Thinkpads Forum

My cat puked overnight on the left lower portion of my T60 keyboard while the T60 was on standby mode, wet, liquidy puke no less, I cleaned up the keys by taking them off and cleaned off underneath as well.

Unfortunately it appear the liquid seeped under the keyboard assembly to the inside of the chassis, the laptop initially showed the "1" indicator light that is within a triangle like outline but won't do anything and displayed absolutely no graphics on the LCD at all, now the laptop won't even power up, in fact it shows no indicator lights and no displays on the LCD what-so-ever even when I plug in the A/C adaptor, it's completely dead.

At the risk of "long-distance" diagonstics, is there a fuse within the laptop I can check?

How likely is the motherboard toast?

My work T60 is exactly the same type (8744-5BU), would the work T60 power up if I plug in the hard drive from my home T60? As I would like to use the work T60 to retrieve the files off the home T60 hard drive if this is possible.

Thanks very much in advance for any advice anyone can provide.

And please, no get rid of the cat suggetion, he's been a great companion for 16 years, he's family!

I'm now looking at buying another "ThinkPad", probably the T400 or T500.......

Yes, I think your hard drive should boot in the other machine. I recently upgraded to a T60 and the hard drive out of my R60e booted right up in the T60.

Scott

I have repaired puked on laptops before (strange accident with myself) and what I ended up doing was stripping it down to the motherboard, washing it off under the tap and leaving it to dry for a couple of weeks. It worked after that, just like it did before, and it sat for 30 minutes turned on crackling and popping. If you are feeling brave try that. If they are the same type, the hard drive should boot no problem.

Jack

Ps. Keep the cat, get a)accidental protection, or put it in a plastic bag overnight.

craigmontHunter wrote:I have repaired puked on laptops before (strange accident with myself) and what I ended up doing was stripping it down to the motherboard, washing it off under the tap and leaving it to dry for a couple of weeks. It worked after that, just like it did before, and it sat for 30 minutes turned on crackling and popping. If you are feeling brave try that. If they are the same type, the hard drive should boot no problem.

I guess I can give it a try, can't be much worse than now.....

Ps. Keep the cat, get a)accidental protection, or put it in a plastic bag overnight.

I can't bear the thought of putting the cat in the plastic bag overnight!

That's too bad - given how easy it is to pull the keyboard, I'd certainly do that first and clean the keyboard. And you'll be able to see what happened underneath, if anything.

I'll give you my "misery loves company" story by mentioning that my newest cat has recently shredded both of my speakers ($16K per pair) after I'd kept them absolutely pristeen for nearly 13 years.

Art

ArtShapiro wrote:I'll give you my "misery loves company" story by mentioning that my newest cat has recently shredded both of my speakers ($16K per pair) after I'd kept them absolutely pristeen for nearly 13 years.

Electrostatic speakers?

aviography wrote:Electrostatic speakers?

No, I believe the logical follow-on question would be: "Declawed cat?" (not that I'm advocating having this done; both of ours are still "fully loaded" but have been trained to use the cat stand when the mood strikes - more or less 100% of the time )

Keeping the Cat in the bag would solve your problem, but I was thinking about the computer.

That cat's sure getting a lot of attention!

Who's the star? The cat or the Thinkpad

aviography wrote:Electrostatic speakers?

Negative - ESP Concert Grands. (Big 250 pound pentagonal seas of grill cloth). Had 'em protected with cylinders of posterboard. Unfortunately, Giovanni, the new cat, is a monster and easily stretches over the posterboard. Oh well.

The only time I've had a Thinkpad harmed by a cat is when Milo walked across my T42's keyboard at just the right angle and broke off the Home key - fractured the little white gismos that hold the key to the keyboard. Wasn't enough of an issue to replace the keyboard. That T42 (that folks may remember that I ran over with the car!) has been out on loan to a Forum member for an extended period of time, and thus is out of my daily consciousness.

Art

ArtShapiro wrote:Negative - ESP Concert Grands. (Big 250 pound pentagonal seas of grill cloth). Art

Simple solution - exchange the speakers for "woofers"....they'll keep the cat away

Thanks for those who chimed in, I was able to boot up my hard drive in the work T60, some minor confusion by the system on the finger print reader etc. but I am up and running, and will be downloading the data files over the next day or so.

