On April 15, Sridhar the POWERful wrote:
> > Last week I managed to get my hands on 2 vaxstations 4000/60, a Cisco
> > MGS, a HP Apollo 700 workstation, Sun Sparcstation 20 (WOW), a VAX 4000-300
> > and a Panasonic 7330. All have varying degree of dampness 8-((. At the
> > moment I have them in house dry and warm... should I stuff them in the oven
> > at low temperature and force a drying or best let them settle for some time.
>
> I would carefully rinse them off, taking care not to soak anything that
> would be damaged by water. Then I would pat dry with a paper towel and
> let dry. I wouldn't stick anything electronic in the oven.
Actually it works quite well, at *low* temperatures. Electric ovens
work best for this since gas ovens produce tons of moisture. Trouble
is, many ovens can't go low enough (~200F or so).
I've had good results from sitting stuff atop floor-mounted heater
vents in the winter. This obviously works best when the equipment in
question has air vents.
Over the past ten years or so, I have gotten a *large* quantity of
equipment (literally hundreds of computers) that has been out in the
rain, sometimes for months. Some of it I use daily even now.
Computer stuff (except for floppy and hard drives) tends to deal with
it fine, even monitors. Analog stuff like test equipment tends not to
fare so well, nor does mechanical stuff like scanners (though my main
scanner was indeed out in the rain for about a week; after a little
TLC it performs flawlessly). The water doesn't seem to do any harm at
all, even with long-term exposure...it's the crap that the water can
carry into the equipment, and sometimes corrosion later on.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire "Hush and eat your vegetables, young lady!"
St. Petersburg, FL - Mr. Bill
Received on Mon Apr 15 2002 - 10:50:58 BST