Reply 42100 of 52976, by TrashPanda
Shreddoc wrote on 2022-01-26, 22:45:I would never buy this. It's just an auction I saw today, a 386 motherboard populated with a CPU, RAM, and ensmeared with a variety of lovely acid-based compounds, predictably centred around the general batterial regions.
corrosion.png
It seems we have reached the stage of highly corroded 386 boards asking >$100 - this particular example is asking $120. "I have no way to test it", they note. We don't need a crystal ball to tell how that test would turn out, friend.
I see a Varta barrel battery I move to a different auction, if it has not leaked yet it likely will soon and while its not a hard fix I would rather spend my money on a 386/486 board with a cr2032 holder or even a Dallas RTC. Only exceptions would be if the board was particularly interesting or rare or the archive didn't have it yet.