[Zelandeth]

We've all seen this on machines of this era... rechargeable battery on the motherboard to keep the RTC going and the BIOS setup held in memory...which after 20 odd years leaks and causes untold damage to the surrounding board.

Amiga 500s are very prone to this, and I've had two Acorn A5000s nuked by it before I got them. The A7000 I got a couple of years back was caught in the nick of time.

I'd plain forgotten the A3000 even had such a battery though or I'd have removed it before putting it into storage. Idiot. It was also in storage for about a decade longer than planned as I lost track of it.

So yes... I've now got significant damage to the lower left corner of the motherboard. Whether the machine is repairable will remain to be seen.

I'll update this thread if/when I attempt it though. This was the first really useful machine I was given so it has a lot of centimenal value.

Wanted to post this up though as I think it's worth of bringing up now and then...if you've got machines of this era, either remove the RTC battery or at least mount it remotely so the motherboard doesn't suffer catastrophic damage if (when) it happens...

Fingers crossed I can sort this one out.