Extreme electronics repair

[David Nebenzahl]

A short tale of taking extreme measures to try to fix electronic gear.
"N_Cook" oughta especially appreciate this.

So I found this receiver in the dumpster where I live--Aiwa
"home-entertainment"-type of unit, meaning probably medium-fi for people
whose idea of good sound is lots of thumping bass: has presets for
"dance", "rock", "pop", "hall", "arena", etc., etc.

Plugged it in and the display lit up with "AM 12:00", but no response
from any controls. OK, time to open it up.

Inside, everything--every circuit board and component--was covered with
a fine light-brown powder, with a couple of leaves here and there.
Evidently, the whole thing had been submerged in muddy water at some point.

Hmmm, what to do? Got $0.00 in it so far. So I did the only reasonable
thing: drug it outside, hooked up the hose, and sprayed it liberally
with clear water. Got all the mud out, so far as I could tell.

I took it inside, let it dry for 2 days. Today, I powered it up, and
whaddya know? It responded to the "power/standby" switch. Heard the
relay click and everything. Responded to every function. Even the tuner
appeared to work.

Of course, the downside is that the damn thing doesn't work. No sound;
obviously some serious problems there somewhere. And the tuner wouldn't
lock onto any signals. But I was surprised that so much of it functioned
normally. I expected the display to be toast, or the logic completely blown.

So I'm just sayin', if you ever encounter a piece of equipment that's
been in a flood, and if you need to get at least part of it working for
some reason, you could try this method.

At this point, it's not worth my time or effort to attempt any further
repairs on this unit. But at least it was fun.

--
Made From Pears: Pretty good chance that the product is at least
mostly pears.
Made With Pears: Pretty good chance that pears will be detectable in
the product.
Contains Pears: One pear seed per multiple tons of product.

(with apologies to Dorothy L. Sayers)

 

On Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:53:49 -0800, David Nebenzahl
<nobody@but.us.chickens> wrote:

A short tale of taking extreme measures to try to fix electronic gear.
"N_Cook" oughta especially appreciate this.

So I found this receiver in the dumpster where I live--Aiwa
"home-entertainment"-type of unit, meaning probably medium-fi for people
whose idea of good sound is lots of thumping bass: has presets for
"dance", "rock", "pop", "hall", "arena", etc., etc.

Plugged it in and the display lit up with "AM 12:00", but no response
from any controls. OK, time to open it up.

Inside, everything--every circuit board and component--was covered with
a fine light-brown powder, with a couple of leaves here and there.
Evidently, the whole thing had been submerged in muddy water at some point.

Hmmm, what to do? Got $0.00 in it so far. So I did the only reasonable
thing: drug it outside, hooked up the hose, and sprayed it liberally
with clear water. Got all the mud out, so far as I could tell.

I took it inside, let it dry for 2 days. Today, I powered it up, and
whaddya know? It responded to the "power/standby" switch. Heard the
relay click and everything. Responded to every function. Even the tuner
appeared to work.

Of course, the downside is that the damn thing doesn't work. No sound;
obviously some serious problems there somewhere. And the tuner wouldn't
lock onto any signals. But I was surprised that so much of it functioned
normally. I expected the display to be toast, or the logic completely blown.

So I'm just sayin', if you ever encounter a piece of equipment that's
been in a flood, and if you need to get at least part of it working for
some reason, you could try this method.

At this point, it's not worth my time or effort to attempt any further
repairs on this unit. But at least it was fun.

Been there, done that.

Long ago, in a time when a Motorola Motrac was current two-way mobile
radio technology. I was given two VHF (130-175MHz) units that had
been in a truck that went into a river.

I used a toothbrush and water to clean the circuit boards and even
cleaned the mud out of the front end cavities. Since the radios were
without the control heads, I built a nice one with both pulse and tone
dialing built-in. Eventually I had a very good 2 meter mobile ham
radio.

It's been a long time since my ham gear was commercial
state-of-the-art ;-)

John

 

[GregS]

In article <49d2baec$0$29736$822641b3@news.adtechcomputers.com>, David Nebenzahl <nobody@but.us.chickens> wrote:

A short tale of taking extreme measures to try to fix electronic gear.
"N_Cook" oughta especially appreciate this.

So I found this receiver in the dumpster where I live--Aiwa
"home-entertainment"-type of unit, meaning probably medium-fi for people
whose idea of good sound is lots of thumping bass: has presets for
"dance", "rock", "pop", "hall", "arena", etc., etc.

