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Cleansing Hardware Of Dead Pig Odors?
Chagatai writes "My company is one of America's largest beef and pork producers. Recently I took a trip to see a new computer room that had been built at one of our abbatoirs. While the new environment is nice and sanitary, the old computer room had air intakes that were adjacent to the rendering portion of the plant, and everything smells in an almost unholy way. Management is curious if there are any cleaning agents or means of deodorizing this equipment before moving it into the nice, new office. The only products I could find would clean the outside of the hardware, but the internals would still possess the lovely aroma of boiled dead pig parts. Of course, this is a race against time, as I am sure someone will inevitably squirt Pine-Sol into the system to try to make things better. Does anyone have any recommendations to remove the effluvium of post-mortem porcine matter from our machines?"
Back in the early 90s, my dad bought me My First Computer. It was an Macintosh IIcx which was a big, beige rectangle box. Had neat stuff like NuBus and about 12 SIMM slots. I lived in Europe at the time, and the computer was purchased from a graphic design house where *EVERYONE* chain-smoked at their desks. The machine had the most disgusting tar-like filth on *EVERYTHING* inside the chassis. The upstairs of my house reeked of cigarettes.
I literally chipped away tar, vacuumed it, put Bounce sheets over the power supply fan, to no avail. The machine still sits in my closet to this day, and having given it my best efforts over 10 years ago- it still smells of stale cigarettes.
Because of the small nooks and openings in your average computer, I honestly don't think you'll be able to do much about the smell. Unless there are some new commercial/industrial agents that can do the job, you might be SOL. Guess it's time for 3M to create a solvent version of Fluorinert.
You're missing a prime chance to pull a real stunt.
One word: Ebay.
Put it all up for auction simultaneously, and watch the fun as people get their newly won purchases. I'd love to read that feedback. "Great PowerEdge, but I've never had computer equipment smell unholy before." And then, watch mass psychology at work as people read each other's feedback from the same vendor and start to put two and two together.
The only thing funnier would be to work at Paypal and hear people squirm as they try to justify asking for a refund. "You gotta believe me, this disk array smells bad. Really bad. Like dead meat bad."
What's your damage, Heather?
Try HOLY WATER, you murderer!
This has worked for me many times before, and I can vouch for it, but the obvious disclaimer is that there are a number of reasons why it's a bad idea, as I'm sure any replies to the post will inevitably explain. But it's worked for me before.
Power down all your machines and unplug them. Set up adequate ventilation (I use several cheap desk fans). Wipe down your hardware with rubbing alcohol using a lint-free cloth or a few old t-shirts; don't worry about your own, buy a big bag of them at Goodwill.
When you get tired of that, or you pass out from the fumes, just pour it in. Yes, I'm serious, you'll want to trickle it over the green hardware and get everything generally soaking. (Not the power supply or hard drive, just PCBs and the like. This is already a dumbass idea, so you don't want to be much more stupid about it.) Then leave, otherwise you'll probably pass out.
I discovered this trick while given the task of cleaning a friend's laptop. He smokes, a lot, and had quit and didn't want the smell. He also had sticky keys from God knows what, so I honestly just said "fuck it" and turned the laptop on its side, open, and poured rubbing alcohol into the ports, taking care not to let it get near the screen, which rubbing alcohol can damage. Using a lot of it allows the liquid to remove dust as it flows by. The excess flowed out the other side and into a few paper towels.
Rubbing alcohol is a great solvent and evaporates quickly, so the ventilation is more for the computers, not you. Make sure the insides are aired out before powering up, or you may find yourself battling a quick-burning alcohol fire.
Have fun!
I think the plastics in the computer will hold on to those odors for a looooong time.
The dogcow says "Moof!"
This is one of the best ways to remove stuff down to the molecular level, and involves no chemicals.
It truly is "the hot setup" ( pun intended ).
Google "vapor cleaning" for more info.
Bravo.
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
Or maybe a little bowl of baking soda in each case. :-) The ozone's probably better though.
Haida Manga
There are activated carbon pellets that are designed to absorb odors. They do a pretty nice job of it.
I suggest cleaning up the equippement as best you can and then placing a few of these in or around the offending hardware.
You can't take the sky from me...
On the other hand wouldn't it be interesting if nobody too the bait, and everybody made only Interesting and Informative answers.
I'd suggest turning the 'puter off, laying the case on its side and pouring in a box of baking soda for a few days. Dump out the baking soda a few days later and blow out the residue, and your computer should smell remarkably "less bad." Mixing a little alum with the baking soda can't hurt, either.
The smell of a rendering plant will be hard to remove, but this is how I remove the "beef scent" from tallow when I'm making soap.
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
this happened when I bought a computer owned by a smoker. I could smell the smoke/nicotine or whatever it was the first day I had it in the house. I used a mixture of sulfur + salt + tabasco sauce + lighter fluid. Apply it with a lint free cloth, rub gently... works nice even on the motherboards. Give it a shot and see what happens.
Skype Me! username: john_allen_mohammed
Febreze is the key.
It really works on dead things.
I got this tip from a ratcatcher called Sid, who cleaned out a dead raccoon from our crawl space. It worked.
I just used it to nullify the odour of a deer mouse that crawled into my truck's AC and helpfully died.
Go Febreze!
I'm not wrong. You haven't thought about it hard enough.
If you can't come up with a solution, I suggest donating the equipment to PETA...
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
A commercial ozone generator should work. I've used them on used cars owned by sweaty curry eating smokers, and it works great. The car smells like a meadow after a thunder storm after treatment.
Try rubbing alcohol. It should get some of the smell off and then evaporate without leaving any residue. You can just dip the pieces numerous times if need be. I've used it to get blood off of several of my components without any problem. No I'm not a mass murderer or anything I just accidently cut myself while working on my computer and then don't feel it. By the time I notice my computer looks like it just had an abortion.
An ozone generator like those from Alpine Air will remove odors and not damage the components.
By curious coincidence, I too am working (as a contractor) for one of the nations largest meat packing companies... and the rendering plants are just amazingly stinky!
hope this helps
This sig kills fascists.
Use it on the case surfaces. Not safe for electonics. If you can't find it at normal places, try PetSmart.
I have a licensed animal shelter at my house, so I know more about strange smells than you can imagine.
What you need is an ozone generator. Park the equipment and the generator in a closed room for a few days, or weeks. Most ozone generators are built from a short-wavelength ultraviolet lamp in a box, sometimes with a fan. (Don't confuse ozone generators with negative ion generators. Ozone causes permanent lung damage, over time. Ozone generators also produce ions, but so what?.) The ozone will oxidize the aromatic organic molecules, over time.
If it's not too much hard work, then take them apart and wash them, hot soapy water should do, perhaps with a mild bleach.
As long as all the parts are *throughly* dry before reassemble, the water is no danger.
Once watched a sun engineer do it to an IPC after a colleague spilt hot chocolate into it...
Isopropyl alcohol does not damage the hardware at all and is a great solvent. I use it to clean everything from fans to NICs. Just let the hardware soak for a few hours and *boom* just like new. Just make sure it's comply dry before you use it.
Running Alcohol... 91% great for scrubbing the computers of smell and stain. Makes a great aftershave too.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
http://www.meetyourmeat.com/
http://tinyurl.com/globalwarmingisascam
Gives new meaning to the phrase Render Farm, now doesn't it?
Why not indeed.
A question whose answer cannot be found by googling.
Truly a worthy "Ask Slashdot".
That man tried to kill mah Daddy
I work for Servpro, so sadly, cleaning is something that I know how to do fairly well. Your best bet would probably be to do some research into ultrasonic cleaners. It might be cheaper to buy the equipment yourself depending on how much stuff you need cleaned. Protein odors are pretty hard to get rid of though, definitely one of the worst.
E pluribus unum
I had a problem somewhat like this at one point. In my case it wasn't pig odor but my solution should help.
The first thing I did was to pull the systems apart and to lay each interface card separate from eachother. I then used denatured alcohol to clean each card. I did the same thing for the motherboard and the rest of the components that would be harmed by more invasive cleaning methods.
The cases themselves(sans power supplys) were cleaned using pinesol, then alcohol to make sure all the residue of the pinesol would be removed.
Once I was done, I layed everything out on an anti-static mat and aimed a high powered fan at them to air everything out for any further odor that could be detected.
This wasn't a perfect solution, but it cut the smell down by at least 95% and prevented the parts from being at high risk for damage.
Seriously weak explanation man.
You should have gone for the
'I was cleaning the horse early one sunday - a really hot sunday, so i took off my pants. Then I found I needed to clean the horses back, from behind. So I got on a chair. It was about then that the horse bolted, propelling me and the chair through our living room window onto the machine'.
Or something. Definately the pants round the ankle bit though - thats crucial to getting the audience buy-in you need.
Caig makes a variety of industrial cleaners for both metal and electronics, some of which I'm sure would eliminate the smell. I suspect the "deox it" prouct would work on electronics, they have a product for cleaning aluminum as well that I don't recall. The best part is: its cheap to find out. Simply order a bottle (around 8$), and if it works -- order enough for all your servers.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Whenever I encounter a system that smells of dead meat I just wipe it & install linux.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. for the humour impared: this is a joke.
Why didn't you just say nothing at all then? The guy doesn't care about your conscience right now. He was looking for solutions.
Contact one of the companies that does disaster recovery after fires. The methods they use for getting rid of the smell of smoke might work.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Spray whatever you think cannot be harmed by water with it.
Caution: Contents under pressure
The smell of a rendering plant will be hard to remove, but this is how I remove the "beef scent" from tallow when I'm making soap.
Tyler Durden? Is that you!!!
"Problem with rubbing alcohol is it is generally not purely non-conductive, as well as it will take dust and other stuff in the computer and turn it into a nice conductive liquid."
Actually it doesn't matter whether it is conductive or not. The real idea is to keep it powered down while it is still wet.
I've actually accidentally (and not so accidentally sometimes, as in putting a calculator's inards into water and freezing it into a block of ice as a kid) poured water onto various circuitry, and so long as you dry the thing properly before powering it on, you are fine.
Some stuff may take longer to dry up though, as water could stay underneath some chips for quite a while.
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
If you are going to use rubbing alcohol, REMOVE THE HARD DRIVES FIRST, then soak everything in isopropyl alcohol. At least you'll have access to the data if the computers die from the deep cleansing process. You could gently rub the surface of the hard drives with isopropyl alcohol too, just be careful not to let too much alcohol get on to the hard drive.
I would think that one of those steam blowers that you see on the TV would work well, as long as you use distilled water and keep everything. Water is a great insulator. IIRC i saw something on the /. years and years ago about someone actually sinking thier motherboard in water as a cooling solution. you would still probally need to replace the powersupplies and disks, but the rest should clean up nicely.
If that fails, remove all the hardware from the cases and scrub the cases down with a bleach solution, then use rubbing alcohol on the PCB's.
