware brought back to life and be used again.