SD Cards: Washable Too!

[Jon Westfall]

<img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/westfall-20060822-washsd.jpg" /> <br /><br />Back in January, I was rushing around one morning changing cases from one to another and in the shuffle, 2 SD cards went missing. Since then I searched every inch of my house, vehicle, office, and yard for them, but to no avail. However, this weekend fortune smiled on me - sorta.<br /><br />While driving into Cleveland to do a server restore, my fiancé Karey called me to tell me she had some good news and some bad news. The good news - she found my two SD cards. The bad news? They were in the washer. Washed. But the contacts were very clean! When I got home I popped them into my PPC and they worked rather nicely. I don't know how long they were in the washer unnoticed, going through cycle after cycle, but it's nice to know that they held up. So on this Monday to offset the drag of work, post your best stories of hardware mishaps - Good or bad ending.<br /><br />And to finish, here's one last note to ponder. While tearing down an old system, my friend <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=23779"> Tony </a> and I were reading the jumper settings on an old CD-ROM drive. We're still puzzled over the two jumpers we were informed should be <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/westfall-20060822-usuallyoff.jpg"> off </a> ;)

[Darius Wey]

What a story. This reminds me of the Peanut Butter SD Card review. (http://www.auphanonline.com/articles/view.php?article_id=1498&amp;page=6) Untouchable... ;)

[x999x]

Oddly enough, if there is no current going through the hardware in question, you could wash it in soap and water if you felt like it. I've washed my video game consoles in the bathtub before sending them off to ebay collectors :P Yes, they DO work before I ship them.

Strange, I know, but my fiirst job as a kid had me washing motherboards to arcade games when coke spilled through the cabinet cracks. With my video game systems, it was like 20 years of dust and 300 pepsi can marks on them.

The only caveats are shorting out hardware with batteries that keep current going for memory retention, and not letting your hardware dry out long enough. We'd let our stuff sit for about two weeks before plugging it back in.

I wouldn't recommend this unless you've taken a look at the internals to know there isn't anything you don't want to get wet, like a harddrive o.O

[jmulder]

I dropped my new MPX200 in the toilet (before use). I figured a $300 phone was worth fishing out. After lysol'ing all the parts I could and letting it dry out, it worked as good as new (which is to say, not very well) for almost 2 years, when I replaced it with something that had a little better reception.

Of course I had to change the ring tone to a flushing sound...

[KTamas]

Two stories, both bad.

July 4, independence day party, sometimes around 10pm. My friends (two boys and a girl) and me are outside, got the idea to get into the swimming pool in our clothes, just for fun. After 10 minutes, the girls screams. "I left my mobile phone in my pocket!".The water was literally in the screen of the phone (some claimshell motorola one, V6something), and well... i think the SIM card at least survived...

Two years ago we had some problems with the fan of our power supply. It had strange noises, but then it suddenly stopped. I thought my father fixed it, actually i think he was mentioning it that he wants to fix it... Anyways, 6 months later i turned on my PC and... my 80-gig hard drive is not found. Reset, nothing. Reset, nothing. The hard drive is not even moving.... Oh well, my HDD died... one day later (I just installed windows to the other 40gig one), the 40 gig one suddenly stopped working. Restart, nothing. Immediatelly unplugged, and well, it has been survived. 5 minutes later i have just found out that our power supply was working without ANY fans for 6 months....thanks God it "only" killed our HDD (of course i had no backup... :roll: )

[signothefish]

I left my 2-week-old Toshiba e750 sitting on top of our minivan and drove off. It had a 1GB IBM microdrive (almost $200 at the time) and a 256MB SD card (comparable to today's 1GB cards in price) in the slots. It hit the pavement about 100 feet out of my driveway. I actually didn't discover it was missing until later, and even then, I was unsure of its demise. My neighbor came by a few days later, and mentioned a Palm pilot :lol: they found in their yard, but the screen was smashed up. I immediately asked for it. Although the screen was broken, the Pocket PC, with bangs and scratches on the casing, still operated normally. I ended up selling it to spyro, who posts linux port links over at Brighthand frequently, for $50. The microdrive was actually smashed, as the impact jarred it out and a car ran over it. It was unsalvageable, so I threw it in the garbage. I did salvage the SD card though - a Simpletech branded card, and my wife is using it to this date in her Pocket PC.

After this ordeal, I begged and pleaded with my wife for a Toshiba e800, as it was new and hot. She reluctantly agreed, and I picked one up at the local Circuit City. Needless to say, I've gotten out of the habit of leaving things on top of the car.

[unclvito]

Electronics and water. Bad combo.

I am an underwater photographer (http://www.bigfatcamera.com) (when I'm not doing my day job) and I dive with a Nikon D100. My enclosure leaked one fateful afternoon. 8O The big fat camera, 12-24dx lens and 2gb CF card were left to soak (unintentionally) for about 10 minutes. Once I realized what had happened, I removed everything from the water. The was power going to the CF card the whole time. Everything was a total loss, over $2000 worth of screw-up.

I removed the lens and dumped the water out of the camera. I also removed the CF card and blew the water out of the contact holes and left it to dry for about a week. Once I got the new camera, I plugged it in and it worked! It's been working ever since (http://www.bigfatcamera.com) without so much as a hiccup.

