Good point, thanks for mentioning. Thought about this as well. These batteries can be 20+ years old now so they can definitely cause problems. Sucks that opening the SC-88 is a bit more complicated due to the multiple boards and PSU inside but I should take a look at opening mine 😀

For this reason I replaced my battery in my SC-55 last month. If you aren't planning on using the battery functionality, you should just be able to remove it and leave it empty.

Great Hierophant wrote:

For this reason I replaced my battery in my SC-55 last month. If you aren't planning on using the battery functionality, you should just be able to remove it and leave it empty.

aha! I think I'll do just that, all I want to use the sc-55 is for some "serious" gaming sessions 😊 😊 😊

Thanks, I just checked mine 5 minutes ago, it was fine but I removed it for safety. In the mkII the battery holder is horizontal.

Well, the battery was doing fine but there was something else wrong... two caps on the power board are leaking quite badly 🙁

@ d1stortion: Not sure, but that doesn't look like leaking caps. I guess it is just glue.

Hmm, do you think so? I was considering that too but it does resemble electrolyte fluid 😒 it was only on those two capacitors.

Do the other caps also have these strange crescent-shaped white markings on the PCB around their bases? To me it looks like they deliberately applied some glue in order to stop vibrations or something like that. I could be wrong though...

this is just glue to hold the cap into place, no idea why (maybe to solder underneath?) but it's a know tactic on older stuff... if it was cap asid then you would see corrosion and white fungus-like damage similar to the battery image I posted above

Yeah only those two caps have those exact markings. If you're sure that it's just glue that's quite reassuring to know 😀

touch it! you'll see it's glue 😉
it's the same as this pic of an official PS1 psu I have opened:

Yea the LA modules have the same thing.

Will check my SC units as well. Hope it's all good...

Interesting to know for sure. I was only aware of such stuff being put on coils in newer PSUs to prevent coil whine.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Yea the LA modules have the same thing.

[...]

yep, you can see it in the pics posted here: http://queststudios.com/smf/index.php?topic=3394.0 , seems to be power filter-cap related

I've seen some glue on old monitor PCBs that started eating through traces...

5u3 wrote:

Do the other caps also have these strange crescent-shaped white markings on the PCB around their bases? To me it looks like they deliberately applied some glue in order to stop vibrations or something like that. I could be wrong though...

They all do. The marks indicate polarity.

h-a-l-9000 wrote:

I've seen some glue on old monitor PCBs that started eating through traces...

glue eating traces? never seen that... maybe the cap leaked and caused this...

glue eating traces? never seen that... maybe the cap leaked and caused this...

No, there is indeed a glue that'll turn corrosive. I'm not sure exactly what sort of substance it is, but I've seen it a couple times myself in some '80s stereo equipment. And I know it wasn't a leaky cap, because it happened in some places that weren't near a cap.

There's also sort of glue that eventually carbonizes and goes conductive after prolonged exposure to heat. I've seen a fair number of PC PSUs that have failed because of that... and I imagine it made for quite a light show in cases where it shorted stuff on the primary side.

^ really?... never actually seen it but a wrong choice of materials is known to cause disasters 😀