I received a microscope for Christmas and opened up my battery bombed IIci to try it out.

geokov

New Tinkerer
Nov 2, 2023
19
3
3
I had a look at the board under the microscope and I feel like I walked into an episode of HBO's The Last of Us... (if you've seen it, you'll know)
 

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geokov

New Tinkerer
Nov 2, 2023
19
3
3
I cleaned it up the battery/RTC area to have a look at the carnage. The RTC chip is in rough shape and I completely lost the R7 and R8 diodes. Doesn't look good but I wanted a challenge. :) Now I'm going to get the caps removed from the rest of the board.
 

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  • IIci RTC REPAIR.png
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geokov

New Tinkerer
Nov 2, 2023
19
3
3
Is that the worst damage on the board? Are the diode pads still there, or did they come off entirely?
That's the worst damage (the battery area), the rest of the board is not the best but ok. The diodes and their pads are completely gone. I also lost all the legs and pads on the diode side of the RTC chip. Those legs are not connected to anything in the pinout. Lots of repairing to do in this area.
 

JeffC

Tinkerer
Sep 26, 2021
122
79
28
Seattle, WA
Eek yeah, definitely fixable but it will be tedious. How are you going to approach the diode repair, are you going to glue the parts in place and then bodge from there?
 

geokov

New Tinkerer
Nov 2, 2023
19
3
3
Eek yeah, definitely fixable but it will be tedious. How are you going to approach the diode repair, are you going to glue the parts in place and then bodge from there?
Hi, I have been going over the board front and back to come up with a plan of attack. I am lucky enough to have a RTC chip replacement and the vias and traces under the chip survived miraculously well. The worst of it is the diode area and I am planning to do what you mentioned, attach bodge wire to the diodes and glue them down. Then there are a bunch of traces to repair. I'm not bothered by the tedium, I find it relaxing. I also like the challenge.
 

JeffC

Tinkerer
Sep 26, 2021
122
79
28
Seattle, WA
I'm glad to hear you are making progress. Do you have more photos of the damaged area of the board? In your third pic there are definitely a couple rotted vias. Have you checked what they connect to, and come up with a plan to repair those? If the via just goes straight through the board and does not connect to any internal layers you can run a thin bodge wire through the hole where the via was. If the via connects to one of the middle layers you might have to get more creative.

I just finished most of my SE/30 build today. When I pulled the RTC off my donor board a couple days ago the bottom half of two legs broke off due to corrosion, I had to bodge those. Then when I pulled the video ROM from the socket on the donor board, one of the legs was too corroded to come out of the socket so the bottom half of that leg broke off. Fortunately, the broken pin (28) and neighboring pin (27) both went to +5V, so I was able to just jumper the pins together. I look forward to hearing about your progress.
 

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JeffC

Tinkerer
Sep 26, 2021
122
79
28
Seattle, WA
I forgot to put this in my last post. In your third photo, some of those traces are definitely gone and need to be replaced, but some are probably still good under the corrosion and lifted solder mask. You can carefully use an x-acto knife to scrape the solder mask off. If you can scrape off the corrosion and there is a good copper trace underneath you should be able to apply some new solder mask over the top and be ok.
 

geokov

New Tinkerer
Nov 2, 2023
19
3
3
I have repaired the diode area and have good connections to where all the pads are supposed to go. I just have to add some solder mask to the exposed bodge wires and then move on to the RTC repair. It's not my best soldering but repairing those tiny pads was tough. It works so I am not going to worry about aesthetics. The blue tape is just notes to remind me where the connections go, where I have to repair trace breaks etc.
 

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