My Atari 800XL decided to die right before a big demo night

I was setting up for a retro computing meet in Portland last Thursday, and the screen just went black with a loud pop. Opened it up and saw a blown capacitor near the power supply, which had leaked all over the board. Spent the next four hours trying to clean the corrosion with isopropyl alcohol and a toothbrush, but the damage was too bad. Has anyone managed to save a board after a cap leaked this badly, or is it a lost cause?

2 comments

2 Comments

piper_green6d ago

Did you check if the corrosion ate through any of the traces under where the cap was sitting?

craig.reese6d ago

Feel for you, that's a real gut punch right before a show. In my experience, once the corrosion gets into the traces it's often a lost cause. You gave it a solid shot with that cleaning effort though.