Dogfighting the Sharp X68000 ACE

When we were first introduced to the X68000 ACE, we saw that the board was very corroded from battery damage. Later on, I whacked the battery out of it and did my best to clean up the corrosion without completely dismantling the machine. This time, it’s personal. Workstation, that is. My initial assumption was that all I’d really need to do is get the I/O board out and repair the obvious battery damage. But, as we all know, old plastics can conspire to slow you down on a project. In the end, the system still isn’t working properly, but it’s come a long way. I had sat on this project for a few months/years, because it doesn’t really have a satisfying conclusion, but I decided that it would be better to publicize my struggles. Maybe it’ll help you fix your own X68000! Taking It Apart As you might recall, a twin-tower X68000 consists of two major boards: The mainboard, which contains the RAM, BIOS ROM, various custom chips, and the CPU; And the bottom board, which handles a lot of the…