I washed my mobo

P

pascal

Veteran
After weeks of continuos work I turned off my micro last friday and yesterday I could not turn it on.

I switched PSU, removed HD, CD-R, boards, etc. but it was not working.
I reseted the ram and nothing
I asked some technicians opinions/test and the diagnostic was a fault mobo (Asus P4B533) :(

Then I decided an revival extreme procedure, I washed the mobo with a tooth brush, neutral soap and filtered water, after that a good hot sun. Now it is working :D

Anyone have done that before?
Any advices/comments? Thanks
 
pascal said:
Then I decided an revival extreme procedure, I washed the mobo with a tooth brush, neutral soap and filtered water, after that a good hot sun. Now it is working :D
Click to expand...

Well I can say that is most certainly a first that I've ever heard of.

Now something I didn't hear you say you tried before giving it a wash, was resetting the CMOS? Did you happen to take the battery out while washing it? If anything, that probably did the trick.
 
I removed the batery before the ram (CMOS) reset and installed back after. It is part of the Asus recomended reset procedure and nothing happened.

I removed the batery again before washing it.

I live in a coast city and there is a lot of salt in the air, then I decided to clean the mobo. And didnt had any isopropilil alcohol to clean it.
 
I've washed a Sega Genesis motherboard in a dish washer before(no soap, hot water, steam dry). It looked brand new and worked great.

When I worked at Hitachi we washed boards in basically a giant washing machine that used Axarel32 cleaning fluid instead of soap.
 
pascal said:
Then I decided an revival extreme procedure, I washed the mobo with a tooth brush, neutral soap and filtered water, after that a good hot sun. Now it is working :D

Anyone have done that before?
Any advices/comments? Thanks
Click to expand...

:oops:

You, sir, are crazy!!! ;)
 
If it was EEPROM it wouldn't need the battery now would it! :D

AFAIK, it's just a little bit of SRAM (around 256 bytes or somesuch) kept alive with that battery.
 
Guden Oden said:
If it was EEPROM it wouldn't need the battery now would it! :D

AFAIK, it's just a little bit of SRAM (around 256 bytes or somesuch) kept alive with that battery.
Click to expand...

It's not RAM, since it would be completely erased if you remove the battery. And I don't mean the settings, but the BIOS itself. It's being _flashed_, that's why I suppose it's flash-EEPROM. The settings might be in some kind of SRAM.

EDIT:
Yup, it's flash-EEPROM. The settings are stored in internal RAM, which needs a battery.
 
Reznor007 said:
I've washed a Sega Genesis motherboard in a dish washer before(no soap, hot water, steam dry). It looked brand new and worked great.
Click to expand...
This is great. My mobo looks really clean, and I am connected to the Internet with it now. Next time I will try hot water.

_xxx_ said:
pascal said:
Then I decided an revival extreme procedure, I washed the mobo with a tooth brush, neutral soap and filtered water, after that a good hot sun. Now it is working :D

Anyone have done that before?
Any advices/comments? Thanks
Click to expand...

:oops:

You, sir, are crazy!!! ;)
Click to expand...
Thanks :LOL: ;)

I have another old dead mobo here (supermicro P3TSSA) and I think I will try the procedure next weekend.
 
Yes, most PCB's and other components are cleaned multiple times during production, sometimes after the components are placed and soldered as well to remove flux and other residues. Dishwasher works great. Just make sure it's dry before you plug it in.
 
Reznor007 said:
I've washed a Sega Genesis motherboard in a dish washer before(no soap, hot water, steam dry). It looked brand new and worked great.
Click to expand...

I feel a sudden urge to try this with whatever motherboard I can muster at home.
 
I washed my 6800GT with Head 'n' Shoulders shampoo and now it has no more little flakes of ailising....... :rolleyes: ;) :D
 
I did some search and you can use water as long as it is deionized.
With normal water we have the danger of some damage for the ICs.
Also the use of Isoproply alcohol is recomended before DI water rinse because water cannot remove oil.
 
pascal said:
I did some search and you can use water as long as it is deionized.
With normal water we have the danger of some damage for the ICs.
Also the use of Isoproply alcohol is recomended before DI water rinse because water cannot remove oil.
Click to expand...

You could use the alcohol instead of a soap tablet.
 
Yes, I could use the alcohol first and water after or I could mix both. Anyway eliminating the soap is a good thing to do.
 
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