Funny thing looking back, a couple of days ago this same cat likely hit the Fn key mid day when the laptop was on standby mode, this caused it to power up with all the applications running in the background, including Outlook!

I could not figure out why some emails were there on my web mail server for a few hours and they all of a sudden disappeared......., until I figured out that the laptop probably got turned on by the cat and Outlook was happily downloading emails from my web mail server as it is suppose to do, and sure enought it was on and sitting in the log-in screen when I got home.

THAT, should have been my first hint to lower the LCD cover all the way down when I'm done using it, and put a plastic cover over the laptop!

ESP Concert Grands.

did not realize there were any high end audio people on here

those "SI" version of those speakers are 90db SPL, enabling you to get into the highest of the high end (ie: directly heated singled ended triodes) as long as you like soft music!

wild_bill wrote: did not realize there were any high end audio people on here

those "SI" version of those speakers are 90db SPL, enabling you to get into the highest of the high end (ie: directly heated singled ended triodes) as long as you like soft music!

I'm a reviewer with Positive Feedback Online. But I don't want to usurp this thread. I'll say that I use the polar opposite of Single Ended Triodes: Manley Neo 250 monoblocks. Needless to say, they're not stressed very much!

Art

craigmontHunter wrote:
Ps. Keep the cat, get a)accidental protection, or put it in a plastic bag overnight.

i would not use a plastic bag, the cat won't like it at all.. !

the bird, however, thinks the bag is ideal for the cat..

also, wash the puke off the system board, after rinsing with water rinse with alcohol to chase any remaining water and that might just do it..

also, check ebay for replacement system boards..

BillMorrow wrote:also, wash the puke off the system board, after rinsing with water rinse with alcohol to chase any remaining water and that might just do it..

What I did find out while cleaning/disinfecting the circuit board of the keyboard, is that those light blue color flexiable rubber material switches under the keys must use a glue that is not immune to alcohol......, a couple of them popped off the circuit board, but they seem to stick back down "reasonably" well.

However I have no way of knowing if these couple of keys are working since the laptop was dead after I cleaned the keyboard.

I will make time tomorrow to take the system board out to clean it.

Laptop was ON when the cat poured dilute battery acid into it. (That's what stomach puke is, more or less.)

Internal batteries were still connected (BIOS battery at least) when you were cleaning it, too?

Prognosis isn't good, the first thing you do with liquid damages and cleaning fluids in a computer, is to remove ALL POWER including the internal batteries, because power plus electrolyte (mmm, battery acid, great!) tends to displace metal and if you displace even a little bit from inside electronics? They tend to stop working, forever.

But, maybe you'll luck out. Or maybe the cat will get it's point acrosss, and you'll throw out those computers?

Well, a bit of a happy update.

Spent a couple of hours this morning taking apart the T60, there was definitely some "stuff" that got to the underside of the main system board, and signs of deposit around some of the surface mount components.

I wiped off the mess with paper towel and water, then scrubbed the area with isopropyl alcohol and a toothbrush, then let it dry.

It didn't look promising initially as it powered up partially into the XP operating system and I actually got the desktop and everything, but then died when I tried to run a program, so I disconnected the A/C adaptor and battery pack then tried again, this time it died partially into booting up XP.......

I then made a bootable CD with PC-Doctor on it as was suggested by a friend, then ran the test with this CD without the hard drive installed, it passed everything!

The harddrive was then re-installed and the system came up fully, as I'm typing this message right now on this "previoulsy puked on by a cat" laptop, everything seems to be working for now.

These ThinkPads are tough!

Time will tell if this is short lived, but it looks promising.

Good luck - I found that once it was working, it stayed working. I have also found out that letting people know what happened to it is a great deterrent from anyone doing anything with it (setting passwords...)

Jack.

aviography wrote:Well, a bit of a happy update.

Well, how 'bout a picture of little Pukie? After all the grief and worry he (she?) caused, it would be nice to have a face and tail behind the saga.

Art

These were taken a couple of years ago, he's thinned out a great deal, old age is catching up with him ........