rice absorbs moisture.

Curious if this works to recover notebooks or other electronics.

  • j4k3@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    If it died as a result of spilling something on it. You most likely damaged something hardware wise. If it was powered off, first remove the battery asap. Then just take off the bottom cover, pat anything needed dry, and let it air out.

    The real concern are the chips that do not have any pins sticking out of them. Those are ball grid arrays (a whole bunch of connections are made under the black epoxy packaging. Those can hold moisture under them for longer. Your best bet is to let it dry in a warm place for a few hours.

    Getting wet is not a problem. The problem is a powered connection having a conductive fluid bridging two or more connections that can not tolerate the current the fluid creates.

    When the actual circuit board is made, it goes into ovens and submerged in liquids. Some even go across molten pools of tin as part of the component assembly process. The board itself, (not all the other plastics and stuff for the case, screen, etc., is very resilient.

    In many industrial settings where the environment is very dirty, it is common to take a desktop PC apart and hose it off with water. The only issue is shorting connections under powered conditions.

    So yes, technically, any form of drying can help “recover” the device.