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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."
Wonder what it tasted like? Mmmm... Palm Pilot. However, the electronics don't look so damaged... Maybe it's salvagable?
Everything is mainstream now.
...and don't mind a little blatant karma-whoring:
The Palm Graveyard is dedicated to tales and pictures of Palms that have piloted their way to the choir invisible.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Shouldn't it just run faster?
Oh, he over cooked it...
"The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance." -Thomas Jefferson
The nerve of this person, cooking a Palm in an oven!
Everyone knows you're supposed to barbecue them!
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Interestingly, the electronics looked to be pretty intact for the temperature it was cooked at, and the screen didn't look too bad. I'd say those Palm VIIx's are fairly resilient. Too bad they're so big.
This brings up another interesting question, however. Are there "rugged" PDAs that are able to take a beating? I know that Fellowes sells a bumper case that's supposed to protect Palms, but how durable are they? Does somebody make a "rugged" PDA?
That's really funny. I've actually dried out electronic stuff this way before and it usually does work, as long as someone doesn't come along and try to use the oven hehehe =]. Bet the company wasn't too happy.
This would be news if the device actually still ran after melting. "The indestructable Palm Pilots..."
To the term "HotSync" :)
I hope the pizza didn't get ruined.
I hear that microwave ovens are really great for drying off your poodle after a shampoo!
I guess he didn't purchase the Palm eMeatThermometer2.0(TM) attachment. That, plus the optional wireless add-on pack, should have alerted his pager to pull it out of there in time...
Sounds like a PalmPilot in the hand is better than two in the oven...
Storm: What happens when you cook a Palm Pilot?
Storm: The same thing that happens to everything else.
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
Soon to be a #11 at a fast food restaurant neat you!
This is a boring sig
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...
chicken of course, well at least my mother-in-laws chicken.
Is there anyone that actually thinks this was an accident? This "exec" cooked his Palm so he could get the "latest and greatest" as a replacement.
I know a lot of people who have done the same thing. Your laptop seem a big sluggish? Drop it on the pavement "by accident"... and bingo... the IT department hands you a shiny new blazingly fast feature filled replacement.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out what really happened.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
we've got a new addition for the geek cookbook!
Want Linux games? HERE.
Or has anyone else noticed that the most sure-fire way to get an article on Slashdot is to wreck complex electronics?
Pouring concrete in a PC case, cooking your Palm Pilot, what's next? Xbox tossing? eBook flushing? Blasting a new iMac with a high-powered laser? Okay, that last one would be cool.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
if you are putting Palm pilots on pizzas as toppings. :)
I wondered why there are so many PHBs believe in kitchen-ware could fix hi-tech devices.
My friend, an Oracle DBA consultant, was given a difficult task to revive a very old tape which contained very important data. He tried so many methods in vain until he found out the tape manufacturer did provide service to 'bake' the tape. Yes! bake the tape to revive the tape. We don't know how and what they use to bake the tape, but they really said it is some process to 'bake' the tape to make the tape 'readable' again.
My friend solved the problem. A month later, the same client called, saying that their PHB, in an attempt to save money, baking tapes that he found problems - with (you bet) house oven.
This time, my friend declined to help(of course.)
My mother always said that bad things would come from Palm abuse...
The "wild molten" look...Apple, are you paying attention? heh heh
Once I had to clean out a calculator that I spilled cranberry juice in, I dunked the parts in denatured alcohol (ethanol or isopropyl with very low water content) which I assumed would clean out the cranberry juice and drive out the water. The calculator (TI85) still works fine today......"teh oven" is "teh bad idea" I think.
Dunno about taste of the Palm Pilot, but I'm sure the pizza tasted like hell (from personal experience.) I hope they tossed it, rather than eat it, burnt plastic residue would settle on the pizza and probably make it toxic, besides just tasting that way.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
my aunt dropped her palm vx in the toilet (fell out of her purse) with her cell phone
Well, she put them in the oven on a cookie sheet on a very low heat and sure enough - it worked
However, both stopped working over some time. The plus is that the plam was able to sync and was able to be replaced 'under warrenty' and same with the phone
There was no definate corelation between the water and stop working but I am pretty sure that some things that were exposed to water eventually corroded.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
...if you look at the pictures, it is the new one. He replaced his old Palm III with the new one, which subsequently got cooked.
Anyway, with the budget restrictions curently in effect at most companies, that rule doesn't apply any more. All of the employees where I work have been told, "If your laptop dies, you get a desktop machine." Since most of us already have a desktop machine, that means we get nada if our laptops break. Scary...
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
I used to read Nintendo Power back in the day when 8 bit systems walked the earth.
One of the soldiers took his gameboy with him to Desert Storm, and it got toasted by a grenade, according to one issue.
They showed a picture that looked about like that Palm Pilot did - but Tetris was running on it. It still worked! Of course, the screen was really difficult to see, since half of it was burnt off, but at least it did *something*.
There used to be a gameboy "game" called a workboy, which was basically a PDA. Maybe I should get one of those instead of a Palm. Then I won't have to worry about it breaking.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
...a slice of pizza in his Palm charging/sync cradle, and his roommate hoping he wouldn't notice anything wrong?
And it doesn't work anymore? Back in my day, we could get our PDAs wed, burn them, have the cattle eat them, pass them, then freeze them, and they STILL had that new PDA smell! What has the world come to???
Seriously though that kind of neat. Personally I think that it would be insteresting to find out what fresh-baked Palms smell like. I guess I'll never find out because I don't have a Palm to waste (I don't have one period), and second I have to say I'd be suprised if it DIDN'T put off toxic fumes. My only real question for the guy who's Palm that was is this: how did the pizza taste? Does silicone enhance the flavor? Did you try putting the Palm in a light Bernet sauce?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Like I care about a cooked Palm Pilot. Where's the photo of the pizza???
