It's amazing how many pin owners don't even know that their machines have batteries that need to be changed. "What batteries? This has batteries in it?? There's no batteries in it... it plugs into the wall!" Great vid Ron!!
I would recommend using solder flux to clean up the solder joints that are corroded. Usually comes in a syringe, intended for SMT rework. Cleanup the flux with something like fluxclene (after all soldering is finished), and then clean any remaining residue with isopropyl alcohol; there shouldn't be any discoloration.
The carnage lol. I was going to mention a dish washer but you beat me to it. I then put the PC board in the super hot summer sun on the dash of my truck. This board is on life support lol.
For a little more "control" over sanding in tight spots or maybe where fingers get in the way of seeing what you are doing, perhaps try the following: Use a set of of reverse action "gripper" tweezers to grab small pads of abrasive paper (basically, cut off a piece of paper and fold it up into a loop/pad that the tweezers can hold onto.) You can get in some real tight spots that way, it's a bit easier to see and control what you are hitting (because fingers aren't in the way) and because the size of the abrasive pad can be as small as you like, it cuts down a bit on collateral damage.
Yep cut those canners off that board way easier to just pull the pins out. Been doing that way for years... thanks for the great repair video from the bench not a talking head.
I predict it is going to work! Help the Machine out a little. It wants to work. It wants to play. It wants to be what it is. Its an amusement device. Sometimes it seems like they are not all inanimate. I have some arcade machines that originally looked like they belonged in a dump; bottoms rotted out, electronics hanging out everywhere by wires,. Real gross train wrecks. A little help and TLC and its almost like the machine helps itself come back to life. I predict full recovery and return to former awesomeness Ron.
To quote Steve Ritchie's other masterpiece: The Getaway (H.S.2) "This time I'm going to nail that dirtbag." That is definitely a good way to describe General Jagov during the repair, & during the gameplay!😁 Hello from Phoenix Arizona!🔥
I cleaned a board up with vinegar and alcohol. I’m glad you mentioned the staining. I was worried I’d caused more damage with the vinegar. Same game ironically.
It was pretty minor alkaline damage. I never even removed any parts. I just clipped the battery holder off and scrub the crap out of the area around it with vinegar on a toothbrush then when added with rubbing alcohol to clean it off. My board looked nothing like this disaster. I can’t wait to see how this turns out
With regards to De-Soldering have you tried "No clean Flux" "Chipquik" it's a Flux that doesn't require cleaning after soldering, but more importantly it rids corrosion, anyway place some flux on the corroded PCB and component Pins "it should need very little flux to then solder "Leaded Solder" to the effected solder joints, once the solder has been added, use de-soldering gun With really stubborn corrosion it may pay to wash the PCB with White vinegar followed by a wash with Isopropyl Alcohol, The beauty of using white vinegar is that it stops further corrosion but as long as it is washed away with the Alcohol. APU I dropped a like..
I wonder if you could use an air compressor with a air gun/nozzle to blow the water out from under chips and IC chips. I use one on lawnmower carbs that I let soak in an ultrasonic cleaner. Thanks for the video. It’s fun learning all this stuff. You’re a good teacher.
My Simpson 261 Volt Ohm Multimeter from 1963 had battery leakage. You can imagine how bad it was. Especially since the leaking batteries proudly displayed "for transistors" on them. lol I was kind of amazed at how well it cleaned up. The corrosion was so bad that it actually completely ate the battery contacts. Like they were powder. Nothing is impossible, it just takes time :)
Ron, I had to rework some surface mount stuff on a WiFi router recently, and a friend mentioned the low melting point “ChipQuick” solder. Stuff’s amazing, it makes taking chips out of boards child’s play. Surface mount stuff, you just flood all the pins with the stuff, then the chip will practically fall off of the board. Works just as good for through-hole parts. Clean up with solder braid.
I've heard about stuff like that but didn't know it worked on through hole stuff, i'll have to look into it. I'm going to start doing surface mount stuff soon I think, I keep running into it so i'm going to have to get a hot air rework station....
Another great video. The amount of work you guys do to keep these machines going is awsome. Most people would've probably just tried to get a new board. Thanks for sharing and showing how you clean them. Can't wait to see if it gets fixed or not. Have a great weekend.
Great video as usual Ron! I use many of your methods to fix and rebuild machines...and my High Speed had similar MPU corrosion and is still running well 3 years later. Your paint touch-ups and board repairs are my favorite. Greetings from Germany!
