Re: Water Damage
At 22:24 30/12/2002 -0800, Doug Hardie wrote: The one server that I have responsibility for (mailserver running FreeBSD 4.6) took awhile to get rewired properly. When it was yanked out, some of the internal cables were disconnected. Had to find the motherboard book to figure out how to set them back up properly. Once that was done, the machine came up and worked fine. However, its inlet fan was severly disfigured by the falling burning stuff. Since its at the bottom of the unit, the junk only marred the bottom of the frame. There were no electronics there for it to damage. The fan sounds funny now and I wouldn't trust it. However, the keyboard connector is now defective. You can't plug a keyboard into it. I couldn't find anything visibly wrong with it, it just doesn't work. I have no idea how that happened since there was a keyboard plugged in during the flooding. My only guess is that whoever unplugged it did so via the grab case and run method - leaving the keyboard to catch and disconnect itself. If it's a PS/2 type keyboard connector (small plug) there is a plastic pin that often gets broken off and left in the socket if connectors are pulled out violently, blocking a new keyboard being inserted. (Seen it often with mice.) If this is so, I've had success getting them out by using 'blue tack' (a semi-adhesive goo used to hold the kids drawings on the wall) on the end of a matchstick to grab hold of it. Sounds like this machine was lucky, though replace the fan when practical... None of the MS servers survived. None had backups either. I suspect that will be a significant problem. However, I do have backups for the mail server and did recover the complete disk and dumped it to my laptop so that will be a simple restore. Are they completely toast? Can the hard discs be pulled and tested in another machine? Failing that, companies do exist that specialise in data recovery in these situations. For a price. It depends how valuable the data is... Oh... and, as my boss would say, it's an opportunity to sell them a backup solution Rob -- APH Computers Ltd. Tel: 0161-442 2603 Fax: 0161-443 1162 To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: Water Damage
Jim Durham wrote: [ ... ] That's an excellent idea because the alcohol will absorb the water (I believe the correct term is that water is misable in alcohol), so when the alcohol evaporates it takes the water with it. Yes, water and alcohol are misable in any proportions, but there's slightly more to it than that. You cannot get 100% pure alcohol via distillation-- this is why isopropyl rubbing alcohol goes up to 91% alcohol, and why ethanol like grain only goes up to 195 proof (~98%). [ If you try to concentrate the alcohol past that point, the alcohol will absorb water vapor right out of the air, just like the silica gel packets used in shipping do. Called azeotropic, which to most people simply means that chemists use funny words. ] -Chuck To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: Water Damage
On Tuesday, Dec 31, 2002, at 02:32 US/Pacific, Rob O'Donnell wrote: If it's a PS/2 type keyboard connector (small plug) there is a plastic pin that often gets broken off and left in the socket if connectors are pulled out violently, blocking a new keyboard being inserted. (Seen it often with mice.) If this is so, I've had success getting them out by using 'blue tack' (a semi-adhesive goo used to hold the kids drawings on the wall) on the end of a matchstick to grab hold of it. Right on. Thats exactly what happened. I guess I didn't have enough light to see that yesterday. I didn't get a chance to pop it out as the insurance adjuster arrived and is going over everything now. Thanks for the info. To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: Water Damage
Drink it. Water and alcohol have quite different somatic effects. -- Regards Cliff Sarginson The Netherlands [ This mail has been checked as virus-free ] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: Water Damage
On Tue, Dec 31, 2002 at 01:22:37PM -0800, Doug Hardie wrote: On Tuesday, Dec 31, 2002, at 02:32 US/Pacific, Rob O'Donnell wrote: If it's a PS/2 type keyboard connector (small plug) there is a plastic pin that often gets broken off and left in the socket if connectors are pulled out violently, blocking a new keyboard being inserted. (Seen it often with mice.) If this is so, I've had success getting them out by using 'blue tack' (a semi-adhesive goo used to hold the kids drawings on the wall) on the end of a matchstick to grab hold of it. Right on. Thats exactly what happened. I guess I didn't have enough light to see that yesterday. I didn't get a chance to pop it out as the insurance adjuster arrived and is going over everything now. Thanks for the info. You know insurance adjustors are easily killed. Stuff bluetack down their gobs. -- Regards Cliff Sarginson The Netherlands [ This mail has been checked as virus-free ] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: Water Damage
On Tue, Dec 31, 2002 at 12:07:41PM -0800, Gary W. Swearingen wrote: Chuck Swiger [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Jim Durham wrote: [ ... ] That's an excellent idea because the alcohol will absorb the water (I believe the correct term is that water is misable in alcohol), so when the alcohol evaporates it takes the water with it. But that so there seems unjustified. Maybe the last part is true, but does the fact that two liquids are misable mean that the lighter one will carry off the heavier one in evaporation? One could as easily guess that the heavier one keeps the lighter one's evaporation rate down to the heavier one's -- or anywhere in between. Or they each evaporate at their own rates, separating at the moment of evaporation. Arrgh. I'm sorry but this is bugging me. The word is miscible, from the Latin miscere to mix. The point of rinsing with isopropanol is simply to disolve and flush away as much of the bulk water as possible. The drips of isopropanol left on the kit will still contain water (As Chuck pointed out, it's difficult (read expensive) to make completely dry isopropanol and handle it so that it stays dry). Even so, there will be much less water present after rinsing, so that it won't take much time to dry. The isopropanol itself being a lot more volatile than water evaporates fairly quickly. It's not that mixing alcohol with the water makes the water evaporate faster. The rate of evaporation depends on a number of factors --- * the partial pressures of the alcohol and water vapours above the liquids --- these will be completely independent of each other to a good approximation. * the concentration of the different components in the bulk liquid. Adding alcohol reduces the water concentration so this factor would actually tend to lower the rate of evaporation. * the surface area of the liquid vapour interface, which adding alcohol tends to increase, hence speeding up evaporation. Are we sufficiently off topic yet? Happy New Year, Matthew -- Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 26 The Paddocks Savill Way Marlow Tel: +44 1628 476614 Bucks., SL7 1TH UK To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: Water Damage
