Old 386 needs major repairs 

This is an excellent tutorial for repairing damaged traces on old motherboards.

I love your videos. I appreciate your calm, methodical approach, and I love old computers. 👍

For whatever reason I love these mid-tower AT cases, they just look so cool! Nice job on fixing those traces, great video!

Excellent comments. The narration helps explain the debug and thinking process

Love your videos. I have several vintage computers, each with its own issues, and it's wonderful to see how I can apply your many and various fixes to my collection. On a related note, I have a generic 386 board with corrosion almost exactly like this one. Removed the battery of course. Then also removed the keyboard connector as it was corroded deep inside. Dropped it into a small vial of off the shelf CLR. It started to bubble almost immediately. 10 minutes later, it emerged like brand shiney new. Please keep your videos coming!

Absolutley love your channel have binged on almost all of it, you deserve a lot more views! Your MFM low level format vid saved my bacon while rebuilding a 286 Zenith over the last few weeks.

A great history and very well presented. Thanks for the skills that you shared with us.

Thank you for sharing your technique for fixing bad traces. I have an old 386 that also has varta damage, only difference is, my board features surface mount components, something I’ll have to figure out as well.

I love these old PCs.

I really loved this video. I found it to be very relaxing and informative. It's a crime that you don't have more subscribers. I remember a childhood friend's hoarding father having an entire bedroom filled to the ceiling with various 2/3/486 computers in varying states of disrepair, but the entire collection was sent to the recycler in the early 2000's, when they were probably worth their very least. Now that I see prices for these old computers increasing on eBay, it pains me to think about what could have been...

Awesome job getting her going again! I've picked up boards on the cheep with battery damage like that. I am way more OCD and use buss wire and go over the same paths where the traces are damaged. Then I apply varnish over my repairs. Those ATI EGA Wonder cards are amazing! They can simulate EGA colors on a standard TTL monochrome monitor so you can still run programs for EGA.

I find that level of repairs amazing! Good job!

Bummer about the Seagate, but you got both the motherboard and WD hard drive back to working condition, which is profit! 😁 👍🏼 💪🏼 This video gives me motivation to pick up the repairs of a few of my old non-working boards again and try to fix and clean the battery leaks. I might need to solder on a few jumper wires too. Awesome!😁

Great find! It needed some work but awesome job and love the case. The wounderfull AT days!!!

Great video, looking forward to seeing more RAM in the machine and then what you can run on it!

ProTip - you can convert SIMMS to SIPPS by soldering on pins (which can be cut from new resistors, diodes, etc).

Nice! You saved a beautiful old computer from the junk and the Atari monitor makes it even better! You must be the computer whisperer or something.

Wow that battery did some major damage and yet you got it taken care of. Nice!!!!

Nice repair👍 i have an old 386sx16. Thankfully the previous owner changed the battery. So no damage inside. I have maxed out the memory. Also. The 40mb mfm hdd is still in good condition.

Kudos for fixing the motherboard, I would have started a salvage operation on it once seeing that corrosion!

Great work!

Loving that Atari monitor.

By coincidence, this is exactly the video I needed right now! I have a secondhand DTK 286 that has the exact same symptom caused by the exact same battery! I had already soaked the motherboard in vinegar. Now I know how to repair the traces! 💾 Thank you!

You got the best retro pc channel on the internet my friend.

Nice to see you using a real hard drive not a flash card adapter etc

Well done!

18:12 - My Caviar 280 recently did the same thing! I unsoldered the MOLEX connector and soldered on a female MOLEX connector with wires - I grabbed the connector from a dead CDROM drive.

hey nice job with the restoration man, I don't think anyone should be harassing you about your choice of wire. There's nothing mission critical about what you're doing, it's a labor of love. you do whatever your heart desires

Very nice save!!

Good job. 👍

It's weird seeing computers I used to use now being restored

I just fixed a 286-16 and a 386-25 from similar corrosion. The worst damage was under the keyboard connector. The 286 motherboard went through the dishwasher afterwards ;)

WOW, that Board is in very bad Condition, Back in time i had a i386 DX 25 :D 4 MB RAM Trident VGA 40 MB HDD

Good job!

Great video.

Made in Canada! Classic ATI card make in Markham (near Toronto) -- This machine would be fun for DesqView or GEOS. The quirky ram situation is the most difficult thing for this

Best vids ever! Retro computing (which i love) Is the best

nice video! well done!

I used to love tinkering with this old tech ..good video :D

awesome instructional video

I notice how many wires cross each other when they theoretically could lie in the same plane and maybe not be as tight between mobo and case. For example, on 14:50 you solder a wire and do a full loop around existing one. Is that intentional, like in twisted pair wire, or there is simply enough space and the signal is strong enough to ignore interference?

motherboards of that kind have only upper and lower layers correct me if i am wrong and there are fully repairable!

I've considered using my ultrasonic cleaner full of vinegar for these jobs, ive used it as retrobrite machine

those seagate early IDE hard drives with stepper motor and metal band are notorious for the heads sticking to the platters and when the disk spins for the first time in years it rips the heads off... dont try to power one of those early ide drives if it has idled for a very long time...even if the heads dont get ripped apart they will be misaligned and you cannot low level format those drives... Maybe bake the drive in the sun before the first powerup or maybe freeze it and quickly try to very very gently turn the platters by hand before applying power.... if it runs ok, then install some hdd stress tester or a benchmark program and let it run continuously for some hours just to let the heads travel various times through all the surface of the disk....hopefully it will not stick again.

