I was able to remove the battery packs to halt the
degradation, but before
I make a bad situation worse I thought I'd ask for some advice on how to
proceed.
The electrolyte in such batteries is alkaline, you need a chemically weak
acid to neutralise it and hopefulyl clean things up a bit. Some people
use white vinegar, I prefer a solution of citric acid (it smells better
for one thing :-)). After using this, wash the area with distilled water
and then clean up with propan-2-ol
This will clean up the battery residue, but of course it won't undo any
corrosion damage to the PCB tracks. I think what you have to do there is
check all the connecitons in the affect area against the schematics,
repair any broken tracksby sodering wires in place of them, and then test
the machine, Debug the repaing faults, remembering that broken
connections are very likely.
-tony