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Comment by fein | Hacker News Reader

Are you in my living room?

A few months ago I disassembled and cleaned a grape juice damaged MBP. Tried it afterward and no dice. Tried it yesterday on a bored whim and I now have a working MBP with a sticky keyboard. Why? I have no idea.

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Most of the actual logic board is sealed. So unless you spill something corrosive that goes through that seal and damages the logic board liquid can only get to and damage[0] actual connectors between components and physically moving entities. In case of MBP physically moving entities are mostly fans and keyboard.

My guess would be that grape juice shorted some of those connectors. After few months it dried sufficiently, such that when you reseated them short went away.

[0] And by damage I mean mostly short and/or corrode the metal.

Heh. I caught in the rain with my MacBook Air, and it worked fine for a day, but then wouldn't boot up at all and wouldn't hold charge. Three weeks later and rice and all that jazz and nothing. A couple months later, the charger showed a light, but it wouldn't boot and never lit up green.

Six months from the first incident, and I randomly plugged it in and it booted instantly - I was ecstatic. It lasted two weeks before it wouldn't boot up again. A week later, it booted up again, and has been fine ever since.

Beats me man. Apple "Geniuses" wouldn't touch it and wanted me to buy a new one.

Would you have preferred they tell you to leave it alone for a couple of months and maybe it would work again?

How about attempting to fix the issue instead of confirming what I already knew and telling me to buy a new computer? That's what technicians are supposed to do.

As a rule of thumb never take a thing to be repaired by someone who's main business is selling new versions of that thing.

Car dealers make more money from servicing cars than selling new cars, though.

They did the same to me, when I dropped my first iPad and cracked the screen. They looked at it, and said "We'll sell you a new one at half price". Oh thanks, not even going to pretend to try to fix it?

But I did buy the new one and let them have the cracked one.

Sounds pretty great, actually. On these modern devices where the LCD is bonded to the glass screen, replacing the screen can cost as much as the device itself.

Again, this was likely due to the minerals in the water causing a short, and after a long period of time, the mineral "bridges" broke/wore-away, resolving the short, and allowing your macbook to boot.

Regarding the "Apple Geniuses", I doubt there would of been anything they could do for you, other than sit there with a cuetip and attempt to wipe down your entire mainboard after a full disassembly. Not to mention water damage probably isn't covered...

That sounds plausible, though I thought any power running through it would've caused it to burn out. I was actually going to do a full disassembly with a mate of mine who was an EE, but never got round to it. We attempted to do it with my iPhone (which was dunked into a toilet in an unrelated incident), but even cleaning everything with isopropyl alcohol it wouldn't work. I didn't hold high hopes for the MacBook.

And no, water damage wasn't covered by warranty, but it was out of warranty anyhow. I just didn't want to pay another $2K for a MacBook Air (maxed out specs at the time).

One weird trick I remember from alt.hackers was using WD-40 to remove the water from soaked electronics, and then using high-purity isopropyl(?) alcohol to clean off the WD-40. (You'd want to remove the WD-40 since it would attract dust.)

That's interesting, I'd think you'd just use rubbing alcohol (isopropyl) of >95%, since it will evaporate very rapidly by itself, taking any moisture with it. It also has great cleaning properties by itself (often used to eat the thermal paste gunk off heatsinks). Isopropyl alcohol is what "Swimmers Ear Drops" are mostly made of (for when you get water stuck in your ear).

If it's not water (coffee etc) shower the motherboard with no battery the wash it with distilled water let it dry.

And that works :)

Butane works well too, as long as you don't spray too much and cause condensation.

Unfortunately rice is mostly placebo. It's something to give your brain a reason to leave the device alone for a while.

Use an actual dessicant. Which might also not work, but then your problem is less likely leftover wetness.

Rice does certainly work as a mild desiccant. Admittedly it is not a terribly effective desiccant, but it still has those properties.

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