As a disclaimer: I have not tried any of the above, but i think it is worth a shot. I would try it out on a PII 300 i have laying around first. But that is just me.
Good Luck.
-Ben
...anhydrous. The last part is very important, because - although rubbing alcohol is hydrophobic (you actually put it in your gas tank to get rid of water buildup), it is still often contained in some alcohol. Make sure you get anyhydrous, because what little water there is won't likely be ionized or contain salts. For about $10 worth of alcohol, you can fill up a sink, and use a standard $1.00 hardware store paintbrush to gently brush the circuit boards. As for drivers, they're pretty much goners. The hair, dead skin, and dust particulates that build up in there can't be practically cleaned out, so its just as cost effective to buy new cd and floppy drives.
Of course, wait for this crap to dry out before you go plugging things up. Also insist that the new computer room have air cleaning equipment, because even without effluent enhance air pumped in, the computers will pick up lots of trash.
Also note that this is an OSHA hazardous waste situation, so you should ask for a respirator and protective clothing before volunteering to do this.
Car air fresheners, baby. You ever seen the movie Seven? Hang 'em all over the room and put one in front of each blower fan... you'll be able to mask the odors in no time.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
Here you go the The Aranizer. I've listened to the guys spiel, and he's (his customers) had success with his gizmos even in mortuaries and such like. Sounds like it's what you are looking for. Small medium large home and office size and industrial sizes as well. Give em a call, ask questions.
... I would use Febreeze. 3 cheers to white-trash cleaning products! However, given the delicate electronics inside, why not try throwing some of that vaccuum powder stuff (the stuff you sprinkle on the floor before you vaccuum) at the intake fan while it's running. Then you can use some canned air to dust it off.
There was a guy in my class who bought a second-hand computer from the office of a fish-processing plant, and, you guessed it, the computer smelled exactly like a 100-year old tin of smoked sardines. The entire class shared this experience when he demonstrated his final-year project.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Mom says that freezing it down should kill the stench. Not really sure if it's 100% safe for your hardware, but, if you are in a place that it *VERY* dry, then you should be able to do it and survive.
In deference to the advertisers for the show, I won't reveal how it ended, but probably a good watch for someone facing a similar problem.
According to the Discovery Channel website, this episode is going to air again soon:
- Sep 14 2004 @ 10:00 PM
- Sep 15 2004 @ 01:00 AM
- Sep 19 2004 @ 12:00 PM
Good luck.The folks who come in to clean up after a fire use ozone generators to get rid of the smell of smoke that clings so hard to plastics. Something about broken-chain hyrdocarbons and the bonds in plastics. Ozone is VERY damaging to lungs, so stay out of the room and vent well before going in again, but that's what I'd try first. Just to be flame-bait, I'll say that home air-purifiers (which are niether food nor drugs, so no help from the FDA) should be banned as the quack devices they are. It might seem nice to smell that "ozone fresh" scent, but the ozone warnings in the big cities aren't kidding. IMHO
A regular gonster macher!
Put them in a room which has an air intake vent adjacent to a dutch field of tulips. Return in 4 years. Viola!
In the next episode of Mythbusters, Jaime and Adam put two dead pigs in a PC case and seal it up for 6 months!
What a coincidence to see this topic on Slashdot seeing as I just saw this exact topic on MythBusters the other day. In the episode (Season 2 Ep. 07, "Stinky Car"). The MythBusters are attempting to confirm the legend of the "Car so smelly it can't be sold".
The MB crew decided that a whole pig, rotting in the front seat would be the best emulation for a dead human body (as described in the myth/legend).
After consulting with professionals, they discovered the best and perhaps only way to COMPLETELY remove the smell of decaying organic matter is to use ENZYME-based cleaners that essentially digest the particles of matter.
At this point it should be noted that a by product of the decaying/decayed animal is Amonia, which is not only smelly, but potentially poisonous.
Unfortunately, the MB crew also concluded that no matter how powerful the enzyme wash, unless you get ALL the decaying matter out, the smelly thing will still smell. In the case of the car, they would have had to take the car entirely apart and washed each individual component in an enzyme wash, which is not cost effective by any means.
This wasn't on the A+ certification exam!
Get some new cases cheap - if they are standard atx type stuff, then go online and find some decent cases with good ventalation. If they are proprietary, ebay is your friend. Clean the logic boards as best you can with rubbing alcohol as posted above.
I tried to use Rubbing Alcohol to clean a keyboard that I had spilled coffee into once.
It still worked after the coffee, but I was adamant about having a clean keyboard, so I poured 70% Isopropanol into the keyboard, then let it dry for two weeks.
It never worked again.
I think the problem may have been that it was only 70% pure, the other 30% being water.
So get the very best quality isopropanol that you can, or ask the boys at the company to buy you a huge container of laboratory grade Ethanol or Methanol instead.
After that, put all the computers in an ozone chamber and I think you'll be fine.
Actually, some Servpro franchises do clean up crime scenes, as well as meth labs, fires, tornadoes, sewage, water damages, pretty much any kind of heavy-duty cleaning. A couple of the guys I work with are actually in Florida (we are from North Carolina) right now helping clean up after Francis. They were screaming for help after Charlie, they don't need Ivan too.
E pluribus unum
Abattoir: A public slaughterhouse for cattle, sheep, etc.
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
Little Tree Air Freshners.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
How about unplugging the equipment, opening it up and have a fan blow in it for a day or two? Humid air might be better since it could be better at outgassing the nasty odors. It's worth a shot, and offers the least dangerous method of cleaning as you still have the potential to break a critical server if you wash with alcohol,
AccountKiller
Wash what you sensibly can with pretty hot water and detergent. i.e. Don't immerse memory, cpu, or disk drives, but more or less everything else is pretty waterproof. Take the covers off the powersupply and take particular care to make sure you get it clean and dry. Make sure you rinse it all very well with lots of clean water. Then put it in the clothes dryer on warm and no-tumble for half an hour. While that's happening do the keyboard. You'll be amazed by what falls in there! Don't use powerful organic solvents, they damage plastic parts.
Twenty some odd years ago, one of my sons left the door to our freezer open. The freezer was located in the basement and the felony was not discovered until after a week had passed. Poultry, fish, pork and beef along with assorted vegetables were the main products in the decaying mass that was removed.
I tried:
Washing with soap
Washing with TSP (20 years ago it was the real stuff
Baking Soda in small containers on all shelves
Charcoal ( Charcoal Briquets broken into small chunks and scattered on the shelves
Then as I was bemoaning the fact that I would have to purchase a new freezer, a Salesperson in the local Montgomery Ward Store said "Newspaper", (She lost the sale but gained my everlasting adoration); it absorbs the odor. Wad it up, but not tightly, fill the freezer, and change it every few days.
Within a week to 10 days, the odor was gone. The stupid freezer is still in operation, probably keeping my electric bill higher than it needs to be.
But, it is odor free!
Newsprint may have changed in the past 20 years, but it worked once (for me).
Ozium is a commercial air freshner, odor killer. It has worked in cigarette/cigar smoke impregnated rooms with limited success for me recently (Real Estate Sales).
Good Luck!
Just wondering why Isopropyl is allegedly bad for cleaning LCDs? It seems like a volatile, inert solvent is exactly the sort of thing you would want on delicate equipment like LCD pixels, what's the catch in using it on screens?
Not quite a smell problem but its releated: is there any way to get rid of the discoloration in the plastic due to the idiots that smoked around the equipment?
Nothing i have tried has worked, as its embedded into the plastic.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Ever seen the TV show mythbusters? It's like snopes for TV. Anyway, they took the myth about the Corvette that smelled so bad that no one could clean it or sell it. They took two dead pigs and sealed them up in a Vette and sealed the whole thing up in a shipping container for a few weeks. Then tried to clean it.
They got a professional crew in, guys that clean out ambulances, crime scenes, etc. The car still reeked at the end of the show, and wound up getting sold for the engine & transmission.
You may be stuck with the stench. OK, random bad jokes : give them to PETA/ADL/vegan society. Give them to Cowboy Neal, no one will notice them over his stench.
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
WD-40 is a common solvent that does not conduct electricity and also displaces water. I have flooded a ThinkPad with it after knocking a pint of beer into the keyboard. It worked but the keyboard eventually got sticky. So if you prefer the odor of oil over rancid flesh...
Vapoorize it with Vapoorizer! http://www.vapoorizer.com/
Ok, that was cheap... ;-)
^D
Relatively high concentrations of ozone are remarkably effective at removing terrible odors from electronics. To make a long story short, our home was destroyed by toxic mold a few years ago. In the process of assessing the extent of damage, we tried everything possible to remove the stench from our goods. One thing we tried was ozone. After a week or so in a room full of rather high concentration (enough that you couldn't breathe it comfortably and it burns your eyes), things smelled fine -- for awhile. Unfortunately, it didn't kill all the mold, so it grew right back. Since your odors are a bit less tenacious than fungal mycotoxins, and since yours can't grow back spontaneously, I would bet ozone will fix the problem. Try contacting a local indoor air quality remediation company for rental of commecial ozone generators. If your handy with high voltage electronics, you can build an even better one yourself on the cheap (the technique is quite obvious to any high voltage experimentor). That's what I did. A small ozone generator left in the computer room indefinitely will also help neutralize any odors that remain. Good luck!
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Really, it's the only way. Nothing smells quite like a rendering plant and nothing gets it out. That smell is composed of volatile hydrocarbons which come out of the meat when it's cooked, and they get into anything porous -- even the surfaces of "solid" plastics. Insulation, wood, sheetrock, and even plastic that has been around that smell for any length of time will have that distinctive smell forever.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
it may not get rid of the stink, but itll mask it and make it smell disgustingly purfumy, which could be an improvement...
01100111 01100101 01110100 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110010 01100101 00101110
All you need to do is put the equipment in an enclosed area with a small ozone generator for a few days. The more air circulation the better and of course opening the equipment and removing all the dust you can beforehand will greatly reduce the ozonation required. I picked up a unit a few years ago for $25(US) to get rid of cigar odor. The results were incredible. I never realized how much the other areas of my house smelled until I ran the ozone generator in a closed room all night. The next day that room which previously reaked of stale cigar smoke smelled very clean and fresh. Anyway.. ozone is a very standard method of deodorizing things.
If something exists that does not need a creator (god) then why must the cosmos need one?
If the machines will really be kept in a room by themselves, a dab of Vicks below each nostril will keep you from gagging when you have to go in to work on them. But you'll look (and smell) funny if you forget to wash it off.
" I'm sure they'll appreciate it"
I got a better idea.. saudi arabia...