Plugged it in and the display lit up with "AM 12:00", but no response
from any controls. OK, time to open it up.

Give it more time. Set it out in the sun.

greg

 

On Mar 31, 9:53 pm, David Nebenzahl <nob...@but.us.chickens> wrote:

Hmmm, what to do? Got $0.00 in it so far. So I did the only reasonable
thing: drug it outside, hooked up the hose, and sprayed it liberally
with clear water. Got all the mud out, so far as I could tell.

I used to do that with arcade game logic boards. I'd buy them off
operators (they were older boards that were removed when the game was
converted into a newer game) by the pile. The ones that were really
grubby I'd take outside with a bucket of soapy water and a scrub brush
and clean 'em up. Rinse off with the hose and let 'em sit out in the
sun all day to dry off. I've even heard of guys putting them in a
dishwasher with the heated dry cycle off.

 

[GregS]

In article <49d4f490$0$29741$822641b3@news.adtechcomputers.com>, David Nebenzahl <nobody@but.us.chickens> wrote:

On 4/1/2009 9:45 AM boardjunkie@techie.com spake thus:

On Mar 31, 9:53 pm, David Nebenzahl <nob...@but.us.chickens> wrote:
Hmmm, what to do? Got $0.00 in it so far. So I did the only reasonable
thing: drug it outside, hooked up the hose, and sprayed it liberally
with clear water. Got all the mud out, so far as I could tell.

I used to do that with arcade game logic boards. I'd buy them off
operators (they were older boards that were removed when the game was
converted into a newer game) by the pile. The ones that were really
grubby I'd take outside with a bucket of soapy water and a scrub brush
and clean 'em up. Rinse off with the hose and let 'em sit out in the
sun all day to dry off. I've even heard of guys putting them in a
dishwasher with the heated dry cycle off.

You left out the part where you said "... and they worked fine after this."

Or did they?

I remember in 1969, was working at DEC in the the data communication/ display
department. One other fellow was assigned a new crt display forerunner of the computer
monitor. Any way, he had trouble with some boards and you would be seeing
him in the mens room washing off boards. They worked better then than
whatever he was using. We usually used a trichlorethelene spigot
to clean boards.

greg

 

[David Nebenzahl]

On 4/1/2009 9:45 AM boardjunkie@techie.com spake thus:

On Mar 31, 9:53 pm, David Nebenzahl <nob...@but.us.chickens> wrote:
Hmmm, what to do? Got $0.00 in it so far. So I did the only reasonable
thing: drug it outside, hooked up the hose, and sprayed it liberally
with clear water. Got all the mud out, so far as I could tell.

I used to do that with arcade game logic boards. I'd buy them off
operators (they were older boards that were removed when the game was
converted into a newer game) by the pile. The ones that were really
grubby I'd take outside with a bucket of soapy water and a scrub brush
and clean 'em up. Rinse off with the hose and let 'em sit out in the
sun all day to dry off. I've even heard of guys putting them in a
dishwasher with the heated dry cycle off.

You left out the part where you said "... and they worked fine after this."

Or did they?


--
Made From Pears: Pretty good chance that the product is at least
mostly pears.
Made With Pears: Pretty good chance that pears will be detectable in
the product.
Contains Pears: One pear seed per multiple tons of product.

(with apologies to Dorothy L. Sayers)

 

On Apr 2, 2:24 pm, David Nebenzahl <nob...@but.us.chickens> wrote:

You left out the part where you said "... and they worked fine after this.."

Or did they?

Why wouldn't they? The ones that didn't need repair to begin with
fired right up and as far as I know are still operate to this day.

 

[WW]

"David Nebenzahl" <nobody@but.us.chickens> wrote in message
news:49d2baec$0$29736$822641b3@news.adtechcomputers.com...

A short tale of taking extreme measures to try to fix electronic gear.
"N_Cook" oughta especially appreciate this.

So I found this receiver in the dumpster where I live--Aiwa
"home-entertainment"-type of unit, meaning probably medium-fi for people
whose idea of good sound is lots of thumping bass: has presets for
"dance", "rock", "pop", "hall", "arena", etc., etc.

Plugged it in and the display lit up with "AM 12:00", but no response from
any controls. OK, time to open it up.

