VOGONS


First post, by kgiannis

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Hello to all! I've been reading here for a long time but this is my first post 😀
Recently I bought this motherboard with a 486DX-2 66MHz on it.
It had a corrosion problem that I thought I could fix. Now, I am not so sure tbh.

You can see in images, I have noted the problematic area (image: Corrosion_Explained)
1: This is the yellow pin on P8P9 connector. Because of the corrosion, it is now short-circuited to ground (area 2, 4pins)
2: These are the black pins of P8P9, ground.
3. This is the damage. I think, the battery corrosion ripped off all the copper mask (this is the term, correct me if I am wrong). So now, the lanes that should be in green are actually exposed and you can see the copper.

I removed 4 capacitors and the P8P9 connector.
I used a multimeter to check continuity and the results:
- Yellow pin of P8P9 is connected to ground (it shouldn't)
- Capacitor wholes in area 3 are all in continuity.

I think that I have to somehow isolate (mask?) the exposed copper so the continuity stops?
I read about nail polish but I am not sure if this is a valid solution.
Any ideas? Is my approach correct or need to do/check something else?

Thank you all in advance!
Giannis

Reply 1 of 2, by Horun

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It does not look that bad BUT the board layering seems odd. The grid pattern must be ground plane which is usually not like that on the surface of 486 boards.
What does the bottom of the board look like ?
If you can take picture of the whole top and bottom of board and also try to save the BIOS to file it would be a good add to theretroweb.com https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/shuttle-hot-406
and also help figure out what you need to do. Thanks !

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 2 of 2, by kgiannis

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Thank you for replying!
The bottom is perfect, same goes for the rest of the motherboard.
The ground plane, is that something that I can fix? Applying solder mask, would that work?

I don't have a flash programmer to save the bios (I have to buy at some point, any suggestions are welcome).
I will post images of the rest of the bottom, both surface and bottom, and also add to theretroweb.com (this is where I found the model in the first place).