A4000 battery leakage need help

[darksun9210]

Not sure if this is related, but my A4000 has decided to not boot. on power up, i get a flashing power light, and nothing on screen. then then machine seems to reset, and goes through the whole flashing power light thing again.

no flashing caps lock light to maybe hint at whats going on.

the battery had been removed before i got the machine, and from what i can tell, it's been removed for quite some time. the only hint of life i got out of it yesterday was when i removed and refitted all the simms. i got one clean power on self test, then setpatch rebooted the machine as per OS3.9, and then flashing powerlight of doom. i've swapped simms around, wiggled things pushed things into sockets,  held the simm modules in, but i can't get anything to work.

i'm hoping that there isn't some battery acid on/in the board somewhere eating away at things. :-(

anyone got any ideas?  :-?

its the board revision with the 5 cheap simm sockets, one for chipram, and four for fastram.

so far, i guess i'm asking for a hot air re-work tool for xmas  ;-)

[darksun9210]

thanks Trevor, i'll certainly bear that in mind! i'd forgotten about ARC France... :-)

but i'm kinda hoping there is something i can do before i have to send it away  :-(

[darksun9210]

 :-( cool ok. well, today it seems that something more terminal is going on. initailly this morning the machine wouldn't power on. the PSU fan spins and drives run, but nothing else. tested the PSU, all ok, swapped the PSU to double check. all ok. swapped back, but now i'm back to the continuous reboot and no screen thing again..

the cap near the RTC circuit has dull solder points. i have neither the skill nor the tools to repair. can i rock the cap untill it weakens the legs so it comes off before more damage occurs? :-? before sending off for fixing. (which will be a while as i have three birthdays, xmas, and new years to budget for :lol:)

as to what it is doing at the moment. when it does fire up instead of continous reboot, i get a red screen which means "bad rom" and if no screen is showing then i get a single capslock light flash, which translates as "bad rom checksum"
to further investigate, i swapped out the A4000 3.1roms with one of the many pairs of A1200 3.0roms i have laying around. i don't get the instant flashing power light, but i don't get anything else either except a continous power light. i guess a1200 roms arn't compatable with the A4000 :roll:

also checked another A4030 cpu board to be doubly sure. same thing as above...

i don't belive that roms can go bad on their own. so i guess its a caps issue  :-(

--edit--

ok thats it, now at switch on, the PSU sounds like its under load (fan sounds like its not spining so fast) but no power light, no nothing.  :crazy:  :hammer:  :crazy:  :hammer:  :crazy:
i give up untill i can get this sick machine packaged off for repair...

[darksun9210]

right, i'm going to do the vinager thing to neutralise whatever is going on there and a rinse off.

i usually go for soya sauce rather than vinager on my chips...

then run a patch lead to skip over the eaten bit. hope this works ... :-)