You've talked me out of it...for now.
I realized the case is physically pristine minus a little yellowing.

I would feel better working on a dead SE or other. Just something I could %100 affirm as dead.

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Good. Recognising that you don't have the soldering skills to perform a repair is a responsible attitude. If you want to learn how to solder, there are loads of good links out there.

Learn to solder by making up a cable. Join two wires together, without overheating the adjacent heat shrink insulator or burning the plastic sheath. Add wires to a big D connector, with lovely tear drops of solder. Then learn how to de-solder. Buy a working 20 year old transistor radio from a second hand shop, and remove a beefy resistor or similar. Solder it back in again and confirm that the radio still works...

But I cannot find anything wrong visually with the chips.

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Most electronic failures, even on 25 year old computers, are invisible to the human eye. Occasionally, you can spot a blown resistor under an optical magnifier. But if the observation requires a magnifier, few of us have the skill and equipment to conduct a repair.