I bought a used A4000 with the typical problem of battery leakage from one of those awful cheap red batteries C= used. I replaced the battery and thoroughly cleaned the area with circuit board cleaner and isopropyl. Well, the rtc is dead (of course), but more importantly the machine does not seem to recognize properly Zorro cards. A program like Showconfig or Sysinfo identifies the cards are there, but not always properly give names and I get errors when I try to use them (e.g. A2091, GVP HC+8, Hypercom Z2 3+). Changing the daughtercard does not help. My thinking is that there is insufficient power to the cards, the machine gives me a red pre-startup diagnostic screen showing defective cards when power hungry cards (w/ memory) are used. Oh, and I occasionally get a yellow startup error flash (problem with backplane). Any ideas how to fix?
UPDATE: I found the problem finally, bad Superbuster socket. the m/b has a plcc socket for buster and it has flexed over the years so it's no longer quite square. There was also oxidation on the contacts. I removed the chip, cleaned it with electronic contact cleaner, reinserted the chip and added some clips to hold the socket better and it works!!
