Smokeputer

[weirdlookinguy]

I just got a smokeputer. It's not too bad in terms of nicotine but it has a lot of dust everywhere. I ripped the PSU apart and I couldn't even tell what kind of caps it had in it! (It was an old Astec PSU, so it had Rubycon and NCC in it)

I took the PSU board and the motherboard and drenched them with mean green, let them sit for a bit, flooded them with hot water, and threw them in the oven @ 170 F for ten minutes. Now I will let them sit for a few days to fully dry out. I was inspired by topcat's mobo cleaning guide and I've done it to a few boards. So far, the results have been great!

That takes care of the electronics. All the drives in the computer are going to get replaced. That leaves the case.

How can I clean the steel case? Hose it down and dry it?

[Topcat]

Re: Smokeputer

Use the same method on the case as the mainboard and PSU. Mean Green + garden hose = cleaned! Toss the opticals, I'm sure they're shot....if not, they're not far from it. I've cleaned many nicotine sludged cases this way!

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1463

[c_hegge]

Re: Smokeputer

The worst computer I ever worked on was covered in dust and nicotine, so it was all sticky. If that's not bad enough, there was a carpet of dead cockroaches on the bottom and all the components were covered in cockroach droppings.

[Topcat]

Re: Smokeputer

...there was a carpet of dead cockroaches on the bottom and all the components were covered in cockroach droppings.

I had to work on one of those a few days ago. board was from an HP. roaches were all gone, but lots of roach pee and poo.....if you thought it smelled bad before, wait till you burn some of it with the iron..... I wanted to hurl. When I was finished with it, I scrubbed my hands thoroughly!

[shovenose]

Re: Smokeputer

oh jee that sounds rather gross

[momaka]

Re: Smokeputer

Isn't the sticky stuff actually tar?
Well either way, it's gross. And then imagine what the lungs of a heavy smoker's would look like .
Just more of a reason to never start (or even try) smoking.

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Smokeputer

I've noticed in most smokeputers (I've been inside a few) that most of the tar goes into those nasty dirt clumps.

You know how a normal computer has regular dust in it? If you blow it out, it comes off easily and disperses into the air? Well a smokeputer is usually full of clumps of tar DIRT. The stuff sticks to everything inside the computer and is a nasty mess to get out. The usual compressed air + paintbrush won't get it out. Like I said, the PSU in this one was so coated in this nasty nicotine tar dirt that I couldn't even tell what kind of caps it had! The only solution is to get medieval on it and wash everything.

It's a nice little late 90's gateway with an Astec PSU. Should make a decent Windows 2000 box.

[370forlife]

Re: Smokeputer

I had to work on a dell dimension 4600 that was my friend's. His grandma smoked like a chimney and everything was coated in tar and dust. I couldn't figure out why it was seeing such a weird number of ram, 468mb, when it had two 256mb sticks in it. Cleaned it out per Topcat's sticky and now it sees all 512mb. Weird.

[ratdude747]

Re: Smokeputer

spooged up DDR sockets... see TC's thread (the board there did it too)

[dood]

Re: Smokeputer

I had to work on one of those a few days ago. board was from an HP. roaches were all gone, but lots of roach pee and poo.....if you thought it smelled bad before, wait till you burn some of it with the iron..... I wanted to hurl. When I was finished with it, I scrubbed my hands thoroughly!

Do you ever turn down a job due to health concerns? I've refused to work on computers that are just so nasty I don't want to bring them into the house.

[c_hegge]

Re: Smokeputer

It would have to be pretty bad for me to refuse to work on it, but I would charge more to work on dirty PCs.

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Smokeputer

Oh man... it came out so good I just have to show you guys.

I don't have any before pictures but believe me, the PSU was BAD. I could not tell what kind of caps the primaries were and I could not see where the rest of the caps were physically located because of how much tar dirt was in there. Here is the result after TC's mean green method:



Looks brand new!

The motherboard, particularly the area around the CPU, was also covered in crap and the whole thing just looked generally murky. Now it looks brand new!




TC's mean green method works wonders and makes 11-year-old components look new. I did the guts of the PSU, the motherboard, the RAM, the CPU, and the PSU fan. They all came out looking brand new and, after a 10 minute bake in the oven followed by a 24 hour drying session, they still work just fine.

[kc8adu]

Re: Smokeputer

other than a method test as far as cleanup that would have hit the curb.not worth the time considering no resale value.
although i get industrial stuff older than that to clean up/overhaul.
and opticals,floppies,ect are usually done for.esp those notebook floppies used in swi boxes.i shred every old laptop i get to have a supply of those!

