[sdiy] Very OT: Computer Keyboard--Lightly Irrigated

[CCartCat at aol.com]

Thanks for all the advice--the procedure below and the plastic layers info.  

Preparing a bath for the keyboard,
Kevin

In a message dated 5/12/03 4:28:28 PM, buchty at cs.tum.edu writes:

<< > Something like 1 or 2 teaspoons/ 5 or 10 or more milliliters of water

> [strawberry-flavored, so with a dash of citric acid/sucralose etc.] got

> dribbled into an iMac's USB Pro Keyboard.


Reminds me of that AmEx commercial where the father feeds the VCR with a

cassette in front of his nipper with the words "He's veeeeery hungry."


Next time the li'l guy walks by the VCR -- this time with his baby cereal

-- he rembers daddy's words...


> I've been drying it out with fan-forced air and even a bit with a blow

> dryer. Nearly 48 hours later it's semi-functional but still has some

> dead keys (most if not all listed below).


You didn't clean the keyboard but just dried the stuff inside?


Personally, I give my computer keyboards the following treatment (and

since they still work, it can't be that harmful after all):


- soak the entire thingy with warm water and your favorite dish cleaning

  agent

- rinse it with cold, clear water afterwards

- put it in the oven for a couple of hours at 50°C/125F


In case your water is very hard, you might want to do the final rinse with

aqua dest.


> Just wanted a reality check.  Am I really waiting for water to dry, or was

> something possibly blown by a resulting short?


Might be... I don't know the keyboard matrix of the apple keyboard.

Judging from the number of keys it might be that an entire row is blown,

but it might as well be that just the contacts are contaminated with that

strawberry stuff.


You might want to give the soaking method a try (which I first time tried

as a last resort after a major orange juice accident). Might require more

than one cleaning procedure as you already spent much time on vulcanizing

the stuff with your hair dryer.


Rainer (who is always amazed how much gunk gathers inside an ordinary

    keyboard -- chips'n'cookies certainly don't do any good to it)

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