Inside, everything--every circuit board and component--was covered with a
fine light-brown powder, with a couple of leaves here and there.
Evidently, the whole thing had been submerged in muddy water at some
point.

Hmmm, what to do? Got $0.00 in it so far. So I did the only reasonable
thing: drug it outside, hooked up the hose, and sprayed it liberally with
clear water. Got all the mud out, so far as I could tell.

I took it inside, let it dry for 2 days. Today, I powered it up, and
whaddya know? It responded to the "power/standby" switch. Heard the relay
click and everything. Responded to every function. Even the tuner appeared
to work.

Of course, the downside is that the damn thing doesn't work. No sound;
obviously some serious problems there somewhere. And the tuner wouldn't
lock onto any signals. But I was surprised that so much of it functioned
normally. I expected the display to be toast, or the logic completely
blown.

So I'm just sayin', if you ever encounter a piece of equipment that's been
in a flood, and if you need to get at least part of it working for some
reason, you could try this method.

At this point, it's not worth my time or effort to attempt any further
repairs on this unit. But at least it was fun.

Snip

!n the 40's D&RG rail road used car radios in their private cars. The soot
from coal fired engines was so bad I could not read the parts. Dunked entire
radio chassis in a 5 gallon bucket of carbon tetrachloride. They came out
spotless. Dried quick. Never seemed to hurt any thing. Also on home radios
used carbon tetrachloride in a squirt can to kill cockroaches before
removing the back covers. WW

 

[David Nebenzahl]

On 4/3/2009 6:20 AM boardjunkie@techie.com spake thus:

On Apr 2, 2:24 pm, David Nebenzahl <nob...@but.us.chickens> wrote:

You left out the part where you said "... and they worked fine after this."

Or did they?

Why wouldn't they?

Because soap and water can damage electronic components?

The ones that didn't need repair to begin with fired right up and as
far as I know are still operate to this day.

OK, but you didn't say that, so I wouldn't have assumed that.


--
Made From Pears: Pretty good chance that the product is at least
mostly pears.
Made With Pears: Pretty good chance that pears will be detectable in
the product.
Contains Pears: One pear seed per multiple tons of product.

(with apologies to Dorothy L. Sayers)

 

On Apr 3, 3:05 pm, David Nebenzahl <nob...@but.us.chickens> wrote:

Why wouldn't they?

Because soap and water can damage electronic components?

Not likely. The most chance for damage is if you pwr up the pcb

without drying it out *all the way*. Now taking a transformer to the
car wash I'd be hesitant to do.

 

[William R. Walsh]

Hi!

Plugged it in and the display lit up with "AM 12:00", but no response
from any controls. OK, time to open it up.

I took it inside, let it dry for 2 days. Today, I powered it up, and
whaddya know? It responded to the "power/standby" switch.

Of course, the downside is that the damn thing doesn't work.

It's a good start. But now you need to figure out why there is no sound if
you want the "extreme" title or close to. Your odds of getting it back
to 100% are very good if it was without power when this calamity struck.

I had a massive flood in my own basement back in 2004, where I had my entire
computer "lab". Well, two things that were down there had notable stories
behind their recovery. The first was a PS/2 Model 85, which for various
(mostly sentimental) reasons, I was not going to let go...at least not
easily.

I started by throwing the whole mess into the dishwasher, just to get the
muck off the boards. And then I slapped it together on the kitchen table:

http://greyghost.mooo.com/temp-blog-imgs/big850XF.jpg (1024x768, 133KB)

You can see the level of muck by looking at the power supply I had to use
for the initial test. This machine is still running to this day.

But the big one was the HP OfficeJet 500. I wasn't going to repair it, I
really wasn't. It had suffered badly and the only promising thing it did
after the most cursory of examinations was to power on. It was Not Happy. I
used it as a fax machine, because it had two invaluable features--all the
faxes could go to the PC for later perusal (and trashing of the obvious
garbage) and it supported distinctive ringing service. I needed both of
these features.

Windows 2000 and XP don't support distinctive ringing. The multifunction
devices I found to try and replace the OfficeJet all treated faxing as
though it were only a last minute add-on. Not *one* could save a fax to the
computer without printing it, and I tried a lot of them.

So I went back to the OfficeJet 500, still sitting in a sad looking pile on
the floor, where I had placed it. I dragged it up to the kitchen table and
lit into it, pulling off plastic trim, cleaning muck out of everything. I
repaired the phone line circuitry (fried by being underwater) with a second
unit as a known working reference. It took at least two hours to get it all
cleaned out. Finally it was time for the test.