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
Isopropyl Alcohol (Rubbing Alcohol): This attacks some plastics. Figure out what kind of plastic the Socket for the CPU is made of, and then look up the chemical compatibility of that plastic with Isopropyl Alcohol. Repeat for all the other plastics which are in the computer. Don't forget, we are talking about immersion of all the parts into a giant VAT of Alcohol. You are not going to get anywhere trying to wipe the system with Q-tips or wipes.
Ozone. O3. This is harmfull to humans, causes respiratory problems. It is used to salvage expensive items which smell of smoke. The "ITEM" is put into a sealed chamber and Ozone is put in at high concentrations. Find out if Ozone will Oxidize the electical connections in the PC (you know, like where the RAM plugs in :)
The Solution: In the good old days, you would take the pc apart, and have the pieces vapor degreased using one of the CFCs that are now banned.
Nowdays, you are going to have to use some sort of water based wash, which is how computer parts in the USA are now cleaned. I'm sure if you ship them to Russia or India they are still using CFCs for this kind of work.
If you are serious about making this work, you are going to have to strip down the system completely, take out the ram, cpu, every connection which is going to trap water and not dry out properly before the corrosion starts on the contacts. Get some of the correct detergent for washing PC boards after soldering to remove flux, dip and agitate the parts in the (heated) detergent solution, rinse with clear water, dry in an oven, (or your attic in the summer for a week), reassemble, etc.
Whatever you do, don't just go slatering on rubbing alcohol, or other stuff which has not been tested and used on PC boards.
Don't immerse the disk drives, either, just wipe them down.
Here is a Google Link to get you started .
This is a serious amount of work, so I hope these systems are worth the labor that you are going to put into it.
I reckon some sort of BBQ sauce will work a treat - it'll make you love going to work the answer is probably some sort of active carbon air freshner to absorb the smell. just stick loads of the stuff around and it'll absorb the smell.
Do a google groups search, I suggest the group sci.chem, on this subject. You'll discover lots of suggestions for selectively oxidizing odors without hurting equipment. /. is a great place for the latest technical info, but your problem isn't technical or current. I'm sure butchers have been struggling with the very problem you describe since the 1900's
Hang a few of these in the room:
l at eM.asp?CatalogID=659&SubfolderID0132
http://www.gratefulpalate.com/Templates/frmTemp
First, you would need one soaking to loosen up the bond the fatty pork molecules have on the plastic.
Then, you need to wash away the emulsion.
*Then* you need to rinse the residue off.
I vote ozone - or low-temp baking.
Contact a company by the name of Hill Manufacturing. I am sure they have something that can take care of that.http://www.soap.com/
Honest to God, I had all sorts of tar and, actually, a little bit of blood, probably the amount that would fit into a cap of a two-litter bottle of soda. I really din't want to get my computer wet, but I really didn't care about this particular computer all too much. So what I did was took a space heater from my grandma and everything out of the case and put the space heater up as hot as it would go and left that going for a couple hours at a time, overall, it probably spent 14 hours in front of the space heater, but alas! It worked, there was a great mark on my floor which was easily cleaned, but again I could see the beautiful gree mainboard! Thing is, however, the smell increased in atractiveness a great deal, but wasn't back to full, so what I did was got some filters and put them over every fan hole on the chassis, which proved quite well. The one problem with the entire matter is that I could never get the monitor to smell quite right, but I'm gonna go out and buy some Febreeze, heck, it doesn't really matter anymore, anyway, I almost never use it now, but it still sits out and it'd be nice for it to not only look good as new, but at least smell better than a pile of dust. Good luck with whatever method you use though!
I like suggestions, but I don't like contributing towards them.
I used to work at Celestica on a hardware assembly line. We used an alcohol based solution to clean solder paste off the PCB's. Just use as pure an alcohol as you can get, and follow all advice about ventilation.
Drew Crampsie - Software Developer
Open Source Business : The Tec
I bet a lot of the smell is in the dust on power supply fans and components. I had computer that was from a smoking environment and just blowing it out and running it in a clean environment for awhile caused the smell to die.
After having just spent an afternoon cleaning up puppy poop from the living room, and cleaning puppy vomit from the back seat of the car, I immediately thought of Nature's Miracle as a possible clean up. It says it contains enzymes to help eat up odors, etc.
I'm not sure if it's necessarily approved to work on electronic equipment, but I think wiping the cabinets (inside and out) with it couldn't hurt. And trust me, if it can take the stink out of puppy poop, it will probably do the trick in your situation.
Note to potential puppy parents: BUY STOCK IN NATURE'S MIRACLE! THIS STUFF ROCKS!
The wise man in Zelda II said it best. "All else fails use fire." -- Wise man Water Town of Saria
----------
Why do I always get error code ura:A55h013?
http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/myth busters.html
n ky_car. html
Season 1 - Episode 7 - Stinky Car
More details here:
http://www.mythbustersfanclub.com/html/sti
They did clean it up, there are some companies that use special cleaners (don't know how abrasive they would be) to clean organic decaying material.
Ozone eats certain rubber parts in your computer.
A friend of mine was having CD-ROM drives die every two or three _months_. Seems that his consumer ionizer was putting out enough ozone to eat the belts away. He stopped using the ionizer, and the problem went away.
My guess is that ozone would also kill off hard drive gasket seals and even certain types of insulation material.
Bad idea. Don't go here.
I don't know if this will work for you, but it's cheap and not risky.
Shut down and unplug the equipment. Crumple up sheets of newspaper, and pack them into the open space of the equipment. Seal it up and give it a day or two, then pull out the newspaper and discard it.
Why do I think this might work? I once bought a used refrigerator. It had been stored with the door closed and the power off, and its inside smelled very bad. I scrubbed the insides with cleaner and let it run for a few days, and it still smelled bad. Someone told me to try stuffing it full of newspaper, close it up, and leaving it for a day. I didn't really think it would work, but it did; the odor was gone. Just gone.
I think that the way it works is just that the fibers of the paper soak up the smell.
Now, if the meat-smelling equipment has actual deposits of meaty chemicals (pork fat or whatever) then I'll bet you will need to wash the equipment with alcohol or something to get rid of it. But if you just have odors soaked into various plastic things, this might work, just as it worked on my old refrigerator.
If you try it and it does work, do please let me know.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
As cheap as PCs are, you will undoubtedly spend more time trying to clean the computers than they are worth.
Donate them and buy new computers.
Where in NC?
It seems like for dead animal stench the only viable way to remove it is with enzymatic agents... I'd say your _BEST_ bet is to call a Crime Scene Cleanup company (as did Mythbusters) and ask them if there's any methods to entirely clean an electronic object... Otherwise...i'd say finding an enzymatic hydrofluoroether so you can dunk the equipment would be a good bet...
A good coat of fire gets rid of unholy smells quite nicely!
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
I've found that the fumes from chlorine bleach can remove smells from my bathroom. Typically I'd wipe the bleach on a few surfaces, close the door, and come back in a few hours. Sometimes when I came back it smelled like a meadow after a thunderstorm, to quote a previous post.
You might want to try this experiment. Wipe a keyboard with enought cholorine bleach to generate fumes then seal it in a plastic bag for a few hours or overnight, and see how it smells afterwards.
Hope it works for you.
Stop killing pigs! Seriously. It is unnecessary, it is bad for the environment, it is bad for your health, and there are delicious alternatives. Not even to mention the horrendous conditions in which these pigs live.
P.S. Please don't mod me down just because you like meat. I am trying to make a rational argument.
Mmmmm...Hog fat
Carrington makes the CarraScent Odor Eliminator. It's used in hospitals and other places to remove odors such as feces, urine, and necrotic tissue. It works very well. Leave a bottle for guests that use your bathroom. It's less dangerous than matches. :)
use gamma hydroxy butrate, or GBL, its a hydroscopic solution used for cleaning greebboards and such.
Just let said dumbass use the pine sol then buy new, non-stinky machines.
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
O3 generators will help... You can wash some components of the hardware... Let's face it though, you can not wash the disks; so, they'll eternally smell like, well, your rendering plant. The other thing to consider is that in order to wash the components, you'll have to completely (and I mean COMPLETELY) disassemble the systems. In doing so (in spite of all the suggestions otherwise), you're bound to have some mortality (no pun intended). What I'm saying is that at least one of your systems will not power back up as expected.
If these machines contain any important data; then, I'd suggest you buy at a minimum a new storage array and transfer all the data to the new machine before you try to clean anything.
I'm not sure if anyone else has posted something similar previous to this, but on Myth Busters (a show on the Discovery channel) they stuck two dead pigs in a Corvette for like 2 weeks.
Result: no amount of cleaning, commercial solvents, enzymes, etc., was able to remove the smell. They ended up selling the thing for scrap for around $1000. The new owner was going to pull the engine, tires, and various other components. All metal and plastic compents that had been exposed to the stench retained the smell.
I'd personally buy all new, transfer the data, wipe the drives, and find some way of disposing of the equipment; the smell isn't going to go away.
Customer: Whats that smell?
Salesman: Once you get used to the smell of rendered hog fat, you'll wonder how you ever did without it.
now this wont kill the smell but it may help you deal with it. its expensive and somewhat geeky but this is slashdot right?
seal up all the holes you can that would allow air in/out of the computer and buy yourself an external water cooling unit like this one http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Mzc2
the radiator is external (methinks) and you will limit the air exiting the case.
try this at your own risk. if it turns you into a smoldering pile of carbon i take no responisbility! good luck
step 1: insure.
step 2: hulk smash!
problem solved. fun, too.
The charcoal wont clean the inside odor but you can put a charcoal filter on the intake vant of the computer room and it'll filter out any odor coming in. Also you could build small charcoal containers and put them infront of the computers exhaust fan which will filter out the smell. Anhter solution which im not sure how it will react with electronics is to put all the smelly items into a empty room and run an ozone generator in there. Ozoe will get rid of any smell there is but make sure no one is in hte room as the ozone will kill anything living. If you want the best charcoal filters get them from a company called Green Planet Hydroponics www.mygreenplanet.com They have access to some of the best charcoal for air filtration
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
PC boards are generally soldered en masse, either with an IR reflow oven or wave soldering. They use copius amount of flux to remove oxidation and other residues that form before soldering so a good joint forms. This flux is essentally a heat activated acid, and must be removed after soldering.
Most places use the equivilant of glorified dishwashers to wash the boards.
You have to use distilled water, no detergents. You might try using rubbing alcohol as a rinse to remove more grime than hot water alone will remove. The water could be up to 140 degrees Celsius (ie, steam) which will also help in the removal.
However there is little that you can do to completely remove the odor without also damaging the components.
Before you immerse or wash the boards close up any small holes, such as the processor socket, with a good quality removable tape. Cover parts that appear to have paper or fiber based construction. Cover the pci and isa connectors across the top, etc.
Use an oven to dry the boards.
Be aware that any efforts you make to remove the gunk which do not actually remove it may end up turning it into a worse situation than it already is operationally. You might turn it into a solvent that attacks plastic, for instance.
