[zzarg]

any suggestions how to cope with this little problem...

my 6 year old managed to spill a large cup of chai tea - hot, syrupy, milky - onto my Rev.A 12" PowerBook.

after draining the machine on a towel and letting it dry out it was able to start up (after the second or third attempt) and the only apparent damage now is that some of the keys on the left hand side of the keyboard are sticky (hardly surprising)

any suggestions for neat ways to clean them ?

Back in the day I used sparkling mineral water on a similarly afflicted IBM ThinkPad with amazingly good results... but I suspect that might not be the case with more modern machines....

[mduell]

Why did you use sparkling mineral water on your ThinkPad? It generally has even more dissolved ions than regular water. Perhaps you mean mineral oil? Mineral oil is electronics safe (some people use it for submersion cooling), but also can be a bit hard to get off.

[tooki]

Fizzy water helps dissolve things. That's also why people use it to lift stains from carpet and garments.

tooki

[zzarg]

Originally Posted by mduell

Why did you use sparkling mineral water on your ThinkPad? It generally has even more dissolved ions than regular water. Perhaps you mean mineral oil? Mineral oil is electronics safe (some people use it for submersion cooling), but also can be a bit hard to get off.

(a) because I had it to hand and (b) mineral oil would have just left another residue to try and get off.
not saying it was a good choice.... but it worked for the ThinkPad. Just not sure I want to risk it with the PowerBook that has much more metal

[phantomo]

Sorry to hear about the accident. I assume your PB Rev A warranty has already expired. I would recommend removing the keyboard from the machine before attempting to clean it.

I had mine removed from the body for cleaning a couple drops of orange juice. I just used tap water and rinse the affected area and a can of compressed air to spray out excess water between keys. Afterwards, I let it dry under a fan for a very long time before putting it back together.

Let us know how it goes.

[Dakkon]

you can use DI water, that has not inons, what ever you do jus make sure you let it dry.. depending on budget/degree of problem, you could buy a new keyboard....

[zzarg]

warrenty long gone
I'll go hunt for instructions on removing the keyboard - I know I've seen them somewhere.
apart from the slight stickiness the machine has survived its ordeal just fine.... shows how well Apple build 'em!

[wuzup101]

If it were my machine, I would remove the keyboard and then clean it with a mild soapy water solution and than after I determined it was clean I would rinse it with distilled/DI water. Rinsing it with some type of detergent would probably be necessary to get everything off. Using DI water alone would most likely fail to remove everything without scrubbing. Neither should hurt the electronics as long as you make sure it's completely dry before you reassemble the machine. GL