Why Is This Thing Working?.

[xman]

I pulled apart one of my hoard of faulty Xboxes I bought some time ago and as always, booted it up before I opened it. The machine booted up and of coarse the standard Micro Soft Xbox splash screen with that hideous noise come on and then the time set window. I set the time, try the DVD and of coarse, it isn't working. Going to need a new belt but other than that, machine working fine, just not modded yet. Power the machine down, unplug it and rip it apart ready to mod it and this is what I found...



Looks like it was swimming at some stage and not a result of one of my man cave floods. This has been like this for years.



A bit of a close up of the same 1.1 mother board. Remember this machine is still working fine. How is this possible?. I've worked with electronics for years and it is beyond me why this thing is still working and it appears to be working good actually.



Look closely and you will see even the supa cap has shit itself. I've now cleaned it all up and the bastard of a thing probably won't like working now that it is all cleaned up. Fingers crossed I was careful enough cleaning it up. I've ran out of PC board cleaner so I just used alcohol and a cotton bud but it looks near new now.

[professor_jonny]

rust is not conductive when the water drys up it will work sweet as, but if there is any impurities like salts in the water that are conductive that's when you have a problem.

but rust is pours in nature and can retain water and act conductive if it is damp.

there is not really much in that corner of the pcb that would really get damaged from a little bit of water and cause it to not work.

it looks like is has evaporated and the rust has stuck to the pcb, I doubt the pcb its self has been drenched.