Another good option is ultrasonic cleaning, and there is an entire industry that is built around electronics cleaning using ultrasonic and mild solvents.
Sounds like it's too much work, IMHO, but I suppose that you don't have the option to completely replace everything. Good luck!
-Adam
You make your own soap?
I think we need to swap recipes. I've got some other things you might be interested in.
E-mail me a tylerdurden@aol.com
Hope to hear from you soon.
Just add some oil and get the room really hot (say 375 degrees Farenheit or so) - nothing beats the smell of bacon! Mmmmmm......
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
I don't know how to get the smell out of the existing equipment, but what you might want to look into is equiping the server room aircon with potassium permangate filters. They are widely used in sewage treatment plants to keep the control room fresh-smelling. It may be that with the filters, the smell will dissipate after a few month.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Or Iran....
The few times I've had to "disinfect" computers and other electronics with "creative" fragrances, I've used pure (reagant grade) ethyl alcohol [in a well ventilated and grounded work space] with solvent resistant gloves, an ultrasonic bath of coating safe electronics cleaner, tupperware dishes and miscellaneous hand tools (brushes, ball peen hammer, cold chisels, etc).. Ball peen hammers are very useful for removing encrustations and cooked on stuff.. You don't wanna know. Trust me.
If you can replace the cases, do so. If not, dissasemble, remove power supplies, remove encrustations, and wash with bleach and hot water, then surgical soap and water.
Standard floppy drives are replaceable. Too much of a hassle to clean.
Harddrives are basically going to have to be removed, wiped with alcohol wipes, and then wiped down with some odor-neutralizing spray. Replace the drives after you get complete backups if any have errors.
Powersupplies, if not replaceable, should be discharged (those caps can kill), blown out with compressed air, and then wiped down with alcohol wipes.
CRT Monitors are going to be a bitch to clean. Replace if you can. If you can't replace, discharge all the capacitors, coils and the tube. Blow out with compressed air. Wipe down any sealed board level components and sealed surfaces with alcohol wipes. Don't get anything on any coils. Allow everything to air for 24 hrs before reassembly.
LCD monitors should be disassembled, their cases washed with alcohol. Spritz down the electronics with coating-safe board cleaner. Use monitor-wipes on the LCD itself.
Cables can either washed by hand, in a dishwasher (NOT HOT WATER! Max temp about 80F) or replaced. Replacement is easier.
Keyboards, if replacements are not available, should have all batteries removed, large encrustatios removed by hand (use gloves!), blown out with compressed air, and be run through a dishwasher, again with no hot water, or washed with large amounts of alcohol. Allow to drain for at least 24 hrs (alcohol) or 48 hrs (water) under a fan before reusing.
Boards: Remove any major encrustations of hardened tiss.. err.. organic matter by shaking, scraping, or chiseling. Soak in ethyl alcohol to loosen clotted material (in my case, literally.. again, don't ask) enough to brush/wipe most of it off. Immerse in electronics cleaner in ultrasonic bath on low. Board comes looking almost brand new. Allow to dry under a fan for several ours. Test, and reinstall.
Replace all fans and filters if possible (easier than cleaning the damn things). Reassemble. Before closing the case, hang a couple of those pine-tree shaped air fresheners in the case.
There are also a lot of forensic clean-up information websites out there.. Google is your friend. Hope this helps..
I've got a room at home that smells like unholy hell, so I keep a bottle of Febreeze handy.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
ACL Staticide is the stuff you're looking for. It is just as good as isopropyl as a solvent but is also an antistat... computer shops use it to clean computers (we use #1010 where I work). If you have any left over, you can mop your floors/clean your carpets with it to make them static-free.
And it's even cheap!
My email is real.
Borax, when it comes to external plastics. Either a soak in a standard laundry dilution, or a 'scrubbing' with a damp sponge and the granules as cleanser. It's the best thing I've found for removing cigarette tar and other yellowings from white/beige casings; Pine-Sol or equivalents tend to leave sticky residues, alcohols don't dissolve everything, and bleach will tend to yellow stuff on its own.
... on through to my personal favorite: a hosing-down with WD-40, which will probably lift any lipid gunk right off, though you'll have to let the equipment air out for a week until it all evaporates off.
Obviously, don't get this anywhere near internal components when wet, as it'll be somewhat corrosive. For the circuitry, I'd probably risk anything from soap-and-water cleaning if it's hardware that's easily replaced if you kill any -- rinsed quickly with distilled/deionized water and dried in a hair dryer or sauna -- to a quick soak with alcohol + a small amount of Febreze or an enzymatic odor neutralizer (hopefully enough to nail the stink without leaving noticably conductive residue)
As a tip, don't clean hard drives by immersion; they generally have filtered air vents to let them equalize to atmospheric pressure.
I see people stacking those christmas trees that come in a variety of fruit smelling flavors in their cars, why not take a bunch of those and hang them all about the computers?
Sorry. See link #2.
I couldn't resist.
Our company manufactures all varieties of cleaning chemicals, and we make a deodorizer that was originally designed as part of a suite for treating pig manure.
It's environmentally friendly, has a pleasing odor, and I believe is non-conductive (can be used on electronics).
Lemme find out.
E-mail me at moornblade at graffiti dot net
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
there are a number of companies that do cleaning using frozen CO2, or a glycol based fogging agent (similar to fog machines used at concerts) It doesn't harm electronics and it cleans well. I don't know how it does with odors, but I work in an industrial facitlity and have seen it used on welding robots and related equipment. It makes grimy, sooty, filthy dirty machines look new
Imagine the smell of a Beuwolf cluster of these
If I wanted water, I'd ask for DiHydrogen Oxide!
Summary- wipe everything down with alcohol, trash anything painted along with the PSUs. I once let a friend borrow a system for several months-what I did not know what this his roomates were smokers and slobs, and the computer came back covered in a layer of brownish goo. I carefully cleaned off everything that I could with alcohol on q-tips and toothbrushes, washed the case with lysol, and let it all dry.
Most of the parts ended up well-cleaned and generally stink free. Unfortunately, the power supply was uncleanable without a total dissasembly that would have rendered it unusable, and the while the case appeared clean, once it warmed up it stank just as bad as before; as far as I can tell it was just some weird feature of the paint that kept me from getting the stink out.
Since I couldn't fit an Antec server case in the dishwasher, I wrote it off as a loss, tossed it out, put the parts in a new case, and donated it to my college-student sister.
I cleaned glue off a PCB once with flux cleaner. Not sure if this would help with odor...You would need a lot of it though. Maybe getting a whole bunch of those Fridge and Freezer baking soda boxes and put one in each system? Couldn't hurt.
My dad ran a business cleaning up after floods, fire damage and crime scenes (mostly suicides). Some things smell bad. Some require vomiting (like rotten meat). Some are just unpleasant but linger (like the acrid smoke smell from a fire).
Things you can't clean by washing can be put in a tent with an ozone (O3) generator. Ozone is what you smell after a lightning storm: the clean rain smell. Concentrated, it smells sort of like bleach, but sharper.
It's both toxic and cleaning because (as I recall) Ozone happily oxidizes anything it contacts, preferring to be regular O2 + a free radical oxygen atom. The free Oxygen can bond with a molecule of stank and modify it to something less stanky, or it can, say, attach to a molecule in a cell wall and kill the cell.
It's like an efficiently burning fire in slow motion. I think oxidation is part of what makes your skin age; as you age, the damage created by environmental oxidation is repaired less and less by your body, until you just wither away. That's the idea behind taking certain vitamins that are supposed to block the damaging effects of free radicals in your body.
Of course, when you have something that stinks, you'd prefer it be destroyed by oxidation.
Unfortunately, plastics are among the hardest things to clean because they can absorb odors and its very hard to suck the stink back out. Stink isn't just something on the surface you can wipe off in most cases.
Spraying perfume just adds a new smell on top, which might not outlast the stink itself. I think Fabreze is a corn based chemical that works along the same principle as ozone. However, it leaves a residue on hard surfaces; it's designed for fabrics.
Sometimes when you have, say, a guy who dies alone in a house and his body fluids drain through the floor, or, in a moment of anguish, someone decides to end it all using a shotgun, you have a situation where you just need to throw things away.
Gnarly.
We had a small house fire which deposited tons of oily soot everywhere. Sort of like having 10,000 people smoke in your house for a year. The semi-professional house-restoration folks scrubbed the walls with various liquids, which got most of the gunk off, then they brought in these high-falootin ozone generator boxes. A few hours of ozone and the smells were all gone. *But* anything made of rubber fell apart, and *all* the ball point pens dried up. Oil in door hinges siezed up. Assuming there's rubber or similar parts in the computers, and oil in various fan and disk bearings, I would NOT recommend this very effective treatment.
This will no doubt get lost in all the noise, but I work at an Electronics company, and I regularly repair customer returns that have been covered in..well.. you name it - we get returns of sensors that range from being covered in mud to god-knows-what chemicals that make you itch and eat off tracks...anyway;
There are a range of producs called 'Micro Care' that come in a bottle, all you need is a brush, cloth, and patience. It's alcohol based, and will not damage anything on the PCB, plus it evaporates away pretty fast. I've used this stuff on gold plated connectors, processor boards, drive parts, and it's been nothing short of fantastic.
You will be able to just pull cards, scrub them clean (carefully) wipe them off, and they will be dry and ready to go again in minutes, and the stuff even smells nice.
'Araxel' is the one we use, but I beleive they do allsorts, just google for it - we get ours from Toolnet in the UK, but it's imported from the US if I remember correctly.
Don't forget to hang a 'magic tree' in the flow of a fan or two to get rid of that last bit of stink!
This is a problem that frequently comes up in police investigations when a body is undiscovered for a long period. The smell is soaked into the carpet and floorboards. It can't be washed away. The answer is a portable ozone generator. It floods the room with a high concentration of ozone and destroys the chemicals responsible for the smell.
Ozone generating air cleaners are used extensively in greenhouses and hydroponic applications. Products made by people like http://www.uvonair.com/ may meet your requirements as long as you are careful to match ozone output to the volume of your workspace. Too little won't work very well and too much can be hazardous.
About the best you can do is activated charcoal filters in the air supply. Perhaps zeolites. The stinkies are low molecular weight organics that are (usually) harmless but mighty offensive. You should be able to find air filtering outfits that deal with this issue.
Don't murder defenseless animals? Nah, that would be too easy. Seriously though, perhaps you could manufacture some computer safe bleach using Fluorinert to dissolve the chlorine rather than water. Or just find a less filthy business, whatever.
Why didn't you just say nothing at all then? The guy doesn't care about your conscience right now. He was looking for solutions.
Since when is that the criterion for a post adding to the discussion? You must think Ask Slashdot is a free consulting service we are running here. The discussions are for the benefit of everyone who participates, not just the OP, and posts that don't contain solutions are still allowed.
