[mmintler]

Today I spilled coffee on my keyboard. And nothing happened until I turned my alum powerbook off. Now, when i try and start it..it gets through the apple logo. Then a black screen with a colored lines is all I get.

I am able to use it in fw target mode to retreive my files. Hopefully, this is a good sign.

Any suggestions? or am I screwed?

Thanks
Mark

[alligator]

Talk about ways to accelerate your processor! Caffeine!

Seriously, have you let the entire computer dry out? If you spilled on your hard drive platters, you may need a new drive. I've seen and heard of solid state components working correctly after getting dunked, but for things like hard drives, I doubt they can be cleaned cost effectively.

Let it dry, then try it again.

[ojnihs]

Aye, let the computer dry.

One of my friends in my dorm has a Titanuim Powerbook and his girlfriend spilled hot water on it because she was making him instant cup ramyun. He opened up the computer, put a fan on top of it and dried it out for like 3 days. It worked fine afterward.

[euphras]

You�re most probably screwed. When the coffee gets onto the board you get short circuits and the fact that your machine isn�t able to finish booting points out that there is some damage. Is the hanging boot sequence reproducible (does it stop every time at the same stage of boot process)?

[bighead]

Machines are never the same after spills. You're probably looking at a tier 3 repair, as long as there is nothing in the LCD bezel area. Depending on your PowerBook, tier 3 is between $800 and $1200 for the repair. I'd say let it dry out and see if you can get it to boot, but you're probably shat out of luck for a cheap fix. Your warranty is also toast.

[mmintler]

Yes, it hangs at the same point

[iREZ]

Let it dry out, and if it doesn't work after a day or two, start selling that thing piece by piece to help you get a new one. That totally sux, people who drink around their PB should definetly have one of these.

[Dr.Michael]

Originally posted by iREZ:
Let it dry out, and if it doesn't work after a day or two, start selling that thing piece by piece to help you get a new one. That totally sux, people who drink around their PB should definetly have one of these.

...or an iCurve :o)

[cal6n]

Having had a bottle of Red (a caffeine/guarana alcopop) spilled into my 17" powerbook, I feel qualified to comment. I immediately pulled the power cord and popped the battery out. After allowing a few days drying time, I fired it up again, and was confronted the same sort of corrupted picture you're describing. When I spoke to the chap at the Apple service centre, he said that I'd done the right thing except that I should not have turned it on until it had been fully stripped and cleaned. Apparently, with water you can just let it dry and you SHOULD be lucky (as long as you power-down REALLY fast) but, with anything else, ALL the parts will need cleaning. The annoying thing is that nobody knows or finds out about this sort of thing until it's too late. I ended up with a �500 ($850) bill for a new display, but it could have been much worse.

[Lancer409]

=( ... people who borrow my powerbook (best friend's girlfriend) scare the hell out of me. they rub their nose or face, then slap their hands on my keyboard (without wiping the facial oils off) and they have uncapped bottles of water around the powerbook (handing it back and forth is scary) AND almost scraped the bottom a bunch of times because of a spiral bound notebook (spiral length of wire) ... son of a .... sigh .. talk about repeat heart attacks ... i would have flat out refused but i figure it's not worth souring a friendship ... augh .. i'm ultra careful with this thing ... hopefully it'll be enough. let us know how your situation turns out .. hope the bill doesnt get tooo too painful...

[shabbasuraj]

sux to be you...

hope you get it working, with not to much damage to the ol' wallet..

[Maflynn]

Originally posted by shabbasuraj:
sux to be you...

that's kind of rough - but true.

I see these threads too often, and that just reinforces my discipline not to drink near my PB.

Its just not worth it, mistakes do happen and hopefully after the appropriate drying time, your PB will come back to life.

Some of the threads that have people moaning about split liquids, some do come to life.

Good Luck.
Mike

[Fenbar]

Should have an iSkin covering that baby up.

