You probably can:

- do each trace at a time
- cover it with UV curing PCB ink
-???
-profit

Given the layers are conductive, there's little reason as to why wouldn't it work. Might be a bit hard given how close they are.

The bottom side traces you might be able to get away with low-temp flux and solder coating.

Tried apply solder to the backside but two traces are broken and cannot be repaired that way. But I'll probably try the silver coating method, I think it's doable. For science.

Okay, I tried to fill one scratch with super glue (which was a success) and then apply a conductive layer while using mask tape. Unfortunately I cannot create such a thin trace. If I apply larger amount of the conductive layer it spreads when removing the masking tape and touches a neighboring trace. When I apply a thinner amount of conductive layer, it gets removed together with the masking tape. Maybe a silver pen would be better for this but I would have to order it. I think I ultimately don't care enough to save this board and will use it for spare parts.

They traces would need to be repaired with wire and soldering.

I've done this on super thin traces, way smaller than that before but had to use my salt camera with macro lens to be able to see what I was doing and to check my work.

A USB microscope would be ideal.

There is also a knocked off surface mount resistor or capacitor showing in those pics.

Most likely saveable if you have the right equipment and those boards are usually pretty pricey.

I've seen those patched with fine wire on YouTube

Maybe I'll try again in the future when I have a microscope and better equipment. Right now I cannot imagine I can successfully solder such thin wires with only magnifying glass.

Those missing caps are just filtering caps connected to ground. So that should be easy repair.

Well, I was impatient so I attempted to do the repair by soldering tiny wires and this is the result:

Took me about 4 hours, the whole process is very fiddly... Had to use thin solder tip and even with that it was relatively hard to solder the wires to the traces. I guess the heat didn't transfer good enough.

It didn't revive the board though so I started investigating again. Found some more broken traces but the worst is missing resistors inside the CPU socket. I have no idea what happened with this board, probably got thrown around in some scrapyard.

Would it be possible for someone to check what resistors should be put there? I guess the resistor arrays are just 0 Ohm pass through but I'm not sure about the normal resistors. Any help would be much appreciated! This motherboard needs to live!

First, this VA-503+ is not as badly damaged as it seems.

For repairing the traces with thin wires (nothing else will work) get yourself some REAL good flux like the "MG Chemical 8341" (and a good magnifying glass). The results will be far better and you save a lot of time.

The VA-503+ is a very good and also a very common socket 7 mainboard, so loads of people have it and can tell you the component values.

If it doesn´t work stable or is picky about CPUs, replace all the large electrolytics.

I had to work with the stuff I have and I think it turned out good enough. Especially when I apply some solder mask on top of the wires. Continuity is there, no shorts, and it holds. But thanks for the tip for the flux, I'll look it up. I use BROQUETAS BRFP-260-10 and I think it's pretty good. Definitely better than the stuff I used before.

Still, I would appreciate some close up photo of the socket area to be sure what resistors are used there. I hope that after that the board will start. Tried to check some photos online but everything is either blurry or the socket is covered with a CPU.

Paar wrote on 2025-03-02, 12:17:

Well, I was impatient so I attempted to do the repair by soldering tiny wires and this is the result: […]
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Well, I was impatient so I attempted to do the repair by soldering tiny wires and this is the result:

The attachment IMG_20250302_101119170_HDR.jpg is no longer available

Took me about 4 hours, the whole process is very fiddly... Had to use thin solder tip and even with that it was relatively hard to solder the wires to the traces. I guess the heat didn't transfer good enough.

It didn't revive the board though so I started investigating again. Found some more broken traces but the worst is missing resistors inside the CPU socket. I have no idea what happened with this board, probably got thrown around in some scrapyard.

The attachment IMG_20250302_120447831_HDR.jpg is no longer available

Would it be possible for someone to check what resistors should be put there? I guess the resistor arrays are just 0 Ohm pass through but I'm not sure about the normal resistors. Any help would be much appreciated! This motherboard needs to live!

Your solder repair of all those traces looks pretty good 😀

I have a VA-503+ that's not in a case so here are those resistor values:

Paar wrote on 2025-03-02, 15:02:

I had to work with the stuff I have and I think it turned out good enough. Especially when I apply some solder mask on top of the wires. Continuity is there, no shorts, and it holds. But thanks for the tip for the flux, I'll look it up. I use BROQUETAS BRFP-260-10 and I think it's pretty good. Definitely better than the stuff I used before.

Still, I would appreciate some close up photo of the socket area to be sure what resistors are used there. I hope that after that the board will start. Tried to check some photos online but everything is either blurry or the socket is covered with a CPU.

I have this board right now on my workbench, used for testing some VGAs. I see that Thermalwrong was faster with close-up photo, but I didn't want to throw away the two photos I already took.

Thank you all for sending me the pictures, it helped a lot! I'm happy to say that after adding those missing components in the socket area and a pull up resistor to the I/O chip, the board seems to boot!

Of course it's still to soon to celebrate. Through testing is needed but things are looking good - CPU and memory is properly detected and I can navigate the BIOS menu.

Did some more tests - booted into DOS while using an AGP card (S3 Trio3D and Ati Rage Pro), swapped 72pin SIMM memory modules with a 32MB SDRAM stick and run some benchmarks/games So far everything seems to works fine.

Good job, Paar! There are still two missing SMD capacitors between the Winbond I/O chip and the BIOS chip, but seems like they're not important.

Thanks! I have added those capacitors too of course, just some 0.1uF ones. I just didn't put a photo there, it's not that interesting.

It certainly was an interesting experience, to thus day the. Most difficult soldering job I've done.

Paar wrote on 2025-03-03, 19:38:

Thanks! I have added those capacitors too of course, just some 0.1uF ones. I just didn't put a photo there, it's not that interesting.

It certainly was an interesting experience, to thus day the. Most difficult soldering job I've done.

Now you can only improve.
It's a necessary step. Happy you got it back on track 😀

Good job !

Awesome job reviving that board!

Thanks everyone! Box full of presumably faulty Socket 7 motherboards arrived, so it's time for more repairs 😁.