Several months ago a PHB posted an Ask Slashdot article asking for someone to write a shell script for his company. He was promptly excoriated by hundreds of unemployed geeks for being a cheap bastard. (Although his Ask Slashdot article was a success because someone did post a three-line shell script that met his stated requirements.) I don't remember any demands for downmoderations on posts with no shell scripts in them, or suggestions that people "just say nothing at all then" if they didn't have a shell script to post.
If someone from a corporate pig farm asks how to get the pig stink off his computers, posts about corporate pig farms in general should be expected and are entirely on topic for the discussion. The OP opened the door, and there's a lot to say about them. They crush family owned farms which can't compete with the vast economies of scale- which can only be achieved legally thanks to extensive lobbying and political corruption. The farms enjoy exemptions to environmental laws that still apply to everybody else. They regularly cause environmental disasters every time there is a flood. The stench they generate destroys real estate prices for miles downwind. People have lost everything when these farms get built near their homes. And unlike nuclear plants, jails, waste incinerators, or sewage treatment plants, NIMBY is entirely justified here since corporate pig farms do not serve the public interest at all. We aren't allowed to talk about this?
Frankly, 600 posts about rubbing alcohol does not make a very interesting discussion.
Putting the vent from the sewerage works in front of the intake will overpower the pig smell
The memories of a man in his old age are the deeds of a man in his prime - Floyd, Pink
Ozone _destroys_ rubber.
This means all the electrolytic capacitors on your electronics will be toast, at the very least.
Computers from vegetable packing plants don't end up smelling like shit.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Carbon Dioxide.
If you can get the equipment into an air-tight device, and pump CO2 into it, the smell will be eliminated. (I'm not sure how long it needs to stay sealed, but I think 2-3 days is the norm.
I know a guy who specializes in removing nasty odours from cars. (He also does work for the police Dept. Removing the smell of decayed bodies out of cars so the evidence can be collected.)
He srrounds the car in a plastic "bubble", pumps out all the air, and then injects CO2 into it.
All Bad odours are gone.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Ultrapure water.
They use it to clean circuit boards right after they put all the components on them.
Where can you get it?
Good question. I've heard that some plants that use it to clean circuit boards will sometimes sell off water they don't need...or maybe you can rent lab time at one such plant? Don't know.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
ozone destroys electronics. it will destroy the rubber in the electrolytic capacitors and other components and render your electronics totally useless.
Dude, that is a sadistic sig. It's been too long; I had to use Debug to read it.
I figure by 2030 or so my 6-digit UID will be something to brag about.
...it is 90 precent isopropyl. Back in the day when I did engineering consulting for systems powered by Data General Nova 4 mini-computers, we used 90 persent isopropyl for everything from cleaning disk heads to deodorizing. The 70 percent stuff (rubbing alcohol) leaves redisdues the effects of which I'd rather not remember.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
There is a water based product called Microbe-Clean made by Georgetown Environmental Group that contains nonpathogenic microbes that break down animal waste and odors. I know that it works great with dog piss and cat puke, it may work with pig smells. It is water based so it would have to be used with care on computers. I get it at Whole Foods Market http://www.wholefoods.com/
and see what they use to get rid of smells like dead possums in the air conditioning ducts. They gave me some powerful one-drop-at-a-time stuff that worked.
I am a vegetarian yet I find that hilarious, should I feel guilty or just say 20 "hail daisy"s?
Windows is only $500 if your time is worthless.
Okay, so you murder hundreds of animals a day and now youre sad because you cant get the stench of death off your PC? Go fuck yourself.
http://www.thelung.org
Bah, just beef up the machine's motherboard and graphics card and you'll be immersed in the world of Doom 3 just a step futher! :-)
Just vent the air from the Power Supply fans back into the Pig plant. Then have a intake for fresh air- cleaning the systems is too much trouble- your room will smell like Pigs feet in two weeks anyway unless you guys wear booties and bunny suits walking around anyway -- two cents!
I remember reading once about a car that someone had been murdered in and his corpse left to rot for some time before it was discovered. The myth is that the car never could be cured of the aweful stench on the interior of the car that came out on warm days, even after completely stripping the car down to the bare metal.
Apparently the myth was tested by some guys a few years ago using a rotting pig carcas, and they determined that it was true. They had all kinds of people try cleaning the car. They even stripped out the seat and the cloth parts. It still stank.
So I don't think that you'll ever be successful.
It was "Myth Busters", and the myth they were busting was "can we stink up a car so bad no-one will buy it?". Short answer: kind of. They put 2 pig carcasses in a car, and tried to seal it up with packing tape, this didn't work so good so they put it into a shipping container. They left it there for two months. They consulted with a crime scene cleaning company, and did a coroners van (best quote ever: "that stuff ain't popsicle drippings, clean it up good"). So anyways they tried to clean the car, ended up ripping all the fabric/seats/etc out, using special enzyme cleaners to break down the animal matter, but it still stunk. They eventually sold it for a few hundred bucks to a guy who was going to part it out. Reason I know this in detail: it was on tv last night.
Try FABREEZE also goto grocery store and purchase 20 pound bag of charcoal only the plain stuff, not hickory or anything else pulverize it with a hammer to a fine powder [you may need more bags] remove the floppy and cd drives put tape over any connector ps2, usb, etc now bury the entire PC in it inside the box and all _covered_ leave it for a week or 2 remove pc blow out all powder and reassemble spray with Fabreeze and let dry ......lather, rinse, repeat as needed.....
Any component of the system (which is not sealed, and has no power applied) can just be washed with soap and water. We used to do this back in the old VT101A days. Simply remove the components (HDD must be omitted) and scrub them with dish soap under luke warm running water. A simple baking (= 125 deg.) for 20 minutes will dry everything and ensure that there is no loss from overheating. If you're too afraid to try that, the only other way to get rid of any type of system grime is 99% Isopropyl alchohol. (Definately don't use rubbing alch.) Good luck with your problem.
You're approaching the problem from the wrong direction. Hire employees who can't smell.
Just donate the equipment to one of the Hamas "charity" front groups, and take the tax deduction.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
They handle many nasty smell situations at beef packing and rendering facilities. Solution would probably include some enzymes to chew up most of the stuff and chlorine dioxide to kill off the bacteria, etc. They probably handle the odor control systems for stink exiting the plant too so there might be a tech at your plant every week or so who'd help you.
There are several other companies that handle this type of situation as well.
http://www.ashchem.com/ascc/drewind/
Firefox &
PETA- People Eating Tasty Animals.. Donate the parts to me, I loooove the smeel of pork!!!! Kill MORE pigs so I can get it cheaper too!!!!
If Kerry was the answer, it must have been a stupid question.
The UN - The largest "political" cause of death.
Ever hear of the super cheap Corvette because the guy died in it and you can't get the smell out? They tested this Urban tale on MythBisters (Discovery Channel). They put 2 pigs in the front seat of a Vette and left it for 2 months. Then they tried to clean it. Best bet is for an enzyme based cleaner that helps break down the molecules. They ended up giving up and even had a hard time selling the thing afterwards.
tabooki.com
Send you computers to a country that wishes it smelled like that.
:-D
Not to mention save on labor costs.
Get techs who chain-smoke.
They'll mask the pig stench within a week.
-J
Even better than steam is probably supercritical CO2, which can mimic various non-polar organic solvents by varying Temp and Pressure. Polar solvents can be mimicked by adding small amounts of other solvents-- it's used for cleaning wafers, decaffeinating coffee, and is moving into drycleaning. It's environmentally friendly-- generally no new CO2 is made in collecting the CO2 for it.
t /7938no tw2.html
here's a link:
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/topstory/7938/prin
Shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, what was left of the Evil empire (eastern version) was having a very difficult time dealing with dismantling their old weapons systems. What everybody was scared shitless of was that the (now out of work) soldiers and scientists would end up selling weapons and weapons-grad, uhm, parts to the highest bidder (with no regard to nationality or purpose).
So the US ended up paying to help the former soviet states dismantle many of their former weapons systems.
In any case, a friend of mine ended up working for a company that was assigned to the project.
A Canadian, paid by the Americans to work on a Russian nuclear weapons system.
For me, the part of about FBI helping to clean up a soviet Weapons research lab is actuall the second most believable part of the story. (the most believable being that a plastic tent might actually do the job.(especially if you could set it up so that the smelly side had negative air pressure.
The resto of the story kinda, well, stinks.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Years ago I went on fishing trips with some guys who liked their really 'stinky' cigars. it was rustic camping complete with outhouse. I used to bring along a one ounce bottle of some stuff called 'DabIt' that I found at a place selling parts for ovens, refrigerators etc. One drop of the stuff put in an ash tray and placed on top of the frige got rid of the odors in a few hours. Caution: DON"T SNIFF IT or it will burn out your nose for smelling ANYTHING! Used with caution, it even cleared the air in the out house! I don't know if it is even available any more.
then you won't smell the rotting pork odour.
Oh well, what the hell...
Fat doesn't evaporate. It also has an interesting tendency to bond with plastics. If you've ever tried to get the stink of some fatty dish out of tupperware, you've experienced this phenomena.
Ask your local cops who they use in crime scene clean ups. The guys who clean up after dead bodies have the technology you're looking for. In the previously mentioned episode of Myth Busters, I believe they ultimately appealed to these type of experts.
Good luck.
I rise the dust off my PCI cards and cables about once a year. If you dry them fast and let them air out they will be fine.
Phillip
The deer mouse might be dead and the odor gone, but any hantavirus present will live on. I doubt that Febreeze is an adequate antidote!
Just a thought... the battery is probably a good thing to remove but if the caps still have any juice in them, wouldn't the most likely thing for them to short either be themselves, or the connected path (which won't overvolt as the cap won't be any more than any connected circuitry can take anyhow).
Unless you're really unlucky it should be ok. I just cleaned up a computer lab which had a heavy roof leak overnight. We had some dead CD-ROMs, and 4 keyboards which didn't work quite right. The computers themselves were fine after drying for several weeks, and even the monitors (some of which the leak was right over and thus soaked nicel) were OK - and they've got much nicer sized capacitors than your standard mobo.
I might leave off the PSU though, they're fairly cheap to replace and I wouldn't want to soak down one of them...
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
Beware of heating them or causing them to burn though. In a small room (i.e. apartment, dorm, etc) they can possibly release enough CO2 if combusted to be dangerous.
... at the office. Apparently my coworker (who's been there a long time) used it to clean reel-to-reel tapes. He still has it, and it's still crystal clear and it smells like all kinds of NASTY. We used it to clean some equipment that had been outside (with birds) and it did a real good job.
It even has an ABC price tag on it. Hilarious...
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
A restaraunt was going into a building that used to be a fish market. Place smelled like fish in a big way. The owner stuffed the place with potatoes for a month. They absored all the ordors. At last that's the story told about Hunans on Sansome when it opened in the early 80s.