[macxtal]

Most electronics are fairly robust, unfortunately, you turned it on before cleaning. You could try this anyway, if it's already screwed:

Obviously, you never want to do spill things. However, if you're brave, you can carefully clean the logic board with warm water without too many problems. Just rinse it under the tap. Use warm/hot water and shake it off. The warm/hot water is a trick; It warms the board up, then you shake off the excess. The heat helps evaporate the remaining water.

If you're looking at a $1200 job, this might be worth a try. Do NOT get water into the optical drive or hard drive, or LCD. They are not sealed and WILL be damaged. The circuit board should be fine.

[Detrius]

Originally posted by macxtal:
Most electronics are fairly robust, unfortunately, you turned it on before cleaning. You could try this anyway, if it's already screwed:

Obviously, you never want to do spill things. However, if you're brave, you can carefully clean the logic board with warm water without too many problems. Just rinse it under the tap. Use warm/hot water and shake it off. The warm/hot water is a trick; It warms the board up, then you shake off the excess. The heat helps evaporate the remaining water.

If you're looking at a $1200 job, this might be worth a try. Do NOT get water into the optical drive or hard drive, or LCD. They are not sealed and WILL be damaged. The circuit board should be fine.

I *FIXED* a keyboard this way two weeks ago. With a logic board, you will need to remove it from the machine for the safety of other parts. Run it under warm water to dissolve the stuff from the coffee. Do the same with the keyboard.

Run a blow dryer over them to attempt to dry them off, and then place the two in front of a fan in a dry area for a day or more.

Worst case scenario: it won't make a difference or will promote corrosion.
Best case scenario: you fix the problem.


The thing to note is that water does not damage electronics; electricity damages electronics. Water is *NOT* a good conductor of electricity. It's when you start putting stuff in the water (sugar, salt, coffee, etc...) that it starts to conduct well. This is why you only have to dry the machine when you spill water, but you have to clean it when you spill something else.

[Maflynn]

Originally posted by Detrius:
Water is *NOT* a good conductor of electricity.

Well that's news to me. I've always heard that it is along with enough anadoctal evidance to support the fact that water is a good conductor.

Mike

[AlbertWu]

pure water sucks as a conductor, but since it's polar, any ions that get in there make it a good conductor.

from what you've said, i'd recommend you swap out the ram and see if it still crashes.

[BenN]

mmintler:

My AlBook suffered a near-death experience with a glass of chuhai (Japanese vodka + mixer). My experience at the time was similar to yours; the screen died, and then the machine crashed hard.

I dried it out for a couple of days, but it wouldn`t boot at all; I was convinced that I`d fried the logic board - I took it to the Ginza Apple Store, and was quoted an outrageous sum for repair - almost the same as a new 12" AlBook!

So I ended up buying the 12", and was going to sell of the 15" remains on eBay. By chance, I decided to try booting it again; this time (about a week after the accident), it worked!

I`ve managed to avoid spending large amounts on repairs, and replacing the keyboard seems to have solved what problems I had.

The moral of the story? Don`t give up just yet! You`ve voided what ever warranty you had anyway, so you may as well open it up & see if you can clean and/or fix it yourself.

My $0.02.

[tubhost]

Okay, I'm not an uber mac geek, but I do have two of them so I was mulling around these threads and caught this one. I once spilled a bit of tea, no sugar, on my Dell notebook and after a few minutes it started to short circuit a few of the keys. The spacebar was acting like a space and a return at the same time. I powered down, used a napkin wedged in between some of the keys to soak up any liquid I could, set the machine on its side, and setup a fan blowing in front of it. After about a half hour I powered back up and everything seemed fine and has been fine for about a month now (imagine how funny it'd be if it went to hell after I write this).

Moral of the story, water and non-sugary substances will normally turn out fine after they dry. I'm not sure about straight black coffee, but if you had sugar or milk in it you're bound to have some damage.

Lastly, I've also seen reports that say Dells are pretty resistant to damage. Supposedly they've gone through coffee spill tests in some magazines in the past and came out with the least amount of damage compared to other notebooks.

No, I'm not trying to start a mac vs. pc thing. I just recently got my PowerBook Pismo repaired because I missed using MacOS X on the go. Now I just need to get a wi-fi card for it. Any recommendations?