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Looking for someone in the U.S. or Canada who I could hire to attempt to repair a motherboard damaged by a leaking battery. This is from a Packard Bell Legend 125 (PB411a), a desktop 486SX-25 system.
The corrosion has resulted in at least two components becoming detatched: PAL16L8 and 74F151 chips, plus probably some caps and resistors. I still have those chips, although it may be better to replace them, if available.
Is this feasible? Please let me know! Or does this end up in the e-waste pile and I look for another?
By time you pay shipping both ways and time for the repair, might be able to find a working board cheaper... But who knows, maybe someone here just like to do it for the challenge.
Replacing the PAL chip would require finding one that's programmed correctly for the motherboard. So unless the existing one is beyond repair you'll have to reuse it. The hardest part of the repair would finding all of the corroded traces and patching them with bodge wires. The damage most likely is worse that it appears and the other components in the area will need at least a reflow of their solder, if not removal and replacement, plus clean up under them too. Otherwise the board will continue to have failures in the future even if it could be made to work with just soldering the components back on.
That's sort of what I feared... that seems like a rather important part of the board, given that the onboard RAM is right there. I am going to look for a replacement instead.
PAL, GAL and BIOS chips are programmed to only work on that board and so can't be just replaced with new components purchased from vendors. The board can be fixed, but the repair person is going to put in hours and hours and hours repairing it. IMHO, it's a good time to learn board repair and do it yourself. Nothing better than learning a new skill. Cost for a good soldering iron, cheap volt meter and the other other tools plus supplies would be under $200 at most. There's plenty of Youtube videos on board repair. Buy a practice board and mess that up, not the board you want to repair.
Upsides its a findable form factor for 486 and 1st gen Pentium machines, LPX being the style name. Compaq and HP machines share that as well, so finding a replacement doen't mean you need a Packard Bell motherboard. IBM's tend to use a different riser, but could work as well if the riser is included.
If you look at U56, you can see that the damage is probably even under the ram chips. I have no idea how rare or valuable a Packard Bell Legend 125 is, but if that would be any run-of-the-mill mainboard, I would say the damage is too severe to care about. If the PAL chip is bust, you are out of luck anyway.
Good info, all. Thanks!
I have another similar Packard Bell on the way that I'm going to steal the motherboard from. It's slightly newer, so it has a lithium button cell instead of the dreaded Varta.
I have actually done some of this repair work myself before. I successfully revived a Mac Classic logic board that had a bunch of leaky caps... and then a few traces damaged by my clumsiness with the soldering iron. After that experience, I knew this Packard Bell motherboard was far beyond my skills.
Even someone experienced with board level repair would have trouble with that, and not have a guaranteed fix. With how those VIAs look, I'm going to guess that the battery goo seeped inside the inner layers of the PCB, which means it may be impossible to fix. That is, assuming that the GALs are still usable. If the battery goo seeped inside the GAL package and destroyed them internally, forget about the PCB because it won't work without them.
If that was some rare/unobtanium logic board, it'd be worth spending time trying to revive it. But it's a Packard Bell. They were crap when new, not worth fixing. The only thing I'd say to do is for you to get more experience in board level repair. Since it's already destroyed, you don't have to feel guilty.
If you don't want to do that, I'd neutralize the corrosion with vinegar and then wash that area of the board thoroughly. Even if the board is dead, it can still be used as a donor spares board. Never know when you may need a chip from that board to revive something else.
