This weekend I got an hour to do a little much-needed surgery Sunday night on the 3000. I knew the battery was still inside the machine, with bad damage but not the worst I'd ever seen. (Plus, the machine works so...)
I took off the case and carefully snipped the 3 little legs holding the battery to the motherboard. I really love t
hese snips, which I bought soon after my friend Christian showed me a similar pair during one of the SEA-CCC meets. (This isn't the
exact same tool, but it's the same basic idea).
- Ugh... at least getting the battery stand out of there was pretty quick and painless.
After that, and consulting with Mattsoft, I liberally doused the area with white vinegar. I could see the vinegar react with the acid as it started to bubble a bit. After about 50 Q-tips later, in addition to using some very light scrapes from a dental tool and tiny file (old supplies from my sculpting art school days) I got the area looking pretty nice.
- Spic and span.
After a final clean with alcohol and more Q-tips, I waited a couple of hours for everything to dry.
And then the final test. Woo hoo!
- Frankly I'm not a huge fan of doing this kind of work because it's just not something I do often enough to build that confidence. But it is hugely rewarding when it works out.
Nice to get that ancient corpse battery out of there and have things still working well. I've now ordered a new coin cell replacement which I'll put in at the same time when the fast RAM arrives. I put one of those in my 2000 and it works beautifully.