I was amazed.

[KTamas]

I left my 2-week-old Toshiba e750 sitting on top of our minivan and drove off. It had a 1GB IBM microdrive (almost $200 at the time) and a 256MB SD card (comparable to today's 1GB cards in price) in the slots. It hit the pavement about 100 feet out of my driveway. I actually didn't discover it was missing until later, and even then, I was unsure of its demise. My neighbor came by a few days later, and mentioned a Palm pilot :lol: they found in their yard, but the screen was smashed up. I immediately asked for it. Although the screen was broken, the Pocket PC, with bangs and scratches on the casing, still operated normally. I ended up selling it to spyro, who posts linux port links over at Brighthand frequently, for $50. The microdrive was actually smashed, as the impact jarred it out and a car ran over it. It was unsalvageable, so I threw it in the garbage. I did salvage the SD card though - a Simpletech branded card, and my wife is using it to this date in her Pocket PC.

After this ordeal, I begged and pleaded with my wife for a Toshiba e800, as it was new and hot. She reluctantly agreed, and I picked one up at the local Circuit City. Needless to say, I've gotten out of the habit of leaving things on top of the car.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot the story I've told a few times about an Asus A620 with broken screen in my pant's pocket and playing volleyball :roll:

[KTamas]

Electronics and water. Bad combo.

I am an underwater photographer (http://www.bigfatcamera.com) (when I'm not doing my day job) and I dive with a Nikon D100. My enclosure leaked one fateful afternoon. 8O The big fat camera, 12-24dx lens and 2gb CF card were left to soak (unintentionally) for about 10 minutes. Once I realized what had happened, I removed everything from the water. The was power going to the CF card the whole time. Everything was a total loss, over $2000 worth of screw-up.

I removed the lens and dumped the water out of the camera. I also removed the CF card and blew the water out of the contact holes and left it to dry for about a week. Once I got the new camera, I plugged it in and it worked! It's been working ever since (http://www.bigfatcamera.com) without so much as a hiccup.

I was amazed.
Off: nice pictures. /off

[Noel]

http://www.seespotruninc.com/Small%20Water%20Cooling.JPG

[ctmagnus]

And to finish, here's one last note to ponder. While tearing down an old system, my friend Tony (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=23779) and I were reading the jumper settings on an old CD-ROM drive. We're still puzzled over the two jumpers we were informed should be off (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/westfall-20060822-usuallyoff.jpg) ;)

Simple - don't jumper them. All the other pins can be jumpered, depending on the drive(s) combination (:confused totally:) but don't touch those two pins.

;)

[dMores]

now what the hell is this guy doing with the hose????
"dude, i got aqua-cooling!"

anyways ... i am emotionally attached to my gadgets, so i usually think about what i'm doing with them. i don't leave them in pockets or put them somewhere without thinking ... i guess that's why i haven't killed a device yet.

but what happens to me once in a while is that i SNEEZE or spit onto my cellphone/laptop/monitor.

:)

hehe :) most of the time it's while i'm trying to blow some kind of dust away, or i think it might be one of those whimpy sneezes and it turns out all wet and slimey.

OH WAIT !!! i just remembered i spilled multi-vitamin juice over my powerbook once.
it spread under the keyboard and actually dripped into the innards of the apple laptop.
keys were sticky, had to be cleaned, but it kept on working.
and i notice there's a kind of melted-chocolate-stain under the SPACE key.
but that's not hazardous.

[Janak Parekh]

And to finish, here's one last note to ponder. While tearing down an old system, my friend Tony (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=23779) and I were reading the jumper settings on an old CD-ROM drive. We're still puzzled over the two jumpers we were informed should be off (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/westfall-20060822-usuallyoff.jpg) ;)
Simple - don't jumper them. All the other pins can be jumpered, depending on the drive(s) combination (:confused totally:) but don't touch those two pins.
Basically, that's the case. Those jumpers are probably used for debugging or special operation modes that are not for end-users.

--janak

[MitchellO]

I have a few things happen to my gadgets. I managed to break the screen on my Jornada 545 even though it had its flip case on. I got pushed into a wall, and that ended that PPC.

I was lucky with my XDA Mini recently. I tipped a whole cup of water all over my desk, where my Mini was sitting. It got on the screen, a bit in the buttons, and the device was sitting in a pool of water. I grabbed it very quickly, and managed to mop up the water off the screen, suck the water out of the buttons and fortunately no water got in. All this while the device was on!!

My mum, however, went one step further. She left her phone (nokia 8310) in her back pocket, and it fell out right into the toilet while it was on. The toilet was clean, so she quickly grabbed it. She disassembled it (aka. removed the battery, covers, sim, etc) and let it dry for a day. She put it back together and it worked perfectly, and continued to for another 1.5 years. That was one good phone.

[MitchellO]

I have also sent a USB key (Sandisk 128Mb) through the hot cycle, and it came out ok.

[lapchinj]

...We're still puzzled over the two jumpers we were informed should be off (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/westfall-20060822-usuallyoff.jpg) ;)
I think it's pretty obvious. It says that jumpers 5-6 are 'Usually off' meaning that other times they're 'un-Usually on' :? . How much simpler could that be :wink: ?

Jeff-