Non-booting A2000...

[save2600]

Never EVER spray WD-40 on anything electronic. It's conductive!! Good luck getting around everything to wipe it off anyway.

I think perhaps he meant to say 'contact cleaner'. High content of alcolhol in Rubbing alcohol is good too as most of it will dissipate. Even compressed air has moisture that leaks out with the spray. I've never understood why someone would use compressed air on anything. You're just blowing the dust to another part of the computer, your room or your lungs!

Use a vacuum and a paint brush to get dust out of a computer. At least that way, the miniscule dust from the exhaust is directed (again) somewhere else.  lol

[save2600]

I've never heard anyone refer to WD-40 as being a dielectric. It's simply not true. Yes, petroleum based products are not the greatest electrical conductors, but they DO conduct some electricity, which is putting your components at risk of shorting out.

You are lucky your machines did NOT explode and burn yet! Besides being of flammable nature, WD40 will also collect and attract dust over time, degrading electrical integrity even further. Do this if you want to shorten the life span of your proprietary chips, etc.

Seriously, using WD-40 on electrical PCB's is terrible advise. Do some research. If you've had "luck" in the past, then that's all it is. Get as much of that stuff OFF your PCB's using alcohol as you can! This is from 30 years experience servicing electronics.

Note to self: never buy a computer from Darrin   :-)

[save2600]

* Driving moisture out of the high and low-tension electrical components of an internal combustion engine (e.g. cleaning and drying the inside of the ignition distributor cap) so that it will start, particularly on cold days"
This may be the root of why some people think it is conductive.

Yes, because it is mildly conductive and metal filings/shavings are likely to cling to it, it worked well for distributor points, etc. in automotive use as a quick "fix". But now that you bring up its use in an auto, think about those components you just mentioned. There's not really a great chance of there being a true short as there would be on something so populated/mini/precise as a printed circuit board.

We're also talking about a rugged 12volt system. Not the more fragile 5v and less found on mobo's.  

[save2600]

Okay - since we're obviously going to beat this thread to death and I've clearly got the time, I thought I'd set up a little experiment for you. I did not perform this experiment solely for myself as I've mentioned before, I know all too well the negative affects WD-40 has on electronics. If you're easily tricked by what you read, marketing, whatever, then no wonder this world is where it's at today!  lol

Alright... here's what I did:

1) brought out a variable DC power supply and set it to exactly 5.14 volts. That would be typical of the logic voltage present in an older computer system such as our beloved Miggy's.

2) alligator<>jumper clipped the positive lead to my DMM set on mV.

3) alligator<>jumper clipped the negative lead to a plastic sandwich bag.

4) liberally sprayed the baggy down with the "dielectric" in question, while making sure it spread from the alligator clipped -5v throughout the middle of the bag.

5) using the other lead from my DMM, I poked about the bag and measured as high as 44mv down to 1.2mv depending how for away I got from the power lead and how much was sprayed near the lead.

I returned to the baggy after a half hour to measure voltages again. Interestingly, I measured even slightly higher readings this time!! A chemical reaction with the plastic?? OR is it attracting microscopic conductive particles, further enhancing its conductivity? There *has* been a lot of talk lately about plastics relating to brain tumours, cancer, etc. Maybe the truth is finally starting to leak out on some of this stuff, or more than likely, another company and group of people have an agenda with a product that they'd like to replace plastic with  ;-)  

Back to the topic at hand...

To make sure I wasn't doing anything wrong (this test could not be any simpler), I snagged another new plastic baggy without WD-40 and proceeded to measure... hold on to your hat here... NOTHING! Nada. Zip. Zilch. τίποτα. Niets. Rien. Nichts. Niente. 何も. ничего.

The reason why you may have had good luck in the past douching your boards down with WD-40 is the simple fact that the traces etched into the PCB are covered by silkscreen. It's the chips and components that are more at risk of having something conductive stick to the excess of the WD-40 (which doesn't seem to be evaporating any time soon on my baggy I might add).

...hopefully this will be the end of the thread   :-)    

[save2600]

Yeah, we're good     :-)  

Just stop using WD-40 on your Amiga's already!   lol

Your auto, fine. Door hinges, fine.

BTW: if you want to try a good cheap alternative to cleaning contacts and PCB's... I've found Brake Parts cleaner to do the trick!  lol   Just hope you don't have weak nasal constitutions for a few days after spraying   ;-)

Course, I would never use brake parts cleaner on any of MY machines. lol  

I do know a very successful electronics repair guy that actually places his PCB's in the dishwasher, being sure to fully dry the things of course. Sometimes, he may even just throw the boards out on the lawn, hose 'em down and let 'em bake in the sun to dry out. He's never reported a single problem with that method and we're talking about arcade/pinball boards...  

[save2600]

@ orange:

Yes - I did measure it without WD-40. Please re-read the results.

And I didn't measure resistance because I wanted to prove that WD-40 conducts electricity - not just add resistance. Doesn't matter if a measurement in mV is low. Introducing foreign power to any circuit or IC is not usually good. Think static electricity.