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.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
To get back on-topic.. (because we can't STAND to read a post that's not on the topic of burnt PDAs in a burnt PDA article.. that would be a waste of TIME!) Yeah, I think burnt PDAs are really cool. Hey, I could.. make a.. ummmm.. burnt PDA.. sandwich. Hahahahaha. Imagine a beowulf cluster of those. roflol.
Oi..... Son of the bloody monkey.
The streets shall flow with the blood of the Guberminky.
Foolish PHB, everyone knows you use a Microwave, not a Gas Oven!
Some people...
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
This is a classic deception.
The reality is that he was attempting to overclock that puppy to 30GHz.
Now let that be a lesson to everyone!
Leaving gear in the car trunk or wherever, particularly overnight, cools it down to ambient which in Montreal right now is about -10c to -20c at night. Then bringing it into one's nice warm steamy house means condensation on components like the hard drive, some batteries, metal shields, etc. This film of moisture can cause problems like corrosion and shorting resulting in everything from intermittant flakiness to outright failure.
Thus aside from sticktion and under-spec cold batteries & capaciters & the thermal stress of running a frozen laptop/palmtop it's just best to let the whole thing warm up and dry out before using. In those cases putting on top of the 'fridge (where the warm air from the condensor blows up) or inside an oven with a pilot light AND NOT USING THE OVEN or on a table near (not *on*) a radiator are all actually good ideas.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
But...I can't stop laughing. OMFG!!!!!!
Damnit, Jim, I'm an anarchist, not a F@#$!^& doctor!
Lets leave a VHS tape in a hot car and see what happens.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Here is what I did to resurrect it.
I took the radio out of the car and the cover off the radio. I filled the kitchen sink with cold, clean water and soaked everything, cassette player and all, for 1 hour. Drained the water, refilled the sink, and soaked for another 15 minutes (rinse cycle). Finally, I baked it at 160 deg F in an (electric) oven for 8 hours.
Why 160? I figured a car radio could get that hot when the car was in the sun with the doors closed. I hesitated to go higher, mainly concerned with the plastic parts in the cassette player.
The radio and cassette still work fine to this day. Yeah, I still own the car - these days only gas-hogging SUVs match the surprising storage space inside of the tiny-looking frame of a 1988 Honda Wagovan, AFAIK made only one year, and only in tan. With plenty of headroom for extra-tall folks.
How dumb do you have to be to put electronics in the oven? I think he got what he deserved.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Or even significantly reduce its usefulness. That way your theory would also explain all the attention given to copy protected CDs and microsoft products. (*smile*)
-- MarkusQ
Windows 2000 CD meets a fire.
AMD has announced that they are working on a new line of chips designed to work in Palm pilots and other small personal devices. When asked of their progress an AMD spokesman commented "The initial tests look encouraging although we're still having some problems with the heat dispersement. We've submitted some of the results of the experiment to a "research" group in hopes that they will have some useful insight."
I stole this Sig
No the internal PCB would probably be just fine. Anything plastic would be melted, such as wires. All of the components on the PCB go through a solder wave or a reflow oven. Those temps are much higher than what you'd be cooking a pizza at.
Actually, no they aren't. Proper pizza cooking should be done at about the same temps. Those frozen ready made pizzas all cook at low temps. I grew up cooking pizza in an oven set at 550F. I don't remember the exact temperatures used in reflow, but I had calculated that a convection oven that reaches 500F would do fine. 250C seames to pop up as a likely maximum temperature.
A hairdryer could be just as bad... I once used a hairdryer to dry a mouse and keyboard I'd just cleaned... The mouse warped terribly. Kinda curled in on itself, the way a foam plate does when you toss it in a camp fire.
A solution to the problem with music today
Ebay, need I say more. Actually ya I do....people will buy anything!
I've used the heat generated from a TV or more recently my monitor. I'm not talking about dripping wet items, that would be stupid, and you would desrve what you get. But if it has moisture on the inside such as in the screen like the face of a watch that fod up inside. Take out the batteries, remove any covers, open all doors and panels, and place it on you tv or monitior. Leave there for a day or two. We used to tell this to people who dropped their digital cameras into water and it's worked dozens of times. Low grade heat and somewhere for the moisture to go. Of course we would suggest that the camera would need to go in for service immediately to protect it from corrosion, etc. most did they were glad we had saved them the cost of a new camera.
I'm afraid you have just violoated my patent, #234562234, Transmission of a patent violation notice via a public messaging system.
My lawyers will be in touch with you shortly.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
A long time ago, a friend of mine got a digital wristwatch wet, and he had the idea of heating it in a microwave oven to dry it. It beeped for a couple seconds, then sparks shot out. It was a goner.
I also immensly enjoyed spilling cofe on my keyboard, dropping my cell phone, and then stepping on it, and cutting my finger when clipping my toenails. I guess I should dedicate a web site to it.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
(2) Water can cause an active circuit to short itself out, possibly in a permanently descructive manner.
I worked in a pizza place that used stone/gas ovens. We cooked at 425. 550 burned the hell out of the bottom of the dough before the cheese melted.
That chart is Celsius. Your oven is Fahrenheit.
425(F) = 218(C).
I meant the insulation on the wire. In this case I specifcally was thinking that the leads off of the battery would melt causing the encased copper to come in contact and possible great a direct short circuit.
That certainly will not work. The cavity of the microwave oven is not a perfect "Faraday cage" so it won't keep RF out. However, it should be resonant at the frequency that the oven's magnetron uses, so it won't radiate (kind of - it's all very complicated).
The only real way to check for leakage is to use a proper detector.