Acorn Risc PC 700 Refurb

Acorn Risc PC 700 Refurb

This is an old revision of the document!

My friend Steve, who I worked with gave me one of his two Risc PC's… and it was a good one, too:

Risc PC 700
64MB RAM
2MB VRAM
Ethernet module
StrongARM 200 processor card
AlephOne DX2-80 second processor card

I hadn't done anything with it, until getting the computer shelving in place, then tried turning it on for the first time.

Sadly it didn't work - although the OSSC and KVM detected a signal from it, I got nothing but a blank, 50Hz video feed and the noise of the original IDE disk spinning up. So I decided to open it up and take a look….

Oh dear. That will be one completely failed battery cell. With nasty battery gunk coming out.

First job is to remove the power supply, to get access to remove the battery and get a closer look at the board… it's held in with one screw, into a screw post in the case…

… which disintegrated as soon as I looked at it!

Fortunately the battery was easy to snip off…

… at first glance the board appears relatively unscathed. A quick clean up with some thinners to get the bulk of the nastiness off, and then a little bit of vinegar to neutralise any remaining corrosion from the battery leak

Next task is to try powering it on again with just the basic peripherals connected.

The mainboard itself looks okay, no signs of any other corrosion or similar.

Unfortunately it looks like this one hasn't aged too well either; on removal of the card from the processor slot, one of the surface mount capacitors literally dropped off the card. It looks like it has been hanging on purely by the residue of the cap itself. Urgh.

This one is going to need a clean up and a replacement surface mount cap fitting. Oh what fun! :(

The StrongARM card looks fine:

The ethernet module is by ANT, and comes with a ROM labelled as 'Access / AUN / TCPIP'… which of these it has enabled (back when Acorn networking modules were sold, you had to pay for the additional features).