Thanks for watching Duffy, we'll get this one going again! I haven't painted one in awhile, i'll have my work cut out for me on this "flight 2000" that's coming up, though :)
Working at home, time is not so much an issue, but commercially, a $400 board or spend a few hours fixing the existing board.... Depends on the hourly rate of charge for the repairs. That said, I always prefer to keep original boards if I can :) Cutting the chips off is what I would do as well. Then you can desolder the legs one at a time and not damage traces. It's pretty common practice with boards like these. I like your approach, I usually do the vinegar to neutralise the base / alkaline and then clean with water and then isopropyl to drive the remaining water out. So pretty well what you do.
I have watched several of your vids. I like the conversational style. After watching your last one on Freedom I was going to suggest that you post a video on board battery acid cleaning. I guess you read my mind.
i love watching your work. the only con repairing the board, the board will always look crappy. there's no way to get it back cosmetically. i do like nice looking boards, but at the end of the day nice looking doesnt mean it's functional.
So can't wait to see if you get it working, but it's fun seeing the process even if it doesn't work in the end. Reminds me about the Movie 'A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood'. Where even if there was a mistake that Mr. Rodger's would make on set, he would show it to the kids saying "It shows kids that adults can make mistakes too." Either way I hope it will work after this is all finished. It was trying it's hardest to be what it was built for and hopefully you can make it work again like it was new. :3
7:54 So another option other than replacing the batteries wholesale, you can also get Lithium AA batteries (Energizer makes them). They're much more expensive, but they last for a lot longer and just quit when they're ready to die. Might be good for these types of boards, I don't think they leak (I've usually used them in my Minidisc player).
A tip for using the fiberglass pen, turn it until there is just a little bit of the fibers exposed. The tip will hold them in a tight bundle and it will clean better.
@@WonkoTSane I was thinking the same. I was wincing watching those tiny slivers of fiberglass pen laying all over the board. Those things are painful and you need a magnifier to see them in your fingers!
I repair old stereos, happily not much corrosion just the occasional leaking cap; but OMFG some of them smell bad- I'm glad I don't know the houses they come from but holy cow, and then there is the sticky cigarette smoke tar and coating of dust. I wash the boards with hot water, dish soap and a paintbrush, rinse with hot water then rinse again with > 90% isopropyl alcohol. Some need a couple treatments to not stink up the shop.
Yeah, I've used boards shortly after washing. So I'd use rubbing alcohol and risk using a hairdryer (trying not to get a flashover). I used that on a board that was covered with cockroaches. So that was a matter of rinsing off the board, knocking the roaches off, then scrubbing the board with an old toothbrush and soap, etc. That didn't fix the microwave, but it got rid of the insect infestation and got rid of some of the digital "noise" caused by the cockroaches crawling around. The actual problem with the unit turned out to be a stuck switch on the front panel, but roaches on the control board didn't help.
Someone responded to my ad for pinball repair with an F-14 Tomcat. 😂 Looks like I'll be doing this too. I have a feeling it's because of the same reasons... Let's see! Is this a System 11?
If you plan on doing more of these corroded boards like this one invest in a Harbor Freight sand blast cabinet. Their pretty cheap and it’ll make your job much easier.
I've heard those are pretty cool I just don't have the room for all that stuff, I hate buying new tools that sit around all over the place :) I have an organizational problem...
System 11, bottom of the board left to right is solenoids on the left, switches in the center, and lamps to the right. Upper part is sounds left, batteries and cpu/display center, and special solenoids on the right
I've used a magic eraser before with 100% IPA as a lubricant instead of the sand paper and it seemed to work well, but it wasn't as far gone as that. It took a more even coat off of the solder mask, but I guess you needed to concentrate on the traces. Hoping for a happy ending :) PS thanks for reminding me about the Amazon link, I had forgotten again!
Awesome repair video !!! Thank you for taking the time to make these !! I have an F-14 Tomcat Board that needs repair. could I pay you to take a stab at fixing my board please ?
Hi John; We don't do just board repair sorry... we need the whole machine in our shop to work through it and do it on a kind of limited basis, this particular machine is leaving soon so we wouldn't have any way to test just a loose board.