There's more to it than this.
You may consider immersion in halogenated organic solvents like trichloroethylene or methylene chloride. Non-flammable, non conductive. Does not dissolve most polymers. Use super-adequate ventilation and dispose of solvents properly when finished!
Maybe Freshmeat.net could help?
... the meat in question is very fresh now, is it?
Well, if you decide to try the second posters solution, I have some spare cans of HFE if you want them. Get ahold of me here if you do!
Words are only yours until someone else uses them...
There should be room inside the machines for a hanging air freshener, as you would find in any car (like mine). Try that. Since the fans in most machines are plastic, and they would tend to absorb more odors than metal, you might want to swap those out as well. As a last resort, gut the computers, and swap out the guts with those of the corp. executives (or their immediate peons) computers. The metal cases (oh wait, are these Dells with cheap plastic cases?) shouldn't hold the smell too much... Fascinating question. I'm going to go fry up some fatback now, thanks.
did you win a free ipod? build a case for it here
IAQM.com is a service that does air quality. They can eliminate all kinds of things from the air, including odors... They use a "fogger" to do it.
I'm one of those "gifted" kids that can "change the world" if I'd get off my ass and stop reading slashdot.
Buy new computers *now*. Do not put the old computers in the new office. If
;-)
you do, the new office will smell of its own accord in a few weeks, and then
replacing the computers won't solve the problem.
Alternately: there are a handful of aromas known to mankind that are stronger
than pigs. Ammonia, PVC cement, Ranch salad dressing, that sort of thing.
Put some of *that* stuff in the office, and nobody will complain about the
pig smell
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Bathe everything in tomato juice, scrub well, then steam clean them, afterwards rinse throughoughly with alcohol.
moox. for a new generation.
http://www.med-chem.com/MSDS/100_iso.htm
That's all I'm going to say. I've worked with all the solvents you've mentioned, in larger quantities than any human being should rightly come in contact with (chemicals plant) and I've got to tell you: They All Suck.
I lost a gf because I was so irritatable after being exposed to IPA (Iso Propyl Alcohol) that I simply couldn't stand to see her. I'd come home, she'd be on the couch, have dinner ready, wearing something provocative... and the only thing that would pop into my head was "God damnit she's here again".
CNS symptoms are nasty for solvent exposure to IPA. I can't even imagine what would have happend if, as you suggest, I had drunk it.
Once I got laid off from that job and no longer was exposed to the fumes, my personality came back to normal. The ex-gf and I are still friends, but she's still doesn't believe me entirely that it was the fumes (tho she's comin around now and then).
Stay away from that crap and remember: Even Alcohols good, Odd Alcohols Kill.
I had to deal with this problem when I worked in an experimental physics environent -- and found that mice liked to live on the heatsinks for the magnet drivers. Guess what: mouse piss conducts! This is really bad when you're running delicate high gain amps. So....
We tried everything. Alcohol. Solvents of all different kinds. Nothing worked until I brought some simple green in from home. This is what you do:
Remove all the water sensitive components from the case (hard drive, CDROM, etc,...) Leave the cover off of the case. Put it into a deep sink and wet it with warm water. Then scrub it out gently with a 10:1 solution of water and simple green. Use a large soft brush for the major areas and acid brushes to get in the the corners.
Rinse it out a few times with warm water.
Get a heat gun (used for shrink tubing) or a really good hair dryer or space heater and blow dry the unit for about 45 minutes, turning as needed. Allow to air dry for 24 hours. Re-install/replace HD, CDROM. Smoke check.
Our chassis always looked brand new after this treatment.
-- Loudog
If you really want to keep this stinky computer going, try putting a Sharper Image ionic breeze unit behind the blower fans. Also, make sure all the front fans are sucking air and the rear fans are blowing air out that back over the ionic breeze. I assume you can disinfect the outside with febreeze or some other agent that breaks down organics, but you aren't going to get the stench out of the inside very easily.
:)
Or if it's still under warranty, try to RMA some of the big pieces like the powersupply and motherboard
while illegal for most purpose (might still be legal as a cleaner where you live, better ask a lawyer though), gamma butyrolactone is an effective and non damaging electronics cleaner.
it can be purchased in canada from some vendors (ontario? better look around some labs). there's a lot of papers to fill out and you might even get a visit from the GRC (canadian evivalent to the FBI) to make sure you're using it legally.
lots of trouble, but it should get rid of the stench. or if you're feeling adventurous, you could try the other poster's methods of sticking it in a dishwasher...
Several quarts, in glass pie pans, around the intake air vents. It will oxodize organic matter,
and the smell ( P. U. ) will dissipate when you remove the amonia. Overnight should do it. Dont
breathe the fumes. May eat metal.
Buy some 150 litres of _PURE_ acethon, pour it into a big bath or something, and soak the box in.
Leave it in for approx. 6 hours.
It will solve the problem... Micro$oft style.
I had this problem with an arcade game that sat in a bar. It reeked of stale cigarette smoke and made the room it was in smell as well.
I sprinkled arm and hammer baking soda around inside, let it sit for a week, and then vacuumed it out. I had to do this twice. That solved the problem.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Isopropyl alcohol, as you correctly noted, is not particularly toxic (at least not with occasional exposure, as another reply points out). Drinking it will, however, make you toss your cookies but good. I had a cousin foolishly drink a bunch as a "look at me I want to die" stunt, and the projectile vomiting and dry heaves that resulted just ended up with her unable to talk for about a week. (Trust me, this was a GOOD thing.) This is not something a person looking to get drunk would want, as they're usually fighting nausea to some degree to start with.
Using it as a topical antiseptic relies on the principle that it's not enough to damage you significantly, but it's more than sufficient to kill any (non-viral) microbes it touches. Because you apply it directly as needed, the concentration at the site is going to be very high, while the amount that you intake systemically will be very low. You wouldn't particularly want to drink iodine, saturated salt water, or hydrogen peroxide, but applying one of those to a wound remains a viable way to clean up.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Why is this modded 4? What is it you think they mix into beer, vodka, gin, etc?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
to my knowladge, all of the internal circutry of a computer (IC's and whatnot) is watertight. As long as everything is fully dried before the power is flipped back on, Pine Sol might do the trick.
Your problems will come when somebody tries to use something corrosive or sticky.
After scrutinizing everything else posted, I'm surprised no one mentioned MythBusters - particularly because they've used dead pigs on several tests - detect buried bodies when the ground, including sidewalk, is ripped up, bodies buried, and sidewalk replaced - stench bubbling up through.
... you can guess the response. They finally sold it for parts.
One episode dealt with the issue of "...can a car which someone died in be cleaned up enough to be sold again?" They bought a fairly nice Corvette (although the owner was a bit hesitant when he heard what his baby was going to be used for), tossed two dead pigs in it, sealed the car as much as possible, then stashed it in a storage chamber to keep it out of the way.
After some period of time (I don't remember how long it was), they donned bio-hazard suits & masks & set to pulling the car out & rescuing it (the car). Even with the masks on, it seemed pretty unbearable for Adam & Jamie. They worked pretty hard, using practically any suggested remedy they had heard of (and some of their adjunct folklore consultants).
IIRC, they brought in a specialty firm to look at the situation. The owner didn't have any "assistance" for dealing with it (no suit, no mask, seemed unaffected -- they didn't say if he was one of those without a sense of smell). Anyway, his crew spent a lot of time using their proven techniques and nothing worked. They finally stripped the car of anything capable of holding an odor: hard & soft plastic, foam, straps, you name it. By the time they were done, all which was left was metal.
Finally, it was time to [try to] sell it. People were rather inquisitive (regarding price and why they were so coy) and of course, the windows were up so as not to provide any advance notice to a prospect what might be lurking. Every time the door opened, however,
Use Ozium. It is the product used by funeral homes to remove the smell of death. You'll probably also want to use compressed air to remove all the dust bunnies that have accumulated inside the case. If the smell is really bad, you would probably want to mount a few aduo-dispensing speayers in the room too.
Hold on there big guy - you just might be onto something with that pool idea.
Instead of just using the pool to clean your data center, you could double it up as a liquid cooling system! Plus, you have a something to do for recreation during breaks. Forget about boring talks at the water cooler, just jump in your data center for a swim!
(Maybe if you use some sorta Jello liquid. I don't think Jello is conductive, and then you could also drink it, which means you could also trash your water cooler, saving your company further money!)
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
You can rent an Ozone generator which is comonly used for removing smoke orders from hotel rooms.
Ozone destroys biological materials, and is used for sterilizing water and other materials.
Because this is all computer hardware you could probably seal the room, crank the ozone generator up to max and give it a good week long exposure. That ought to put a significant dent in the smell problem.
NOTE: We aren't talking about those cheap air ionizers here, those wont touch this problem. A professional ozone generator can be rented from a industrial equipment rental shop, and the ozone output will be high enough to be dangerous! Don't go into the room until after the ozone has cleared.
You obviously haven't seen him on TV, it's clear he doesn't bathe.
A shop that could safely use trichlorotrifluoro-ethane to clean the assemblies might be a good choice. Trich dissolves organic oils and such and has a long history of being used to clean electronic and electrical equipment.
Don't try this at home...
--
Tomas
I cannot speak to rendered pigs, but the remedy I used to correct the truly evil smell in a house I renovated was: sodium hypochlorite in weak solution (Clorox cut with 50% water) followed by Febreze.
The odor was a compound of the scent of American cockroaches (the big flying ones, anyone who has smelled it knows), organophosphate pesticides, exploded jars of preserves with who-knows-what growing therein and generating the gas, cat piss, human piss, tobacco smoke, shit, and air freshener. I mean... I'm tellin ya...
So. Obtain a pump sprayer. Mix the bleach and water and thoroughly hose down the disassembled machines. Do the same with full-strength Febreze. For your application, rinse with water and finish with undiluted ethyl or isopropyl alcohol with as low water content as possible. Shake off excess liquid. Allow to dry in a well-ventilated location. That's all you can do.
How do I know the way is like this? By means of this.
Ok, it's really scary when the article that gets the most replies on Slashdot has to do with methods to remove the smell of decaying flesh from computer components.
Who are you people? Nevermind. I don't want to know.
Use charcoal briquets. In the cancer wards, they'll put three or four regular barbecue charcoal briquets on a small cloth on the window sill or next to the radiator. If it can take out those smells, it can't hurt in this case. I'm not sure if I'd put them inside the computer but somewhere in the vicinity of the air outflow of the computer ought to offer some measure of help.
I lived in a college dorm for a while, so I got your solution.
All the money you will spend on cleaning services and product, use that money on scented candles.
Scented candles, Plugins and other aroma room filling things will not cover up the smell, but after enough it will completely desensitize everybody's nose and they won't smell a thing.
Modern components however are made to face a dishwasher, and can withstand it nicely, unless the components are defective to begin with (like some bad electrolytics on motherboards).
