Half-duplex VT420?

One odd failure that I had in a pc-compatible mainboard originally manifested itself as a non-functioning mouse. The mouse worked elsewhere. I said "toasted serial driver or receiver" and then I swapped the serial card (no Tony, no individual 1488's or 1489's to replace here; it was one of those integrated functions card). Still not working. Eventually I traced the fault to a broken -12V trace feeding all of the slots; the NiCd battery had begun spilling (though that was hard to see until I desoldered the battery) and that trace was the first to go... a little precision soldering and v`oila, problem fixed. By the way, I normally use vinegar and a toothbrush for cleaning NiCd messes, followed by rinsing with lots of water (water is not too hard here), some gentle shaking to shed off excess water and finally placing the board on top of one of the older monitors (gentle heat). When I suspect that there are crevices where a lot of water is hiding I use some isopropyl alcohol before drying. The vinegar seems to do a good job of eating the NiCd spill and corrosion. What do other people on the list use? At 06:31 PM 10/9/01 +0100, you wrote: -------------------------------------------------------------- Carlos E. Murillo-Sanchez carlos_murillo(a)nospammers.ieee.org