Kathy,
How comfortable are you about open the case?
To get the soil out you will have to remove the blueberry blue plastic shell. (You did indicate it's a 5 flavors Imac - right?) That is a bit harder that take off the bottom. I'd start there any way. After unplugging, rest your Imac on a towel screen down ( I hear the dirt tumbling forward -- ahhh!)
There is one screw to take off the lower whitish plastic plate. The short cleaning attempt is to blow out the dirt here and say that you tried.
From this point you can pull the main board. With a couple of three plug and a couple more screws. If your game to have gone this deep you will have access to most of the areas where gravity will have moved the soil (i.e. the bottom of your machine) Make sure that you blow out all the places where there are connection, plugs and the guides for inserting these...
There are a lot of air holes up on top. dirt can be sitting on the CRT and its magnetic coil. Also there is straight access via gravity to the the analog circuits and the power supply. These are both dangerous for electrical shock to unaware fingers. If you pop off the blue plastic bonnet only blow air into these components. No fingers; no conductors.
I'm caviler. I might hold the machine upside down to shake out the bigger clumps before using the canned air.
If this has scared you off. It's about 2 hours work at your computer stores repair rate. That probably more that $100.
Hope that this is helpful,
Rob Zilin
Kathy Kotomaimoce wrote:
The cat is in the doghouse, so to speak. She decided to nap in the potted
plant on top of the bookcase. Upon exiting said perch, she knocked the
ceramic pot off the top of the bookcase where it crashed on top of the iMac,
dumping dirt (fairly dry as the plant hadn't been watered lately)
everywhere... floor, shelves, desk, chair... and the innards of Madame
Blueberry.
How do I go about cleaning out the iMac without doing any damage? Amazingly, the pot crashing onto the case did not seem to do any harm other than a few scratch marks... but there's definitely some good potting soil now residing in the depths of the iMac, and I really don't want anything to start growing in there.
And yes, this is the same Mac that recently recovered from having 3 CDs jammed in the drive by The Toddler. Interesting that my posts to this list usually involve disasters rather than some interesting technical issue...
Kathy K
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