Hello. I recently unearthed my family's old Apple IIGS from the basement. I'm trying to get everything up and running to bring it to my classroom (I run a middle-school makerspace). It has all worked except for the keyboard and the mouse. I took a look at the motherboard to discover that the battery had exploded at some point in the last 35ish years. I'm not sure whether that is what's causing the keyboard not to work. I could use some advice on what to try. I'm posting this humbly as someone who knows some stuff about computing and circuitry, but really just enough to stay ahead of curious kids. Feel free to speak to me like they do (as an idiot). Thank you.
Anonymous
User login
Please support the defense of Ukraine.
Direct or via Unclutter App
Active forum topics
Recent content
Navigation
No Ads.
No Trackers.
No Social Media.
All Content Locally Hosted.
Built on Free Software.
We have complied with zero government requests for information.
It looks like the computer was stored upside-down, so the electrolyte deposited itself over the power supply instead of mainly on the circuit board. You can see that it's awful, corrosive stuff, since it burned straight through the steel of the PSU and the lower shield.
Unfortunately this type of corrosion damage is very involved to diagnose or repair. There isn't any simple fix, although cleaning the residue as thoroughly as possible may arrest the process and prevent further damage. It's important to know that any corrosive substance on an electronic circuit becomes far more destructive when the circuit is powered on.
That's rough. You'll have to clean it all, stop the corrosion on the board (strip it, soak it, repair any bad traces, then recoat).
I would probably just replace the power supply or at least rebuild that internally also. It will be failing. It's really hard to believe it turned on at all from that damage.
It's a big job. It may work again if redone well and the chips aren't damaged.
Yikes. Thank you so much for the responses. From what I'm hearing, this work might be beyond me and, if I can pull it off, might not matter anyway. What can you do with a working keyboard, monitor, mouse, and joystick? Is there a way to run an emulator throught a raspberry pi with the original hardware?
Here is an alternative in case of issues with the PSU: https://www.tindie.com/products/dekunukem/picopsu-adaptor-for-apple-iigs/