Great job! Im working in a system with that exact same case... just a much more yellow! :( im buildind a p100 system in it. I chose that case because of the 3 digit led display.

You can actually replace the SIPP sockets with SIMM sockets ! These memory are pin compatible, and if you look further, you'll notice there are holes in around both sides of each SIPP connector which are here to let a SIMM connector fit (because these have two extra plastic pins to firmly fit in the board) Or you can also solder pins to 30 pins SIMM sticks if you want. Nicea repair ^^ Sadly white vinegar doesn't work that well on my boards, I don't know why ...

I just bought a lot on a local ad an I think I've found two identical motherboard that look just like yours (I'll have to check back when I have the time), except mine came with SIMM slots instead ! Also they're in much better shape.

You can acturly get sipp to simm adaptors. I bougt a box of nos at some point, i think i still have a box of them somewhere.

Nice job and nice video ! thank you ! on 21:10 you said : "i know this type of wire arent ideal but they were the only things i had" There is an other solution more profesionnal ?

I have my old EGA Wonder still, too. Canadian Made

Damn Varta batteries!

I had this exact case in the mid 90s. I'm kicking myself for letting it go back in the day. I've been on the lookout for this case for a very long time. Shoot me a message if anyone has seen this available for sale.

How would you go about fixing a Dell 486-33/L motherboard that powers on but will not post. PC diagnostic card report nothing and lights do not blink, no error codes, no beeps, Nothing. What happened is I was trying to add a CD-ROM drive and I did not realize the computer was on so I was connecting and disconnecting the IDE cables while the computer was on. I must have shorted something out ?

I remember when I bought RAM for my 286 (2 MB). It would accept ICs or SIPP. The vendor told me not to bother with SIPPs because they have a fatal flaw. They tend to work their way out of the sockets over time for some obscure reason. And I'm sure I eventually read the same reports from computer magazines.

I found some old pentium pcs a Out in the wild and cleaned it. Do you recommend turning it on?

Can you please tell me which type cable do you use at 15:36 ?

That Seagate ST157A HDD suffered a very major headcrash...

nice case

Bravo! 😊

did this get a follow up video ? cant find it

I honestly hate working on old PC motherboards, I have had no end to the trouble I’ve experienced with my Athlon XP board, first the rubber pads fall off then I realise that the CPU preinstalled was cracked, when I replaced the CPU I find that my I/O shield would fight me to get the board out and when I do I spot traces underneath that look scratched near the chipset and a capacitor bulging. So now I’ve got to do microscopic repair work and replace capacitors around the VRMs!

How do you have working floppy disks ?

Purchased a Monotech NuXT v2.0 MicroATX Turbo XT MoBo. Been looking for a case exactly like this particular one in this video. Search eBay with no luck, any advice?

I know that it's been a while since this video came out, but there is something that I would like to see someone try: solder pins onto 30 pin SIMMs. SIPPs and SIMMs are 100% pin compatible, just physically different.

You can probably make SIP memory by soldering legs onto standard SIMM memory. Provided the pinouts are the same.

Will need to give my Soyo board another try. It also gives the no keyboard error

I would spray some F2 contact cleaner on that corrosion!

what did you do about internal battery

que gran trabajo

I have one of these amd 386dx 40 with a leaking battery. The leak had gotten under a chip 74als 245awm. I wasnt careful when removing the chip, so damaged the pins and some pads. Bought a new one from china and did my best to solder it on the board and checked connections. Computer will not post. No output to screen. Does that indicate a fault with the repair or something completely different? Do you know if cheap chinese chips are reliable?

How in the world did the hard drive still work in that state!?

Cool😊

would contact cleaner be better ?

Can you make a video about how you would trouble shoot a dead non working 386/486 motherboard with a multimeter ? ( Cache, CPU, RAM, Traces, BIOS, Voltage rails, etc. ).

19:50 i'm afraid that fix will not hold for too long, it eventually will crack the solder again

Maybe this wasn't the best video to click for testing if h264ify and the hardware video decoding is working right

two empty solder points and a missing battery.. well, the CR3032 holder is cheap.. and effective..

Uh, that tool isn‘t meant to be used with „regular“ ICs, it‘s a special tool for PLCCs.

Wait, it can boot without battery?

What liquid you use for clean corrosion? I can read english, but cant translate on the fly in video, sorry, iam from Ukraine, such as you like retro PC

That poor Seagate ST157A. :(

Those soldered on motherboard batteries, hate those things.

can we get an F for the 40MB MFM hard drive

Do you have any SIPP RAM for this?

I call those Varta batteries "Farta" batteries, because they fart out their contents everywhere.

damn varta batteries

11:00 holy hell, you should get some proper wire

Great video. But please, the 'L' in solder is not silent!

What's Windows 98 like on a 386?

An Atari sticker on the Case and Keyboard and Viola this is an Atari PC

I really like what you done, so A for result but C for execution, I don't try to offend toy or anything, but your soldering and wiring skills need some work, that said, keep it up! :-)

I have a working example of the drive inside that computer

You used some really thick wire. I would have used wire wrap wire.

Are you sure it wasn't an atari dev kit?

Subbed ya

This motherboard is now 90% bodge.

Is that WD-40?

What you keep calling test points are actually called via's.

4:00 Its amazing how many modern cases DO NOT have a removeable motherboard tray!.

Imagine if this pc have i9900k