Water and computers

[lnp]

So, this might sound really dumb, but this morning there was an incident where a glass of water got knocked over and while my desktop sitting under that desk avoided being drenched, there is the potential that a few drops got in the case. Fortunately the computer was off at the time and if any moisture got in there, it was minimal and all of my important data is backed up.

So, after rapidly getting a towel and mopping up everything and turning off any power strips, etc. I opened up the case and didn't immediately see any water or drops in there. However, just to be safe, I put the desktop on top of my desk, turned on all the fans in my room to face it and left it open (and off) to let any water which might have gotten in there dry over the nine hours that I'll be at school.

I suppose I decided to post for a few reasons:
1. The only way for me to stay awake during lecture is to check blogs, these forums, etc.
2. To ask if this all I should do to make sure that when I reconnect the case to power and turn it on, my machine won't fry? (Though it will accelerate my need to upgrade :D)
3. To remind everyone, as temperatures increase around Tucson, to watch your computers around water.

[fischerm]

Just let the thing dry out for a good 6-8 hours and you should be fine. Resist the urge to use a hair dryer to speed the evaporation process :) A faculty at my last job did that and melted a bunch of things...

[trees]

I concur exactly with Mark. Unless you have water that is sooooo hard it leaves a conductive residue behind after evaporating (very unlikely), just letting it dry by itself is the thing to do. There is not much in a computer that can be damaged by just plain water. Some machines have paper-cone speakers that might tighten up a bit when drying, but that's about it. Even dousing a hard drive should have no effect, as all the mechanical parts are inside a sealed case. Perhaps a CD or floppy drive could have problems, but, again, not unless the water leaves a pretty awesome residue behind.
If you take a look around the web you'll see lots of references to immersing PCs in oil. Distilled water will also work fine. i would imagine that even "almost" distilled would work OK. And that's with the fluid present, not evaporated

[powellm]

Problem is, as soon as that distilled water gets dirty it will start to conduct (pure H2O is not a conductor, trippy, huh?).

[lnp]

Problem is, as soon as that distilled water gets dirty it will start to conduct (pure H2O is not a conductor, trippy, huh?).

I love chemistry trivia...Thanks for the tips.

[jharriso]

Another thing to do, if you're feeling OCD, is to go over everything with Q-tips and rubbing alcohol. I've done that for laptop components that were accidentally drenched in Pepsi by one of my clients.

[trees]

OK, then!
Here's what we need to do-
Get a decent sized aquarium, super clean it, and fill it with distilled water.
Construct a PC with appropriate cabling so that we can immerse the logic board into the aquarium. Clean the board super-clean also.
Then, we will immerse the board repeatedly whilst slightly raising the salinity between dippings.
We will determine the exact salinity needed to render the board useless. (Well, more useless than usual)
It will make a great web site, thus creating even more exposure for OSCR!
Get Kate to give you the OK!

Trees

[begay]

I don't think a Darwin Award would be good press for OSCR......

[dparm]

So Tom, by using the words "logic board", did you just agree to dunk a precious Mac in water? ;-)

[lnp]

Well, just for the record, the desktop is doing a-ok. And if OSCR really does do the salinity experiment, that would be way cool.

But maybe that's actually a really hip idea: extreme technology demonstrations each semester. Do it live, create a website for it, etc.

The reason I think of it is because I'm going to be starting a med student tech video blog which is trying to get med students (really any health professional) excited about using technology in their professional lives. Anyway, I've found that its sometimes kind of hard to get the general public fired up about tech and so I'm looking for a bit that might work...

[dparm]

That's a really cool idea, actually. Maybe a good way to kick off the semester at the Help Desk?

[lnp]

Darn. All my good ideas only come to me when I leave. Stupid graduating.