Mr Sheen Furniture Polish

[danamania]

Curiously, Mr Sheen is the stuff I use for all the archaic hardware I come across, inside and out. Cases, panels, inside plastic bits and motherboards, they all get a Mr Sheening.

I started doing this when I came across a machine with a motherboard that had mice nesting on top of it, and corrosion from their peeing all over it. After a run through with dishwashing liquid and a huge rinse, thankfully with no tracks completely eaten through, I coated the whole thing with Mr Sheen and left it to dry completely. It's still working...

...as are the other 42 computers I've done that to.

A clean motherboard is a happy motherboard!

[danamania]

I wash intently, and then rinse even more so. a quite serious amount of rinsing, even!. warm water and a paintbrush to help the liquid get absolutely everywhere. After that I towel-dried the boards, and then used a hairdryer to not just give the board a blow over, but thoroughly heat it. Edge connectors like isa/nubus/zorro slots are horrible for holding water, so the warmer for longer, the better. The same with PGA sockets and FPGA smt chips - they like holding water underneath, so making sure they're dry is probably as critical as any rinsing or washing. through the drying I used a paintbrush again to get in all the tiny spots I could - it dries out with the board and helps flick out a little extra water too.

After all that's done, power up and you're ready to go!. I've since heard (after I started washing motherboards) that even the tiniest amount of residue from tap water will kill a motherboard, which I think is way overestimating things. Perhaps if water dripped on and dried off in the same spot a few times in a row it may form a conductive mess, but the whole hairdrying & paintbrushing thing stops that!.

I've also had a machine with visible water marks across the motherboard that still booted and worked just fine. They're a lot tougher than they're made out to be

dana