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Smokeputer

Agreed, I can't even put this up on CL for a few bucks. I just like taking something that's been run down to hell and making it work again.

I got a sweet set of powered Boston speakers with this, they made it all worth it.

[Topcat]

Re: Smokeputer

Do you ever turn down a job due to health concerns? I've refused to work on computers that are just so nasty I don't want to bring them into the house.

Only one. It got here covered in some really slimy crud that stunk to high heaven, never was able to determine what it was.....but it was eating the silkscreen off the board (was a dell gx620SFF board). I put it back in the box and returned it to the customer, postage due. After I packed it, I scrubbed up like a surgeon, took 3 washings to get whatever that stuff was off my hands.

[shovenose]

Re: Smokeputer

so you never figured out what the stuff was? thats absolutely dusgusting?

[kc8adu]

Re: Smokeputer

customer must have thought you are in the hazmat business too?
some of the water base coolants are nasty like that.had a monitor in here where the stuff had caused the solder mask to peel from the board.
all the coolant in the plant must be rancid since everything they send for me to repair smells like body odor!

Only one. It got here covered in some really slimy crud that stunk to high heaven, never was able to determine what it was.....but it was eating the silkscreen off the board (was a dell gx620SFF board). I put it back in the box and returned it to the customer, postage due. After I packed it, I scrubbed up like a surgeon, took 3 washings to get whatever that stuff was off my hands.

[Per Hansson]

Re: Smokeputer

all the coolant in the plant must be rancid since everything they send for me to repair smells like body odor!

Oh, it's very very toxic
The things we pour into our chillers comes in two bottles as a "kit"
And each kit comes with safety glasses and gloves!
There are so many warnings on it that it's not even fun, and mind you this is in Europe, where liability is less of a concern than the US
If you had the same product in the US it would probably come with a pallet full of safety datasheets

If you put your hand in the water when it has been mixed with this stuff it feels very strange (the water)
Why would you do that I hear you now ask?
Because the fucking crap does not work for shit, so we get algae growth in the chillers anyway!

[momaka]

Re: Smokeputer

Just got my first smokeputer 2 weeks ago from the dumpster. Wasn't too bad to clean up overall, but the fans and fan grilles were quite nasty. Actually, if it wasn't for them, you can say the computer was fairly clean. But the dust that accumulated on the fans was infused with tar and was all sticky . Couldn't just brush that crap with a toothbrush and blow it away. Had to take apart each fan and wipe it. I didn't have any Mean Green stuff, but chlorine-based wet towels worked just fine. Also wiped the case with that stuff and cleaned the PSU (a 200W Astec, with all Japanese caps). The computer still smells a bit like smoke, but is very hard to tell overall.

As a bonus, the hard drive was left in it (WD, 15.3 GB, 33k hours, no bad sectors). Just needed some SDRAM and a video card to make it work... Which is kind of funny because 2 days before I found the computer I also found an AGP video card (Radeon 7200) (it's almost as if I knew I would find a computer and need one ). Video card was wet when I found it due to rain the day before that - which is all good because I didn't have to wash it. Just dried it and it worked fine.
There was Windows XP SP2 installed on the hard drive, too. It had some viruses and spyware, but I got that cleaned fairly easily.

Yes, I know this computer doesn't really have much value now, but it works just fine. Also, motherboard has NO electrolytic caps at all, just Tantalum. I can see this thing work for another 10 years easily. With 384 MB of RAM, it feels exactly like my P3 HP Pavilion 8756C, which I use fairly often for browsing.

Unfortunately, I don't have any before/after pics. Needed to get the computer cleaned quickly so I could bring it in the house same day.

[ratdude747]

Re: Smokeputer

what brand/model?

sounds a lot like my gateway with a slot a board i had... it had the jabil kadoka mainboard with the AMD irongate nb and AMD viper sb.

it was a mild smokeputer... the fan grates and the psu were NASTY

the gateway case was useless... stupid tiny newton 200w... it was gutted, the mainboard was put in a spare dell dimension 4100 case i had (ribbon cable for the front I/O matched, no I/O shield)...

it is a nice board... tants only... i popped on a pII cooler and went from there... not in use now but it will make a good remote computer (it has a wireless b card i put in there). i only gave it 384mb ram, since xubuntu ran just as well with that as it did with 768mb maxed out. i tossed in a spare 300w delta i had (i might have downgraded it to a 200w delta) and i soldered the back fan (80mm antec sleeve) and a odd sized zip tied front hd cooler fan to a 12v p4 connector, making use of the 12v connection.

some after pics might be nice...