Rain + Computer

Starcross

My computer sits next to window and recently got covered in rain. The back of the screen and the keyboard were soaked. Will waiting a couple of days for them to try out be enough or are they going to be ruined by this?

Movitz

Dunno about the monitor but I've spilled my share of soda/coffee into keyboards in my days. It's usually ok to just open the keyboard and leave it on a towel until dry. Hairdryers are recommended for speeding up the process. This probably goes for the monitor as well.

The key here is to open up as much of the stuff as you dare. Water can stay for weeks in small crevices due to surface tension and whatnot and then when the keyboard is plugged in it shorts out. This happened to me on a weird HP-keyboard with layers of plastic inside instead of a circuit board.

Crashtard

This should probably be the point where someone says do NOT open up the case of your monitor unless you know what you're doing.

Casual

As Movitz said the keyboard should be a simple matter the monitor however I would leave it in a warm dry place for at least a week to really be sure and even then its up to you if you want to risk it.

Black Ice

I've salvaged a cell phone (that went through a washer and a pool and it still works to this day) and a Game Boy Color by simply doing this: put the electronic under a fluorescent light for a few days.

Also, can't you buy USB keyboards for $2?

Movitz

Black Ice wrote: »

I've salvaged a cell phone (that went through a washer and a pool and it still works to this day) and a Game Boy Color by simply doing this: put the electronic under a fluorescent light for a few days.

Also, can't you buy USB keyboards for $2?

Out of curiosity. What's the rationale for this?

Black Ice

I'm not quite sure. When the GBC was left out in the rain all night I called the Nintendo customer support line on battery cover and the guy told me to do it. And it worked.

Movitz

My mad google skillz yields nothing on the fluorescent light. It remains one of life's mysteries I guess.

Anyway, we really shouldn't derail the thread more. Starcross, let us know what happens to your stuff. It's good to know for future spillage.

BlochWave

Electronics = stuff that isn't intrinsically destroyed by water. It's when you turn them on and the water, which has a nasty habit of being conductive, conducts current all over the place. All over the place is normally not the preferred destination of electric current in well designed devices, of course.

If you can dry it out, it'll probably be fine, but you won't know it's totally dry until you turn it on and it doesn't snap, hiss, and die. The keyboard's probably no problem, obviously whoever builds those things in the modern day probably has planned for the possibility of someone spilling their crap all over it. You can try popping the keys off, toweling off the excess moisture, and letting it sit.

The monitor is trickier, I'm not sure you can open LCDs in any useful way and you shouldn't open a CRT(well, you shouldn't jack with a TV's CRT, I dunno why it'd be different for a monitor)

I really even couldn't guess how long you'd need it to sit to dry sufficiently, but put it in a dry place and pray

As for the fluorescent light mystery, if you get electronics like a cell phone or gameboy wet, you can save them by removing the battery (turning it off won't be enough, you need to completely break the circuit)then you just wait until they dry out, similar advice to above. Advice for this ranges from setting the components in a bag of rice to absorb liquid or just placing it on top of a CRT TV, which generates a gentle amount of heat. You don't wanna set them next to an incandescent light because you don't want to expose wet electronics to too much heat for the same reasons you don't wanna expose dry electronics to too much heat. Fluorescent lights provide a non threatening amount of heat

Starcross

I took the keyboard apart to dry and it's working fine now (although i accidentally swapped the i and o keys around). I've left the monitor in the airing cupboard and will wait a couple of days before trying it.

Midshipman

It would be hard to apply it properly to something as large as a monitor, but alcohol can be used to help dry out wet electronics. Stuff like 91% isopropyl (rubbing alcohol) is pretty easy to get a hold of. High percentage ethanol denatured with methanol is even better, but you have to be careful what ingredients are used to denature it, some of them might not be compatible with the plastics in your electronics. For smaller devices like a cell phone you immerse it in the alcohol and then after you remove it and the alcohol evaporates, it takes most of the water with it.