"Jeff Liebermann" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 6 Jan 2013 14:49:35 -0000, "Gareth Magennis"
wrote:
I spilt some wine over my laptop keyboard, but stupidly left it running as
I
didn't think it would do much harm, and I was a bit drunk at the time.
Doh!
Wine is somewhat conductive. Conductivity testing is used to
determine the Potassium concentration of the wine and therefore its
stability:
http://winechek.com/webfiles/Stabilab%20GW%20article%20Dec%2010.pdf
http://www.mbhes.com/conductivity_measurement.htm
1000 uSiemens/cm isn't very conductive. Compare with sea water, which
is about 50,000 uS/cm. In SI units, 1000 uS/cm would be
Get it really cold, and wine improves superconductors:
http://io9.com/5731129/drunken-scientists-pour-alcohol-on-superconductors-and-make-an-incredible-discovery
Something went "fizz" and I lost the screen, and got lots of furious
beeping
going on.
This is a clue that you screwed up. However, it must be contageous.
Last week, I was marching to the bathroom in the middle of the night
and stepped on my Thinkpad T30, cracking the LCD screen.
I took it into work next day and dismantled it to see what was going on.
There was very little wine inside, and none that I could see on the
motherboard itself, but this is what I found:
http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/2728/imag0141ux.jpg
The connector is the one going to the screen, and as you can see it has
got
very hot around the 2 pins on the far right. The melted blob next to C29
used to be a 6 pin IC.
Make and model of laptop? Make and model of LCD panel? I have a few
schematics.
The 6 pin IC is probably a voltage regulator or pass FET for part of a
regulator. The LVDS interface on the panel is well protected and
probably not involved. Here's a typical LCD pinout:
http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d8/Lucky13ESP/LQ10PX22LVDSPinout.jpg
Runs on +5VDC which could do that kind of high current heating damage.
I'd be interested to know how the wine might have caused so much damage,
I'm
guessing the 6 pin device might be the power supply for the screen?
Probably, but then shorting the regulator would not cause the ribbon
cable connector to smoke. What happened to the ribbon cable? If
nothing, then the wine shorted the connector, which caused the
regulator to get hot.
Umm... did you remove the laptop battery after the spill?
--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Hi Jeff,
Laptop is an Acer Aspire 5739. I found the service manual today but it has
no schematics.
(best thing about it is the internal speakers - it has a subwoofer "tube"
that actually makes the machine sound really good - Acer don't seem to have
these on their laptops any more)
After the spill, I mopped as much wine as possible from the keyboard, then
upended the laptop with the screen open so it was standing on its head in an
inverted V. The idea being to keep any liquid off the motherboard.
I took out the power adaptor and ran it on its battery, thinking that
keeping a supply of warm air going on might be a good idea.
I heard the fizzing whilst it was running on the battery, and recognised it
as something blowing up. I know those sounds, yuk.
I franctically tried to remove the battery but it was too late by then of
course.
I don't know if the LCD cable got damaged, its wrapped in a braid making a
round cable, not a ribbon, so is not visible.
I was wondering today if the overheating connector was unrelated to the
wine - this laptop regularly makes 10 hour long audio recordings in a hot
and sweaty club, the LCD remaining permanently on though dimmed to minimum.
It is also in daily use at home, and serves as my TV so it has had some use
over the 3 years or so of its life.
but yep, don't drink and surf!
Cheers,
Gareth.