Re: [NTLK] FIXED! (Was: Water spill!)

From: John Goggan (jgoggan_at_dcg.com)
Date: Sat Apr 06 2002 - 10:40:45 EST


Just wanted to let everyone know that my spare Newton is alive again! W00T!
:)

I let it sit for a while and kept getting the same thing. So, I took a can of
compressed air and (gently) blew through the PCMCIA ports for a bit. I then
gave it a go and it powered up! It went straight to the "erase all data?"
dialog -- to which I said No. It then came up and activated all of the
internal packages. It had lost the date/time, but the rest of the information
was still there and seemed fine!

So, now I'm giving this some more thought... I'm not sure it was the Pepsi
spill actually. As I said, it never looked like any got inside -- it all
appeared to be external and I just wiped it off. In any case, I had used this
Newton to test those 70 32MB cards that came in last week. After I had tested
them all, I put my ethernet card back in. Note that this Newton sits on a
table all day (it's my dedicated Net Newt) -- so it doesn't get moved around
or flipped over much. Yesterday, after the pop spill, was the first time
since I tested those cards that it has been picked up, flipped around, and the
ethernet card removed again. I'm now thinking that, while inserting/removing
those 70 cards, something had fallen inside (a tiny, but conductive speck of
some sort) the Newt. It just didn't touch anything "bad" until I flipped the
Newt around after the pop spill. Then, when I put the ethernet card back in,
it pushed it somewhere that caused the ROM to freak/short/whatever.

Blowing it out then, hopefully, removed it -- and everything is fine again...

Guess we'll have to see how it goes. I might still open it up to make sure no
Pepsi made it inside (and check for whatever was shorting things before).
But, I'm at least quite happy that it appears to be alive again! :)

Thanks for all the hints and suggestions!

 - John...

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