VOGONS


First post, by SuperLuke2003

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Hello all

I have in my possession a Toshiba Satellite 110CS which had been stored in an outbuilding for many years

When I got it the batteries had leaked but since it was upside down the batteries mostly spewed their guts all over the case and very little actually got on the motherboard.

After removing the batteries the system worked perfectly fine for several months to a year before I had to put it in storage in my garden shed due to a pseudo bedroom move that never happened.

On recovering the now very sad looking equipment from the shed I set about testing the stuff that worked and discovered my poor 110CS now does not POST anymore, I have green lights and I have a hard disk but no display output.

On disassembly the board is still clean aside from a couple of discolored Vias and some traces I scratched up to find they're also fine under the solder mask.

At one point the AC in icon flashed orange and the system wouldn't turn on, but this doesn't happen now

I've also discovered a bent pin on the TCP package for the CPU but don't know what it's for

Attached below are photos

I have decided to buy a better unit in this case style bit I don't fancy giving up on this machine just yet especially since I can't see anything obvious wrong with it

Hopefully some people can explain.

Reply 2 of 3, by SuperLuke2003

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rasz_pl wrote on 2026-09-18, 11:34:

shed = constant condensation and evaporation = water corrosion = junk

So at this point it's a lost cause?, damn I don't even know where to start looking for a replacement computer, none of the ones on eBay seem to be worth buying they all display nothing.

Surely there's gotta be a place I can start on the motherboard surely, it doesn't look that bad.

Reply 3 of 3, by rasz_pl

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under chips, inside vias
its doable on eighties hardware because chips were big, pins were big, vias were big, in the nineties we got BGA and lots of tiny pins/vias
you can try taking good zoomed in pictures capturing where the most corrosion/sediment is, then wash the board. There is a sliver of chance its the mineral deposits/scale left over from all the evaporation cycles that is shorting something and not the actual corrosion, a very narrow sliver of chance.

https://github.com/raszpl/sigrok-disk FM/MFM/RLL decoder
https://github.com/raszpl/FIC-486-GAC-2-Cache-Module (AT&T Globalyst)
https://github.com/raszpl/386RC-16 ram board
https://github.com/raszpl/Zenith_ZBIOS Zenith Z-386 MFM-300 ZBIOS disassembly