Keep in mind that the unit had been underwater for several days, without
power for months and was not at all happy when I powered it up after letting
it dry out.

With a new ink cartridge in place and all the muck cleaned out, the unit
came right back to life and printed out three faxes it had received before
going under. Astounded wasn't the word.

That was five years ago. It's still going to this day.

William

 

[isw]

In article
<0d4fb663-88c9-4097-b999-a1aeb76bd7ac@q9g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>,
boardjunkie@techie.com wrote:

On Apr 3, 3:05 pm, David Nebenzahl <nob...@but.us.chickens> wrote:
Why wouldn't they?

Because soap and water can damage electronic components?

Not likely. The most chance for damage is if you pwr up the pcb
without drying it out *all the way*. Now taking a transformer to the
car wash I'd be hesitant to do.

Back when all Tektronix 'scopes weighed a ton and used nothing but
tubes, the first thing that happened when one got sent in for repair was
that the side panels got popped off and the whole thing got a good
dunk-and-slosh in hot soapy water, followed by a rinse and a trip
through the hot air drying oven.

Only then did a tech take a look at it.

Isaac

 

[David Brodbeck]

boardjunkie@techie.com wrote:

I used to do that with arcade game logic boards. I'd buy them off
operators (they were older boards that were removed when the game was
converted into a newer game) by the pile. The ones that were really
grubby I'd take outside with a bucket of soapy water and a scrub brush
and clean 'em up. Rinse off with the hose and let 'em sit out in the
sun all day to dry off. I've even heard of guys putting them in a
dishwasher with the heated dry cycle off.

This is especially useful for grungy remote controls. You know, like
the one that was never the same after the kid dropped it in his Coke, or
whatever. I've fixed several by taking them apart, scrubbing all the
pieces with soap and water, and blowing them dry with compressed air.
Good as new. Fortunately most of the stuff people spill on remotes is
water soluble.

 

[JB]

"David Brodbeck" <gull@gull.us> wrote in message
news:nqadnQ3Q-avsjUXUnZ2dnUVZ_uJi4p2d@speakeasy.net...

boardjunkie@techie.com wrote:
I used to do that with arcade game logic boards. I'd buy them off
operators (they were older boards that were removed when the game was
converted into a newer game) by the pile. The ones that were really
grubby I'd take outside with a bucket of soapy water and a scrub brush
and clean 'em up. Rinse off with the hose and let 'em sit out in the
sun all day to dry off. I've even heard of guys putting them in a
dishwasher with the heated dry cycle off.

This is especially useful for grungy remote controls. You know, like
the one that was never the same after the kid dropped it in his Coke, or
whatever. I've fixed several by taking them apart, scrubbing all the
pieces with soap and water, and blowing them dry with compressed air.
Good as new. Fortunately most of the stuff people spill on remotes is
water soluble.

Easy fix but the pads are usually too worn to bother with by the time you
get around to it. I wish there was at least a 6 mo solution to that
problem. Sometimes only the original will do for higher functions.

 

[JB]

<nob...@but.us.chickens> wrote:

Why wouldn't they?

Because soap and water can damage electronic components?

Not likely. The most chance for damage is if you pwr up the pcb

without drying it out *all the way*. Now taking a transformer to the
car wash I'd be hesitant to do.>>

Perform the normal cleaning and quality control procedures that the factory
would use in manufacture or re-manufacture.

I could tell you what those are but it would violate confidentiality and
shock the heck out of you all.
http://infotech.awardspace.com/

 

[David Nebenzahl]

On 4/3/2009 10:15 AM WW spake thus:

!n the 40's D&RG rail road used car radios in their private cars. The
soot from coal fired engines was so bad I could not read the parts.
Dunked entire radio chassis in a 5 gallon bucket of carbon
tetrachloride. They came out spotless. Dried quick. Never seemed to
hurt any thing. Also on home radios used carbon tetrachloride in a
squirt can to kill cockroaches before removing the back covers.

Ah, yes, the Good Old Days, when men were men and nasty carcinogenic
chemicals were freely used ...


--
Made From Pears: Pretty good chance that the product is at least
mostly pears.
Made With Pears: Pretty good chance that pears will be detectable in
the product.
Contains Pears: One pear seed per multiple tons of product.

(with apologies to Dorothy L. Sayers)