* On Wed, Dec 02, 2009 at 08:51:05AM -0800, Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote:
Late 80's Macintosh logic boards are worth more if the electrolytic caps
that are leaking acetic acid are removed and the board is cleaned up.
I didn't realize how serious a problem this is for late 80's electronics
in general. The museum has been removing batteries from artifacts for a
while now, but I don't know how we're going to deal with trace rot on all
the PCBs with leaking surface mount electrolytic caps.
Indeed, there seems to be a mass die-off of vintage Macintoshes going on
right now judging by the buzz on 68K mac enthusiast message boards. My
own SE/30 refused to boot about a month ago, showing the classic
"Simasimac" zebra-stripe failure. On inspection I found that _every_
surface mount electrolytic cap on the board was leaking. I had to re-cap
the entire board -- only 11 caps, but my smd hand soldering skills are
just fair to middling. I chose smd tantalum capacitors, the solution
used by most of the folks on the boards, and brought it back to life.
But this hilights something that's going to be a serious, on-going
problem for anyone who has a lot of 1980s gear in his collection (like
me, alas)
-Seth