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?

3 comments

3 Comments

piper_green3mo ago

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

craig.reese3mo 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.

felix_bailey452mo ago

That really sucks man, I feel your pain. I've been through the exact same thing with a Commodore 64 a few years back and it's just brutal when you're all set up and ready to go. Honestly, once that cap juice gets into the board fibers it's pretty much game over for those traces, they just turn to dust. You did the right thing trying to clean it quick but if the alcohol didn't stop the damage from spreading you're probably looking at a full retrace job at minimum. Might be less of a headache to just find a replacement motherboard or another 800XL on eBay and save yourself the hours of frustration. The retro scene is full of dead boards like this so don't beat yourself up over it too much.