Is it the poisons they put in the alcohol that stains it? Break out the moon shine ;) Oh the suspense! The drama and anticipation! 😂🤣 I checked your website looking for a Mattel hand held foot ball? You ever run across one let a Gnomie know 👍 Great video Ronnie! 👍👍👍
@@LyonsArcade drinking rubbing alcohol are we? Now I understand 😂🤣 The stuff they put in it during the Prohibition to keep chuckle heads from drinking it silly 😜 But I guess why waist good shine on a board 😉
@@TheGnomestead He's almost certainly using isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol, which is sold pure, with only water to dilute it depending on the level of purity. You're thinking of "denatured" alcohol, i.e. ethanol with additives to make it poisonous, a common additive being methanol. Even a small amount of methanol can permanently damage the optic nerve, and as little as 1 fluid ounce of the stuff can potentially be fatal. But humans routinely drink regular ethanol. It's perfectly safe in moderate quantities. You could even use Everclear instead of rubbing alcohol or denatured alcohol to clean stuff, but it's kind of a waste. You paid all those taxes on it, you might as well enjoy it. :)
Cutting the chip is what you should. Like you said save the board. Good job! Yes brass brush good too, not steel wire brush no. Brass is softer that steel wire.
Hey, Ron, you can use water to clean a circuit board but must be ultrapure water (distilled water). Since there are no conductive ions, distilled water is good for removing dust and the water-soluble flux residue on the board, which will not damage electronic equipment because it has poor electrical conductivity. Please be careful to flush the circuit board only for a short time, and ensure there are no water-sensitive components on the board. Therefore, in all of the videos, you saw that using tap water to clean a circuit board directly is wrong, just because their boards have been pre-coat with waterproof materials, and washing time is short, but even so, this is not recommended. The disadvantage of water cleaning is that rosin flux residues are usually insoluble in water, and the water in the fine gaps often cannot effectively evaporate during drying.
Recently had my Williams BigGuns board reworked due to alkaline damage,125dollars in parts and 1650dollars in labour.definitely pays to know how to repair it yourself.
@@LyonsArcade Yes a few little things but mainly the motherboard,l should have mentioned I'm in Australia and technicians charge almost 100 dollars an hour, not many left so they know you will pay if you want it fixed.BTW I love your videos.Recently my sound has disappeared so I am kind of nervous.Hopefully just a loose wire.
Hi Ron! Point of curiosity; I notice that you don't do things this way (and it obviously works for you, so...),but I was wondering if you had an opinion about using, in situations like this, a spray bottle filled with (diluted?) vinegar, and a small-ish nylon brush (something a little larger than a toothbrush) over the entirety of the board to neutralize the alkaline, followed by a water rinse, and another spray bottle of alcohol, again over the entirety of the board to assist with the evaporation/drying. As you mentioned, alkaline damage can creep, and I imagine that a wider approach might prevent future problems. Just a thought...
ive had luck with dawn dish soap/water on tv remote control boards but skittish about doing that with the dell keyboard, keys are getting sticky/annoying so need to do something soon
Those membranes we run into on controllers for video game systems all the time, unfortunately they deteriorate over time so cleaning them doesn't always fix them... .
Jason: Dell considers keyboards to be disposable units. I am a Dell-certified service technician, so I sometimes replace parts under warranty. Normally, when they send out a part like a motherboard or a hard drive, they want the old one back to be refurbished. Keyboards, however, are considered CRU (Customer Replaceable Units). In other words, when they send a replacement keyboard, they usually just ship it to the customer and let them replace it themselves. On the rare occasions when they send me out to replace a (laptop) keyboard, they don't even want the old one back. They're just so cheap that it costs Dell more to pay return shipping than it's actually worth. With that in mind, the simplest thing to do... Use a keypuller to remove the Plus, Minus, and Enter keys from the numeric keypad. Obviously, if it's a wireless keyboard, make sure you remove the batteries too. If you have access to a bathtub or a plastic container big enough to submerge the entire keyboard, fill it with lukewarm water (no soap), and give the keyboard a bath! Let it soak for at least 12 hours, then turn it on its end and lean it up against a wall so all the gunk runs down to the numeric keypad. Let the keyboard air dry for at least 24 hours. Then you can just carefully clean the gunk out, put the keys back on, and see if it works any better than it did before. If it stops working (which it shouldn't, as long as you let it completely dry), a cheap replacement only costs about $20 USD. I've rescued a few keyboards that way.
The dreaded Varta battery is a big problem for older PC's and Commodore Amigas. I managed to catch a failing Varta in my A2000 before it got too bad. The issue is made worse as it's not easy to just remove them; they are soldered to the mainboard. :/
Great job Ron, That was some great work in saving that mpu board. How much pressure do you use when you are using the metal brush? Can you dig into the board if the press to hard? Love the Bob Ross ref. Happy little pinball machine. Can not wait for video 4. Thanks Ron
That wire brush can't really damage the board, I found you'll only really take off corrosion with it it doesn't really damage the traces.... so you can go as heavy as you want :) Thanks for watching Frank, we appreciate it!
