the device on the table for this post was a macintosh LC ii. this machine was made from march 1992 till march 1993 – apple’s highest selling product in 1992. not working.

this macintosh was owned by a local administrator – a techie kind of guy who was interested in reviving it. the typical problem with these older units is that the capacitors on the motherboard can fail and leak causing some corrosion. our guy had already ordered a capacitor replacement kit and had already started the process of cleaning up the board and removing the old damaged capacitors.

after completing the removal, an issue became apparent in the process to replace the capacitors. one of the issues that popped up was the size of the iron needed to be used for the small areas that the iron needed to reach into. not a lot of room to access the points that needed to be heated. especially with a “normal sized” iron.

another more concerning issue occurred when removing one of the old capacitors. he was using some cutters to clip away at them and ended up tearing up a pad that is connected to the motherboard that the capacitor is soldered to.

so my job was to replace all the capacitors and repair the torn pad and reconnect it to the trace.

we started off by building a “new” pad out of some thin copper wire, curling the wire into a small coil about the size of the pad. we then applied some motherboard sealant securing the coil inside. then we gently scrape away at the sealant till we get access to the copper coil. we can then tin the coil and we will have a new pad.

my only concern after finishing was making sure the capacitor was connecting properly. i felt that i needed to double up and make sure and ended up making a trace directly from the capacitor terminal directly to the trace and then sealed all that up tight.

an interesting historical repair.