A4K has ARRIVED!! But, oh! The BATTERY!

[dandelion]

Following my recent post, the A4000 arrived on Friday. Yesterday I had the opportunity to peer under the bonnet and was shocked to find two things..

a) Battery corrosion!

The battery is starting to fur up around its poles, not only that, but there's a thing green fur spead out over a few adjacent chips and on the pins of a nearby connector. Please say I can salvage this, that it isn't some unstoppable cancer that will in time short the board. And how can I safely remove the battery? I don't feel very confident with a soldering iron - can I just carefully saw it off?

b) The buster chip..oh dear - it's SURFACE MOUNTED!

I tried to see what revision it is although it's not obvious. It says SuperBUSTER followed by a stream of numbers, however there is a -09 amongst these numbers so I expect it is indeed a revision nine (uh, oh) surface mounted (UH, OH!!) chip. Is there anything I can do about this or should I just turn my back a graphics cards etc.

c) Oh and one other thing, apart from the problems above the machine is working well. I've installed a larger harddrive which is very snappy on the 040 (coming from a standard 020), but when I try to alter the monitor settings to DblPal or Multiscan productivity and plug it into my PC monitor with my old a1200 adaptor it refuses to display anything. At the moment i'm just using it with a scart lead of a big old TV which I don't think is doing the machine must justice.

Any help greatly received!!!

[dandelion]

Ok, i'm going to do it this evening. I have a couple of hack saw blades which i've been able to borrow (unfortunately no tin snips). I should be able to cleanly remove it with patience though.

Now, ammonia or vinegar...I work in a biology lab so can pretty much get hold of anything. Might just go with the vingear though, old tooth brush, followed by distilled water and WD40.

As for the pins, tbere in a different place on my board compared to the picture link posted previously. However, they look very much like the pins located next to the simm slots on the amiga.org picture. My motherboard revision is "b" by the way.

[dandelion]

Ok...i've decided against the hacksaw option and have been able to get a soldering iron. As well as this i've also got a solder sucker thing which should be useful for pulling away the molten stuff.

However, i've never really done this before...any soldering tips for a novice?

Oh dear, and some conflict on the WD40 advice. If I don't scrub off the corrosion already on the board is it likely to continue to spread and cause more damage? Or is it the case that once the battery has gone that will be that?