Addendum, Invest in a De-Soldering Gun they're Cheap!! Oh and watch some retro computer restoration Videos which have suffered horrific Battery damage.. Eg: "Corroded Mother Board Restoration"
I think both, I have actually seen them dripping if you can believe it. The dead giveaway too is sometimes you'll see where it has dripped, so for instance on a bally machine the mpu and the battery mount up in the top left, the board down below it isn't even touching the battery but those traces closest to the battery physically (at the top) will be corroded down an inch or so... sometimes you can see a track where it looks like something has dripped down the front, eating crap up as it goes! IT'S LIKE A HORROR MOVIE
It can drip. But worse, a lot of the electrolyte comes out as a gas, so it can flow even further and get into even worse places than if it was just a liquid dripping from the battery. A lot of crystallization you might see is the gas condensing out and reacting to corrode whatever it landed on.
As oxidation spreads through metal, the material's electric properties will diminish until ultimately no current will pass through. The thinner the metal, the faster it will happen. Soldier joints are thick, but also exposed to air like component legs, and serve as entry points for the oxidation to spread to metal inside components or under the solder mask.
It actually gets inside the components and doesn't let electricity through, many of these are actually physically broken in half in places from the corrosion. Imagine if you had a gate with really rusty hinges, when they get rusty enough it's all weak and they can break in half, but they're already weak enough that the weight of the gate will make them bend, etc.
@@LyonsArcade That's pretty much what I figured. How many hours before that board is repaired? Just curious about repair vs. replacement in terms of cost effectiveness.
@@808zhu It's still probably more cost-effective to repair. Every component on that board can be bought individually. Most of them (resistors, capacitors, even some of the chips) only cost a few cents each. You can get a reproduction board where all you have to do is program the EPROMs, but from what I've been told, they cost $400-$500.
@@LyonsArcade Oh I remember! I worked at a Grocery in HS. Scored me a life size Larry Byrd holding a Nestle Crunch bar and a 5' Pillsbury dough boy next to me Farrah Faucet poster ;)
So when to get alkaline or acid which would be a better option vinegar or baking soda? Would one situation prefer baking soda compared to vinegar? Or they both about the same.
I enjoyed your work on the pcb; regarding the batteries, considering they had plenty of room in the pinball machine, still don't understand why they had to place them in the pcb
The better question is, considering how easy it is to get inside the machine, why didn't the operators replace simple batteries? All you had to do was pop them out of the holder, yet they didn't. I don't think this is on the designers. If you drive you car until the tires wear out and they pop, that's not a design flaw, that's a lack of maintenance...
Because they assumed someone would get out in the field to the machine and replace the batteries. It's also an additional step in manufacturing to install the battery pack remotely in the machine. Also these machines were made with an expected use life of 5 years. If you change out the batteries twice in 5 years you probably at least won't have damage. You may not have the high score to date stored but probably no damage.
Actually neutral PH value is 7 (water for example). The closer to 0 you get the more acid is the substance and the closer to 15 you get, the more basic is the substance 😉
What type and brand of Conformational Coating do you use that will protect the pcb board and components from Alkaline battery leaking Alkaline and battery acid?
On old PCB's like this with fine pitch (for the day) cutting the chip out is the industry way of doing it cos ya gonna save the board, vinegar is the obvious choice, whats worse alkaline or the acid ? well which would you put on your chips ! besides you wash the board and treat it with Isoprop anyhow... cheers.
Ron why can't you neutralize that seems to me and it's been a few years now but there is a company that offers a spray for corrosion just in this instants you spray it on the board and it neutralizes the corrosion and then you go in and you wipe it off using your fiberglass pencil or whatever case you choose to use then it allows the solder to flow better I've seen it where on a chip you spray it on both sides and you use your brush clean it off and it brings back the shine and you can desolder whatever's needed to be done or am I just imagining things
C'mon people, people, c'mon people....listen to Ron. It's alkaline! Stop calling it acid damage!! Nothing irritates me more in pin repair than hearing this. Thanks for getting it right!!
What about compiling the circuit diagram for the main board into a code file that can be burned into a SPARTAN FPGA to replace the the damaged main board.
