Help: T40p water damage

[atlacatl]

Hello,

Today is sad day. My son spilled half a liter of water on my T40p's keyboard. I tried the usual: tilted, drained the water, removed keyboard, let it dry.

It's been 12 hours now...I put it back together and turned it on. The fan of the computer powers on, but nothing else.

Is there any hope?

BTW, how much does a motherboard cost for this machine? I'm just out of the warranty, too.

[jdhurst]

You don't say if it was running when the water hit it. If so, water can easily cause circuits to fry.

If not, perhaps it was not really dry (a number of posts here suggests drying in a warm {not hot} oven at very, very low heat for a number of hours). You can only hope on the latter, because, if it was not really dry, and then you powered up, it would be the same as the first paragraph. ... JDH

[atlacatl]

You don't say if it was running when the water hit it. If so, water can easily cause circuits to fry.

If not, perhaps it was not really dry (a number of posts here suggests drying in a warm {not hot} oven at very, very low heat for a number of hours). You can only hope on the latter, because, if it was not really dry, and then you powered up, it would be the same as the first paragraph. ... JDH

Ah yes. The computer was on, and it kept running while the water was dripping. Of course, I immediately turned it off to dry it.

I will give it another day to fully dry and try again. But I doubt it will make any difference. As you said, if there was any water in there after I turned it on, the damage is already done.

[richk]

Before you dry it in an oven, you must remove the motherboard from the case.

[Johan]

<snip> My son spilled half a liter of water on my T40p's keyboard. I tried the usual: tilted, drained the water, removed keyboard, let it dry.

It's been 12 hours now...I put it back together and turned it on. The fan of the computer powers on, but nothing else.

Is there any hope?

See the thread T42 HW damage - a happy end there, and that was even with a liquid "worse" than yours!

Try search this forum for the term "spilled" and see how very many hits comes up.... and how many ended succesfully!

Best regards,

Johan

[atlacatl]

<snip> My son spilled half a liter of water on my T40p's keyboard. I tried the usual: tilted, drained the water, removed keyboard, let it dry.

It's been 12 hours now...I put it back together and turned it on. The fan of the computer powers on, but nothing else.

Is there any hope?

See the thread T42 HW damage - a happy end there, and that was even with a liquid "worse" than yours!

I'll give it a try and cross my fingers...

[sjthinkpader]

Daughter's friend split coffee on an A22m a while back. She called and I had her removed the battery immediately.

I cleaned the MB with spray PCB cleaner and let it dry in the sun for a few hours. It worked fine after assembly and still working to this day.

[atlacatl]

I'm feeling cautiously positive here...I'll post results--whatever they are.

[Jax184]

I've repaired several IBMs that got soaked. A T23 and T40 that got doused with beer, and a T21 that encountered sea water (!)
Two of the machines were running when they got wet. The idiot owner of one even left the thing running overnight with beer in it, and brought it to me the next morning with burnt beer sludge in the power regulation secton.

In all three cases I took the machines completely apart and cleaned the motherboard with distilled water and 99% isopropyl alcohol. The water dissolved sugars and stuff that alcohol won't, but that's not really needed if it was only water that got spilled.
Once I was sure everything was dry, I put it all back together. All three machines are still running to this day.