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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."
...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
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?
To the term "HotSync" :)
I hope the pizza didn't get ruined.
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...
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?
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
...a slice of pizza in his Palm charging/sync cradle, and his roommate hoping he wouldn't notice anything wrong?
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"
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.