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MactoshLover · Aug 3, 2005, 05:31 AM

I had a roof leak, dripping water on my 15" G4 Powerbook. It was closed and sleeping. I drained the water out, and shut her down. After drying for a day, I fired up. Everything on the computer works. But the screen is dark. I can actually barely see the screen, but thhere is no background lighting. SO I can only read it with a flashlight carefully placed, and magnifying glass assistance.
Plugged in to an external monitor, I can use things normallly, but now she is not useful as a portable.
Does anyone have a clue if this is easily fixed, and how?

mad cow disease · Aug 3, 2005, 05:59 AM

Sounds like part of the display itself may have shorted out when you awoke the computer OR when you turned it back on, because from what I can tell from what you said it seems the water penetrated quite a bit, didn't it? If that's the case, you are lucky you have a working laptop at all.

To be quite honest with you, I would have waited far longer than a day - more like a WEEK to turn the thing back on, and I wouldn't have messed around with shutting her down - I would have just removed the battery, unplugged, and left.

You can run keyboards through the dishwasher or douse them thoroughly with a hose, let them dry out over the course of a week, and use them with no problems whatsoever. But you HAVE to let them dry out, or the instant you plug them in they will short out and you have a dead keyboard. I've done it more than once...

bighead · Aug 3, 2005, 02:23 PM

Sounds like the inverter is blown, however, I would suspect that the water getting into the whole of the case would eventually cause a significant amount of corrosion. You can have someone replace the inverter for you, but it may be a good idea to have everything checked out, because water damage can start to affect machines months after the incident. Even if things look OK immediately afterwards.

I apologize for the sentence fragment at the end of that paragraph.

TFunkadelic · Aug 3, 2005, 02:23 PM

ha, it's funny this should come up. Just a few weeks ago my brother dumped a huge glass of water on to the keyboard of our old compaq laptop. waited a few days, good as new

.

mattsgotredhair · Aug 3, 2005, 02:35 PM

Originally Posted by TFunkadelic

ha, it's funny this should come up. Just a few weeks ago my brother dumped a huge glass of water on to the keyboard of our old compaq laptop. waited a few days, good as new

.

That proves it, Mac's suck. Everyone should ditch them and go to Compaq.

MactoshLover · Aug 13, 2005, 03:14 AM

Originally Posted by bighead

Sounds like the inverter is blown, however, I would suspect that the water getting into the whole of the case would eventually cause a significant amount of corrosion. You can have someone replace the inverter for you, but it may be a good idea to have everything checked out, because water damage can start to affect machines months after the incident. Even if things look OK immediately afterwards.

I apologize for the sentence fragment at the end of that paragraph.

Thanks Ian,
Is the inverter you referrred to the $70 part I found on a site? Apple part no 922-6015 ??
Is this something that I could do ? Would I need special tools? There were take-apart instructions available on the site. (for a few bucks)

Everything is still running well except the screen. I do not really know where the water came out of, as the unit was still closed when I turned it on its end, and it was not a large volume. Is the main unit pretty well sealed from above? IE is it possible that water just penetrated around the hinge, and the potential damage might be limited to the inverter? Or is the inverter inside with everything else? I think the main source of the water on the Powerbook was splash from drips behind the closed unit.

I think it is remarkable that the CPU and keyboard and ports and drive work just fine, and that the screen is dark. With the computer on when this happened, I would think that anything that would fry would do it right then. And I only waited a day before turning back on. (Much less than what people have said I should). But am I just wishful thinking do you think that maybe there wiill be no other problems ???

I appreciate your thoughts and experience. Cheers

Sourbook · Aug 14, 2005, 08:09 PM

I once dumped a whole cup of coffee into the keyboard of my old 5300cs. It snapped, crackled and popped. Shut it down, turned it upside-down for 3 days. It died. I took it to a dealer, who took it apart, got the coffee smell, and stains out. Yadda, yadda, yadda, I got a full warranty repair. New logic board, monitor, hard-drive and ram.