That sounds good in theory but in practical use it would take a long, long, long, time to make that happen and it would be very expensive. There are 100 wires connected to this board that you'd have to repin or add connectors to whatever new board you came up with ,there's 100's of discrete components used to drive solenoids, lamps, displays, switches, sound... all with different voltages. So while i'm sure it oould be done, wouldn't it be a more practical solution to spend a couple hours fixing this one that already has all that stuff figured out, designed, and partially working?
@@LyonsArcade the largest SPARTAN FPGAs have enough nodes to handle such a design and it seems like a whole Pinball mainboard implemented as a SPARTAN FPGA.
@@DAVIDGREGORYKERR Now that as an idea is fantastic for millenials, us boomers and GenX, like to get into the nitty gritty, burn our fingers, cut our arms, and spend hour after hour working out what's wrong and at the end when all the bells, whistles and artwork is done, lean back with a drink of our choice and say, Man that is one beautiful working machine.
Sure, you could replace the display drivers, cpu, eeproms, etc with an FPGA but all of the driver circuitry on that board will still need to exist somewhere. The schematics are freely available for these boards...
@@DAVIDGREGORYKERR The project I am currently working on at work has an Atryx 7 FPGA on the board. It handles the logic OK but there's so much support circuitry, input output level shifting, etc that would be required it's not this simple.
I'm not an expert on this stuff at all. But isn't leaving copper exposed really bad long term? Just air can cause corrosion to copper and then any moisture will cause it to speed up.
Oh probably so, guess this is unrepairable then since I can't get anything on top of the copper that runs underneath all the chips once the tin is gone, all those hundreds of traces can't be recovered so once they're this far gone guess there's no chance of it ever working again
@@LyonsArcade No it's not that really I was more curious like have you ever had to work on the same board again? I've seen people use UV mask to cover the copper what's your take on that? Obviously you couldn't do that under the chip or contact wouldn't happen. I also saw one guy use conductive silver paint on the traces saying it protects the copper. I didn't mean to come off as a dumbass saying your doing it wrong.
Basically if you just leave it exposed how long does it hold up? I've been trying to fix stuff my self since watching you and a bunch of other tech fixers.
Just a little nitpick. You don't want to get the pH to 0. That would be highly acidic. Neutral pH is 7. Less than 7 means acid, more than 7 - base. Otherwise - yes, using mild acid to get rid of potassium hydroxide (the highly alkaline stuff oozing from old batteries) is not a bad idea.
@@LyonsArcade Also, you can probably use mild acid to get the old dull solder shiny and more receptive to reflowing. In fact, soldering flux is really just acid that removes oxidation from the metal surfaces. Some aggressive fluxes use stronger acids like sulfuric or phosphoric, but they probably shouldn't be used on electronics for obvious reasons.
I've seen enough absolutely ruined vintage computer boards to know, they don't always just leak fluids onto the board. Sometimes like the red maxell computer obliterator bombs also release fumes that corrode stuff above them as well as leaking onto the boards below them. So sad.
That's crazy, I guess it just depends on manufacturer and how it's made... I was just telling The Gnomesteader down below that I've seen where they've dripped on boards below them in the Bally games, pretty wild!
@@LyonsArcade I think it's based on the battery chemistry. the ones i've seen this happen to are lithium batteries while most of these backup batteries even in computers were nickel metal hydride, or alkaline.
I guess oxidation could be the right word. Alkaline is generally a heavy oxidizer. That is how bleach (a type of lye or "alkaline") works. The bleach oxidizes the stains, similar to letting something sit in the sun for years.
Great job Ron wish more people would repair things than just throw them away. for this my bad joke of the day. 2 lab mice were talking one said to the other have you got your covid shot yet the mouse replied what are you crazy they have not finished testing it on humans yet
hahaha we're not allowed to laugh at that one, they'll kick us all off youtube and the government might come lock us up, the officials shall not be questioned Adrian! :)
"Happy little accidents" wise words. When I've applied 99.9% Isopropyl Alcohol I didn't get white residue... and it sure chases the water away... so I might not "have done it like that"... ;o)
@@LyonsArcade Nah, you can get 99% IPA at Ace Hardware or even Walmart. You can expect to pay about $9 plus tax for a quart, $25 plus tax for a gallon.
Board is $400, what is your labour worth? As a business you should be charging at least $50/hr to cover overheads. So if you spend more than 8 hrs on the board, better to replace the board. If there is nostalgia involved, that may change the equation.