Darn it, looks like my iBook was defective. Oh wait -- did you say dishwasher, or washing machine? I thought the spin cycle would really shake loose any remaining dirt...
If you had enough time (months), you could leave the machines someplace where flies and other insects could eat off any nasty bits of protein and other goo. Also, bacteria will naturally putrify the substances into something less nasty. Once the biological stuff has been degraded, clean out the unit with water or your cleaner of preference.
Me email iz skyewalkerluke at microsoft's free email service.
I didn't ask if they make sure the police know about the body/evidence before removing... tempting for a gag, but not something I want to try from a phone that's either tracable or in a public place these days. Of course, since they do specialize in cleanups for crime scenes such as for murders, you probably want to make sure that the server room geeks have showered before asking for "persistant odor abatement." =)
Again... yes, those folks are real, please don't bother them unless you have a job. They also sell T-Shirts with the "Crime Scene Cleaners" logo on them-- looks like a great gift for your favorite black hat.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
You probably want to use "denotation" not "connotation". Denotation is what the word means. Connotation is what you imagine a word to mean by metaphor and allusion. Since the dictionary definition of "aromatic" specifically contains the very facts you cite, "aromatic" denotes, not connotes, the facts.
Is of course WD-40. Try a spray can first, and if you like the pleasing scent as much as we do, then buy it a gallon at a time and hose down everything within reach. Also makes a decent insect repellant.
If WD-40 won't fix it, then it's just broke.
"And now, Frank N. Furter, your time has come. Say 'goodbye' to all of this, and 'hello'... to oblivion!"
Let me guess... you're moving computers out of the Hormel world headquarters and SPAM factory in Austin, Minnesota?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Just keep this equipment in its own server room with an exhaust fan sucking more air than the dedicated A/C unit supplies. If you're worried about odors escaping, use one-way vents in the door to cut down on the whistling through the door jamb. If the dedicated A/C shuts down, the exhaust fan will keep sucking, if it goes out, get a crapload of stickups.
rent a commercial ozone machine. :)
Does your company also smoke any meats? If they do, I would assume they use large facilities to do so. As such, you could store the affected machines in the smoker for a month and hope the new, aromatic smell replaces the stench (it should -- smoke is extremely effective at leaving a scent).
Take a dump in each machine; they sure won't be complaining about the former porky pig (now deceased).
Try peeing in every third one or so, just so you don't get bored.
This is one way to get management to buy new machines. Tell them "Here's a nice new machine. It's as fast as shit" and see what they say after you set it up in their office at 5pm on a friday before a holiday.
If nothing else, you didn't like working there anyway.
Where's Robin Hood? We could kinda really use him now.
If it's MS reformat and reload. SCO will always stink. OS X and the other UNIX / LINUX variants just don't stink. Simply move them to their new house and everything will be fine.
But my first PC was bought from a guy who also ran a Pizza shop. I smelled pizza sauce almost every time I turned that puppy on.
Use a drivebay as a baking soda box holder.
Seal the new computer room completely, install an air lock and fill the room with CO2. All staff and visitors will need an air supplied respirator to enter the room and will thus be protected from the aroma. As and added bonus, your room will be completly flame retardent!
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
Then you buy new equipment. Smell gone.
(I think working in an abattoir-odored data center for any extended period of time would turn me into a vegetarian, all PETA jokes aside.)
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
I'm an ER nurse. I deal with stong smells on a daily basis. Rank, rancid, fetid, rotten infected... you name it I've smelled it and probably cleaned it up.
Let me tell you, that nothing but nothing sucks the smell out of the air better than idoform gauze. Yup. It's gauze intended for packing abcesses. Just hang some from the ceiling or wave it around in the air... pulls the smell right out. Hang it next to whatever befouls your nostrils and the stench will be gone. No liquid vs electronic componets needed.
You can find it here.
consider what the dag coating of a CRT really is. you have an inside metal shield of vaporized aluminum on the CRT inside the vacuum. you then spray the outside of the tube with conductive graphite lacquer to create a dag coating -- that stands for Deposited Anode, Graphite. the anode is the positive accelerating charge for the electron beam. it's half of (in the case of large color tubes) 45,000 volts, or half of (in smaller tubes) 15,000 volts. the aluminum shield inside is grounded, that's the other half of the 4th-anode power circuit.
two conductors with an insulator between them, last time I read my basic electricity, is a capacitor. 15 minutes to several hours after you turn off a color set, the 4th anode voltage can still knock you on your ass, if you're lucky and that's all that happens. I've got a screwdriver that might still be stuck in a rafter in devils lake that proves it, if you can get into the tv station up there to see for yourself.
no, you better use a good insulated HV fishpole grounded to the chassis before you go poking around CRTs. slip it under the anode connector and touch the metal clip there for 5 to 10 seconds before you remove the anode connector.
oh, it's not nice to hit the dag coating with lots of hot soapy pressurized water... you'll peel it off, it's lacquer. cold, low pressure, don't work it hard. or you'll lose the dag and won't raise a picture on the screen again.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Hang one of those little trees from the edge of your power supply. Use the same scent in each machine and voila...your whole office smells like new car scent.
If i'm not mistaken ozone attacks the aromatic ring portion of odiferous compounds.
o3 can attack pretty much any double or triple bonds in organic compounds. the benzene ring has (pseudo-)double bonds, so it's susceptible, but it's certainly not the ONLY site ozonolysis can take place.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
My company is one of America's largest beef and pork producers
Hmm... Did you consider the disservice you'd do to your employer by posting the link to the rendering plant? I, for my part, am considering going vegan after reading that - and it was not the part about pesticides and the like, believe me...
All you've got to do is back everything up, use the Pinesol yourself and say, "Oops, sorry boss, looks like we'll have to do that upgrade after all."
You get new servers, fresh scent, and no moving expenses.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Why didn't you just keep the amps away from the mice?
With great power comes great fan noise.
Mmm, hog fat.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Just open up the cases and let tongue go to work. Dishes are a breeze now that I have a dog.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
... pork whiskers! Eventually the hardware will fritz out due to the accumulated pork whiskers and you'll have to replace it anyway. Problem solved.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
I can't believe they wasted a Corvette. They couldn't find some POS 1988 Corolla or something? Bastards.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Near my hometown about 10 years ago there was a brand new porsche 911 for sale.... for only a few 1000$.
THe reason: The owner gassed himself in it... and wasnt found for quite some days...
And nobody wants a nice porsche whose leather and all smell like death people...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Any reason why the company doesn't just replace the computers? I mean, if they are typical PC's, it would be cheaper to replace them, reload the software/data, etc. than to clean them. Downtime surely isn't a problem (will be needed to clean them). If it is high end stuff, well, it is probably worth paying someone to do it.
On a side note, who is the idiot who designed/signed off on the ventilation system for the old location? Possibly the one too cheap to replace the computers?
The whole myth was that people would find really nice sports cars on sale for cheap, but aren't sellable due to the odor.
I attend Anime and Gaming cons regularly, I think the dead fucking pigs would be an improvement.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
You work for Compaq, don't you?
I am an Architect and Have heard of a few cases like this. From what I understand in cases like this it is decaying fats/organic material that cause much of the annoyance. I am familiar with one case in which a chicken feed factory was converted to office uses I believe that they used a mild acid solution to etch the concrete (majority of surfaces). This helped but did not solve the problem. Three years later the smell had largely dissipated thanks to bacteria and house keeping. In another case a house was filled top to bottom with trash. All interior surfaces and insulation were replaced. The place still smelled. It should have just been burnt. Perhaps time will solve that problem too. Not a lot of hope but smells are a tough problem to solve. You could try turning up the HVAC to light wind just keep the air moving to remove the worst. In the end time is your friend you just have to wait for the decay cycle to run its course. Good Luck,
...and the hook was still attached to the door handle!!!!!1!1!!
Let the other office staff get frustrated and wash them with bleach then scrub them out. Just make sure you have good, up-to-date backups first (of course, you already do - right?).
;-)
That way you'll get nice, NEW, non-stinky servers
If something exists that does not need a creator (god) then why must the cosmos need one?
Dead pig flavored jello?
there's not much you can do. After a relatively short time, strong odors will permeate the many slightly porous surfaces. A very thorough de-greasing, and a very thorough blasting with compressed air to remove dust (which traps a lot of odors) may help.. but it's going to be really, really, really hard to get them to pass muster in a non-agricultural office setting.
Now, I've got this Corvette for sale, you see...
Sure, dead pig flavored jello wouldnt be that bad. I love dead pig! Of course, I don't call it that. Instead, I eat stuff called "Ham", "Bacon", and "Ribs", amoung any other fine cuts of meat that comes from dead pigs.
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
I agree this was greatly worded. The effluvium of post-mortem porcine matter is priceless.
Well, he doesn't know squat about computers, so I'd try some of the other suggestions above before doing that...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
The dead fucking the pigs would be an improvement? Man, those conventions you go to are Hentai , not Anime. I guess nobody just informed you of the subtle difference yet...
Sister bought a car once whose previous owner smoked cigar's regularly. We layed an open bag of charcoal behind the drivers seat and put a couple briqs in the ashtray. Smell was gone in a week.
If you want to get rid of the scent, you could think about sending it to some poor moslem country that cannot afford to throw away the equipment.
Sooner or later, it won't smell like dead pigs anymore. And you'll help in the war against terror.
MythBusters actually did something similar to your situation. They had an older vintage corvette and they seeled two dead pigs in the car, seeled it up for to let them rot for a month and then tried to see if the smell could be removed.
They tried for some time, cleaning it and they even consulted with some cleaners that come after people have died. In the end, they were never really able to remove the smell completely, even with expert advice. Consider on top of it that we're talking about cleaning for an object with sensitive electronic components and it would seem unlikely for you to be successful in removing the odors completely.
Wow. That's a bad one. I know a lot more about how
to dispose of pig end product aka shit though (curses
my father's obsession with gardening...). But, how about supercrit CO2? (love to see any pictures if you
manage to fascinate a postgrad at your local university sufficiently - hey picture of the computer dude, not inflagrante delicto stuff )
This won't work. The odor does not come from surface dirt, but from the organic molecules absorbed by the plastics and resins of the cases and components. Dishwashing won;t do anyting to get those out.
The only solution is to get those organic molecules out of the materials and that is not going to be easy. Here are the things I would try:
1) Heat. This increases the diffusion rate of the offending molecules from the plastics. Make sure you vent the oven to get the organic vapor out or they will just re-absorb as the unit cools.
2) Activated Carbon. Activated carbon has a great affinity for organic molecules. You may want to put each PC in a cloth bag and bury it in activated carbon for a while. Test with one first to make sure the carbon fines don't short-circuit anyhting. Get activated carbon from a scientific supply.
