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I pulled my Z50 out of storage and was most dismayed to find that it wouldn't power up. Charge light on, but no response from the power button. A quick check of the underside revealed an ominous battery cover, and sure enough, there were the 2x AA cell backup batteries I'd forgotten about
Tool time
Following the HMM, strip down was straightforward, with just a few unmentioned plastic clips thwarting access and/or waiting to snap. I cleaned the offending crust off with many targeted small applications of lemon juice, reassembled, and it worked
Took some photos along the way, of course, as I know how forum members like a good disassembly thread...First step, a quick check of the underside. The large cover, er, covers two slots - the upper one is for a RAM card (not present), the lower slot is populated with a ROM card for WinCE and preloaded applications. (Those of you familiar with the launch WinCE models like the Cassiopeia, Philips Velo, Compaq C120 etc. might remember swapping out ROM cards for the upgrade from WinCE 1.0 to 2.0. after about a year) In truth, neither the RAM nor ROM cards would need to be removed to enable the strip-down, they are safer in situ perhaps. The system board RAM is visible under the RAM card slot, obviously suggesting that base RAM of 32MB would have been possible with all four RAM chip locations populated.
After undoing some - but not all - of the visible case screws, the machine could be turned over and the keyboard removed.
The keyboard has a lovely positive feel to it, very much like the X2x or X3x series, and a real TrackPoint taking the 1990's 'big square peg' style of cap. This one came to me with a later inverted dome cap, rather than the original cat's tongue. The bigger cap seems to emphasise the diminutive dimensions. I found the blank plate underneath the keyboard a little shocking, expecting the usual busy 'stuff'; my first thought was of the huge screen bezel on the old 360C with a postcard-sized 8" TFT lost in the middle...
Turn the machine over again, and with the remaining lower case screws removed (including two at the rear and tiny ones around the parallel and VGA ports) the lower cover could be removed by working round progressively with a pry tool - and remember to unplug the small cable. Watch out for the first pair of stubborn undocumented clips as circled, holding the lower cover firmly and hidden in the battery compartment:
Those tiny port screws and tight clearance prompted me to pick up my PH0 screwdriver for the first time in ages... a PH1 is pretty much the only screwdriver needed for all 1990's and 2000's models. You'd despair at the screwdriver I've used for all my ThinkPad repairs for the last 20+ years before I treated myself to a couple of sets of Wiha drivers last year
Oh, but the Wiha's are lovely, and black with red accents too, and the precision drivers have their very own 'TrackPoint' red disc on the end... 
Anyhow, lower surface of system board fully revealed. It is just one big board filling the case. Note the NEC VR4121 (MIPS R4400) CPU next to the ROM/RAM slots. The PCMCIA and CF cradles are obvious on either side, and yes, at the bottom there is a ThinkPad-style docking connector... what exactly does that connect with?!
Remove three screws around the PCMCIA cradle, two ribbon cables to detach, and unplug the three cable connectors - red/black modem next to grey/black screen power under the white tape, then the red/black lid latch sensor. Now the other two very stubborn undocumented clips frustrate the removal of the system board, but again a careful pry with a non-conductive tool should ease the board past them:
You should now be looking at the underside of the blank plastic cover under the keyboard. The shiny bit in the middle is the display panel, the large ribbon cable top right is the display signal cable, the smaller ribbon cable top left is for the information LEDs and switches that live just under the screen. Further blue corrosion is visible, but this is just contamination of the foam pads which ensure correct placement of the sprung backup battery connectors on the system board, and can be cleaned off easily.
I flipped the system board over to get a good look at the corroded backup battery clips, resting it on the lower cover since I'd forgotten to lay out my ESD mat in all the excitement to get started. The two big red circles are the microswitches under the TrackPoint buttons:
Actually not as bad as I had feared. Time to start cleaning. I used plain old lemon juice from the kitchen cupboard, applied using a combination of cotton wool buds (apparently "Q tips" in the colonies
) soaked in a small dish of lemon juice, or a fine 2.5ml pipette used to drip a more targeted amount in stubborn areas. Wipe all resulting solution away before it dries, e.g. with more cotton wool buds or paper towel.
Whilst it doesn't undo corrosion of the metal, it does lift the hard crust of battery leakage with next to no abrasion, digging, or prying. This is the battery terminal connector from in the case (right hand side in the first photo) entirely liberated and cleaned by lemon juice, before I then scrubbed it with fine wire wool to remove the surface oxidation:
Re-assembly was straightforward, backing through the HMM steps. The only gotcha was with the rounded cover that provides the inner surface of the main battery tray - the two thin metal tabs on this have to be slotted under the plastic of the upper case, whereas they want to sit over the plastic. With a slight bend the tabs could be angled to easily slot under the plastic as you rotate the piece into place. If you are subsequently screwing down onto silver metal tabs you've got it wrong, onto black plastic and you've got it right:
Apply power, press the button, and hey presto:
I do like that the 'Rapid Access' tool has the ThinkPad utility icon, although its function is extremely basic. As you can see, it's a DSTN screen - the four clear/white buttons to the right of the display are up/down controls for brightness and contrast. I couldn't work out whether it had a comet cursor (remember those?!) enabled by default, or if it was just the slow refresh rate of the DSTN. Actually, the whole machine chunters along at a leisurely pace, but it gets the job done.
Here's a quick tour of the outside...
Note the two buttons next to the power LED - all three of these are visible and accessible whether the lid is open or closed, a nice design touch. Left button dismisses alarms or notifications (e.g. calendar reminders), right button starts an audio recorder (regardless of whether the machine is on or in sleep mode). Contemporary reviews praised this latter feature, although history suggests that it perhaps only appealed to journalists since it never went mainstream!
Case latch at front:
Left side of case houses modem connector, audio jacks, and type II PCMCIA slot. Note the slim blank that looks like it might have been intended for a smart card slot (but no gubbins inside of course) :
Rear houses power, main battery lock, main battery release, and Kensington socket:
Right side houses VGA (under flap, capable of 800x600), CompactFlash type I (so too thin for a MicroDrive), IRDA, and micro connector for the included parallel cable (under flap):
Enjoy!
But anyway, it needed to be stripped to be cleaned up properly after the corroded battery.