What happens When You Cook Your Palm Pilot

Hal-kun writes "What happens when you put a Palm Pilot in the oven to dry with the warmth of the pilot light, only to have someone cook a Pizza while you were out? Take a look. Stick a fork in it, I think it's done."

Comments

Electronics and Ovens

[iansmith]

Using an oven to dry out electronics isn't all that absurd.

When I was working in hardware design, many IC's that were designed to be wave soldered had to be totally free of moisture. They came shipped in air tight containers with humidity cards to tell you if they were exposed to too much moisture.

If they were not dry enough, the procedure was to bake them in an oven at several hundred degrees for a while.

Now, LCD's and plastics and other materials would not be too happy with that treatment. As others noted, a hair dryer will work to get it mostly dry. I'd suggest leaving it in a warm, dry area for at least a day after to make sure.

I once spilled an *entire* glass of water into an old Comodore 1541 disk drive. The scary thing, is they contained their own power supply. And it was on. After a day or so of drying, it worked fine.

Not so for the Commodore 128 that took a glass of grape juice (real, not flavored) into the keyboard. Although it was funny watching the keys sloooowly depress in the order you typed them in...

Info Re:Bake the tape!

[Alien54]

This is Legit, as seen here:

http://www.tangible-technology.com/tape/baking1.ht ml

When baked, the tape will expand and become loose around the hub. For this reason, use flanges to protect the tape from coming apart. Cooking temperature is between 130F and 140F. Tapes wound on plastic reels with small hubs should be rewound onto large reels with NAB hubs. Be careful to thread the tape around the hub without any "folds." The goal is to minimize "mechanical distortions" that can be impressed upon subsequent layers causing dropouts. The "wind" must be smooth as if played!!!

I have received several e-mails regarding "cooking time" and temperature. Provided the wind is smooth, I am not afraid to bake a quarter inch tape at 135F -- for two hours -- flipping every half-hour. You will find that cooking time varies with tape width, type, brand, condition and the number of reels being baked. Ampex tape from the seventies might require twice as much time as 3M tape from the eighties (as reported by Wendy Carlos when restoring her masters from that time period). Table One below can be used as a guide.

Other links:

http://www.audio-restoration.com/baking.htm

which indicate that this may not be a permanent solution, but is intended for tapes manufactered from the mid 70's forward, which had a tendency to absorb mosture.

http://www.sospubs.co.uk/sos/1996_articles/may96/s alvagearchives.html

is also good, and indicates that home ovens do not go low enough.