3) Heat and Charcoal - probably the best solution would be a conmbination of the two above solutions. I would put each PC in a cloth bag and bury the bag in a bed of activated charcoal. Bake everything on low heat for several hours (120 - 150 F). Use just a warm oven because high heat reduces the effectiveness of the activated charcoal. You can re-charge activated charcoal between uses by heating it at 350-400 F in the oven to drive the organics out of it. That will stink.
With your liquid cooling comment, I'm picturing a pool full of liquid nitrogen. That may not be a very comfortable place to take a swim.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
...and lots of it!
We are blind to the Worlds within us
waiting to be born...
once i bought an used p-133 from a whacko who used to hide his stash inside the computer case, only place his mother would never look.
oddly enough the machine was incredibly unstable, often blue-screening, pci cards didn't get recognized...
i wonder why...
What ? Me, worry ?
Three words: Someone Else's Shit
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Uninstall windows... duh...
and now Tom with the weather...
Way back when I was In the military(early 60`s)we just dipped all our electronics gear in a vat of trichlorethelene. Came out sparkling clean--no damage.
That's true... My grandmother wears this godawful perfume, and after she moved, we had the task of making it smell not-so-bad. Febreze did it in three or four days.
Dead pig flavored jello?
You do know what Jello is made from, right?
http://home.howstuffworks.com/question557.htm
Beta sux! Join the Slashcott! http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4760465&cid=46173047
de ionizing air purifier
The best solvant I have used for electronics is Electronics Grade Ethanol. We used it for cleaning flux from PC boards on space equipment. It evaporates with absolutly no residues. (In the old days of removable disk packs I used it to clean a hard disk platter). Warning: It is both potable and poisonous ( and flamable). The bottles came with a tax stamp. (Although all things considered I'd replace the computers and just move the bits off the hard drives. In any case junk the keyboards and mice).
1. You mentioned that the air intake for the computer room was adjacent to the so-called "rendering portion" in your slaughterhouse, excusez moi, abattoir. Why did nobody notice and take care for this in advance, long before the computers started absorbing the smell? If computers start smelling that badly, the actual smell in that room's air must have been totally abhorrent and somebody could have noticed.
Otherwise, if people didn't notice or noticed and didn't care, everybody seems to have gotten used to that smell, it's a slaughterhouse anyway, so they should cope with the smell in the shiny offices now as well.
2. Many comments suggest disassembling the computers, thoroughly soaking each and every part with ethanol, propanol, baking powder or other substance, optionally covering sensitive parts with duct tape in advance. Then have it drying, reassemble and try if the smell is gone, and I guess the same people would suggest doing it again if the first run didn't completely remove the smell.
Excuse me? How many boxen are we talking? What is somebody supposed to earn per hour who is doing this? How does it compare to the value of the computers (or new computers), and is this economical at all? How much is one of this boxen you are talking about? Doesn't your industrial meat processing company make some money so that you can get a few new boxen? How many computers does a slaughterhouse need, provided you aren't somehow dedicated to SETI@abattoir?
While I think reusing gear is a good thing in general (for both economical and environmental reasons) I guess this particular case might not be of much economical value. Given that your business involves such nice products as bone meal, I would assume that environmental considerations are limited mostly to rotten smell in your whitecollar slaughterhouse offices.
Maybe you should instead put these computers up in the production and rendering facilities themselves, where smell doesn't matter, together with some webcams, so your customers can watch your work and thus develop a more affecious relationship to you as a company.
--
I expect troll mods for this opinion.
In my situation, replacing the cases is not an option, these are early 80's machines and it would ruin the entire effect to do that..
Painting is something ive been saving as a last resort...
I heard of someone dying plastic once.. but never did find his info..
Ive also been considering moulding new ones, using the old as 'masters'.. But tahts a bit overkill i think...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
ozone
It's what various commercial services use (e.g., automobile detailers).
Also, contact a commercial post-disaster clean-up service.
They specialize in removing odors from smoke (fires) amd mildew (floods).
Vapor phase degreaser. The old ones were base on freon. It is boiled in the bottom of the "barrel" and condenses at a cold zone near the top. Anything placed in the middle is drenched. When you remove the piece it is free of crud as the freon was released into the environment. Maybe they have new ones with more PC solvents?
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Baking soda? No way, it's caustic (alkali), so any powder remaining on the board can rehydrate from atmospheric humidity and cause damage to the PCBs. You cannot remove all traces from under components and in thru-holes, not even with canned air. It also combines with most lubricants, so you will write off any mechanical components you haven't removed. Alum exacerbates this, and acts as a moisture trap making the chance of corrosion even worse.
Do not, repeat, DO NOT use baking soda! A computer is not a candle!
I should mention that isopropyl is also not ideal, since it dissolves the component labels (not that many people do component level repairs anymore, but you may need to check chipsets at some time in the future). However, a weak solution with distilled water is safe enough.
I've worked as an electronic tech in the music business for 18 years, and in that time I've cleaned just about every substance imaginable out of electronic equipment (example: a singer, very well known in Australia with the initials JB, once emptied a bottle of bourbon into one channel of a mixing desk, which wouldn't have been a problem if he hadn't drunk it first! There are just some things you don't want to clean out of edge connectors. And don't get me started about cats; does an amplifier really look that much like a sandbox?). What I've found is that if you spend a few extra dollars on a product specifically made for electronics you head off future disaster. This makes a huge difference when you're dealing with vintage equipment (like original Pultec EQs or LA-2As) which are near irreplacable, or must have near 100% uptime.
I suggest Electrolube's Potclene, or similar products made by 3M and Riston (the cleaning solutions for PCB production are ideal). But unless you are 100% sure whatever you're using is safe for metals, or you can afford new computers, DON'T USE IT!
Other than that, try one of those pine tree thingies for cars: fold it over, and wedge it (edge on) in the path of the fan exhaust. Your server room will be mountain fresh in no time!
I submitted a rad pair of articles making fun of Mc Donalds....I should have misspelled 'the' then it would be submitted!
Professionals built the titanic Amatures built the ark
If most of the equipment are servers etc, put them in a sealed server room with extracator fans ducted to outside the building. With remote access, you shouldn't need to go their very often :->
Anything that would be considered a desktop, bin it - you'll never get it smelling good enough. In the UK, if it smelt that bad, the Health and Safety people would not be impressed, and you would almost certainly be told to junk all of it as its a health hazard. Ultimately, the cost of a new desktop is buttons compared to all the time you will waste trying to clean it, and then you'll still have to bin it after every employee refuses to touch it !
From the looks of things, it's only about twice as deadly as isopropanol for acute exposure, although it appears to cause far more problems before that point.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Having worked at an electronics company, I'll tell you that almost ALL electronics can be washed. Yep, mild detergent and water - in fact, almost every PC board (usually called PWBs inside industry) goes through a glorified dishwasher!! (turn off the heat - don't use sanitize cycle), Don't run things like disk drives or fans through it (aka no mechanical parts) - but you should be ale to take the motherboard and wash it with soap and water - ditto the case, and the internal parts of the power supply except for the fan
Oh yeah - make sure the power is off and disconnected
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
I repair/rebuild/restore vacuum tube guitar amps (Ampeg mostly) and I use brake cleaner to de-barify (as in remove the bar smell) some of the really smelly pigs I get. I use it only on the chassis sheet metal and circuit boards. So far it hasn't attacked anything. It evaporates quickly and does a good job.
Ozone is bad. It oxidizes metals very rapidly. It can break apart plastics, paper, and pretty much any organic substance (much as bleach can)... it can also kill you.
Rubbing alcohol is bad. A lot of plastics disolve or craze in rubbing alcohol. The amounts you would need to make a difference are not amounts I would subject any computer to. If you do decide to go this route, get the pure+undiluted kind. I recommend a local lab supply. Proper breathing apparatus plus a small crew is essential.
Baking soda will work (though slowly)... activated carbon will work (slightly less slowly)... keep in mind that activated carbon gives off a lot of dust. You should probably change out the dust filter in your air cleaner when done.
I saw someone mention febreze. This is a great idea; febreze really does a number on organic stenches of all sorts. However, be careful about directly spraying it on electronics components. I'm sure it has all sorts of holy scents to counteract unholy-stink. Unfortunately, electronics components are far less forgiving of holy scents than they are of unholy-stink. To put it less obtusely; there are almost certainly components of febreze that leave behind a conductive residue, and you really don't want that.
And finally, hard drives are no longer hermetically sealed. They have a permeable gasket to even out pressure differentials now. Of course, that gasket is now thorughly permeated with unholy-stink, as is the interior of the drive. If you submerse it in alcohol (or any liquid), best case is it'll be filled with alcohol. Worst case is you'll destroy the gasket (usually paper or plasticized rubber)
What would I do? Duct the exhaust fans of all the computers to an activated carbon stack exhaust (the "home growers" you find on google do good work here)... that doesn't solve the problem of stench when you open the cases, however... for that you're going to need to either clean the residues out (impossible without risking damage, IMHO) or add some kind of chemical on the intake to neutralize those odors. I'd probably just put a well-secured box of baking soda in the bottom of each case. Well-secured because... well... do you really want it tipping over? If you've got rack mounts, good luck.
And it isn't a bad idea to wash all these computers in deionized water and let them air dry. Just remember, capacitors keep a charge (discharge with a properly insulated screwdriver), and some things really don't like being filled with water... hard drives for instance. Anything with optical components probably isn't going to like dirty water sloshing across lenses, too. An air compressor can be great to ensure that all the water is out of the nooks and crannies when you're done washing.
Oh and deionized water doesn't stay that way for long with dust and dirt and unholy-stink particles washing around in it...
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
As I saw this, I am watching the Myth Busters episode that had the car they threw a dead pig in for a while and then sold the car.
So I guess it's possible to at least sell the hardware.
The picture tube *is* the capacitor on the HV supply.
If they don't hold a charge (quite well, I might add), I guess that inch long spark I drew off the anode connector was a figment of my imagination.
*Always* assume a CRT is charged, and use a grounded screwdriver to discharge it before trying to remove the anode connection.
Or you'll be very sorry.
Except it was a Corvette they were trying to clean.
It went cheap...and smelly, even after they sought professional help to get the dead pig smell out.
Fun to watch though. Especially when they unsealed the car after leaving it taped up for a month with two dead pigs in the driver's seat.
Way back when, when I was fixing computers for a living (When computers were computers, not the toys of today.), I went to fix an LA36 DECprinter in a food warehouse. I opened the back door, to find two live rats staring at me...
But I digress, a few years later, I ran a Disaster Recovery Project. A Lot of equipment covered with rust particles (incorrectly installed fire prevention equipment). We used a Company (Sydney, Australia) called Relectronic Remech. I believe they were/are global, as they were bringing staff in from all over on that project... They would dismantle, chem-bath, scrub, bake, whatever was appropriate and needed, and return the equipment to full vendor satisfaction... Saved us Millions.
Mister Q