Listen. I have a friend, an electronic genius. He, one night dunked his incredibly expensive, state of the art. mobile phone in a glass of Baileys Irish Cream Whiskey, The next day he washed it in distilled water. It works again. The only moronic thing about him is that he uses a mobile phone. These devices should be reserved only for use in hell. -- Regards Cliff Sarginson The Netherlands [ This mail has been checked as virus-free ] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Water Damage
My church had a fire in the computer room today. The equipment was not directly damaged by the fire as the sprinkler system put it out very quickly. However, the sprinklers ran directly on the equipment for a couple hours. There are several servers, routers, hubs etc. Most of them had water pouring out when we picked them up. All but one spare router were on during this. I have carefully dried out all the units. However, one of the hubs appears to be toast. Some of the burning residue fell down and was pulled into the hub by the fan and is imbedded into some of its chips. I didn't bother with cleaning that one up. However, there is no visible damage to the remaining gear. I am letting it sit tonight and will try a power cycle on it tomorrow. Presuming that any of it is still working, the question is can it be trusted for unattended operations anymore? While the cost of most of it is not significant, the configuration time is. It would be much easier to use it rather than set up new gear. To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: Water Damage
I have carefully dried out all the units. You may want to use some distilled water, or very clean water, if there is any visible residue/chalk/salt on the boards. What I normally do with WiFi equipment which got wet/soaked is to rinse them well with very clean water and then dry them in an oven with the door open or with a hair dryer. This works well. Note that water may collect in places like coils and under IC's and inside drives. If it was salt water then *immediately* rinse them with fresh water or demineralized water to stop corrosion (and keep them wet until you can do so). Though with salt water if the machine was on you are often too late. My experience is that also normal tap water has enough conductivty to ruin a machine when it is switched on before it is 100% dry everywhere. The high voltage power supply is in my experience the first thing to give. Dw To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: Water Damage
On Mon, 30 Dec 2002, Dirk-Willem van Gulik wrote: I have carefully dried out all the units. You may want to use some distilled water, or very clean water, if there is any visible residue/chalk/salt on the boards. After that, you can rinse it with isopropyl(sp) alcohol, this is the alcohol used to wash the PCBs after soldering. After the rinse, the alcohol evaporates very quickly. Fer To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: Water Damage
Fernando Gleiser wrote: On Mon, 30 Dec 2002, Dirk-Willem van Gulik wrote: I have carefully dried out all the units. You may want to use some distilled water, or very clean water, if there is any visible residue/chalk/salt on the boards. After that, you can rinse it with isopropyl(sp) alcohol, this is the alcohol used to wash the PCBs after soldering. After the rinse, the alcohol evaporates very quickly. That's an excellent idea because the alcohol will absorb the water (I believe the correct term is that water is misable in alcohol), so when the alcohol evaporates it takes the water with it. I work for a company that operates large television trucks full of expensive gear that occasionally gets wet from leaks, road spray, etc. We have had good luck with filling the janitor's slop sink up with hot water and dousing the equipment in there to remove any salt. If the water you had was not salt, you probably don't need to do this, but I mentioned it just to show that most modern solid state gear with sealed chips is pretty resistant to water damage, as the gear would work after we dried it out. As was mentioned, power supplies are the worst, as the voltages can be much higher on certain parts of those boards. As to reliability, I'd guess if you watch it for a few days and it's OK, then go with it! Operating it will generate some nice heat to finish the drying out and a few days of this should make it or break it. -Jim To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: Water Damage
Thanks for all the suggestions. Here is the latest update. The water from the sprinklers was purer than that from the tap. There was no residue from it anywhere. A bit of head (oven and hair drier used) and it was easily evaporated. However, all of the units except for one router were powered on and in use. The 2 hubs were directly below the fire and burning strands of something fell down and were sucked into them by their fans. The strands were hot enough that the melted into the chip bodies. I didn't hold much hope for them and was not surprised. Neither showed any form of life. Not even the fans came on. Also keep in mind that the ethernet cables came down from the ceiling and had no excess so water running down them had a straight forward path directly into the RJ-45 jacks. The operating router's sealed power brick is totally dead. Since its watertight, something obviously failed in the router and shorted out the brick. Trying another brick in that router caused every light on it to come on. It didn't do anything but light the lights. The non-operating router works fine. The one server that I have responsibility for (mailserver running FreeBSD 4.6) took awhile to get rewired properly. When it was yanked out, some of the internal cables were disconnected. Had to find the motherboard book to figure out how to set them back up properly. Once that was done, the machine came up and worked fine. However, its inlet fan was severly disfigured by the falling burning stuff. Since its at the bottom of the unit, the junk only marred the bottom of the frame. There were no electronics there for it to damage. The fan sounds funny now and I wouldn't trust it. However, the keyboard connector is now defective. You can't plug a keyboard into it. I couldn't find anything visibly wrong with it, it just doesn't work. I have no idea how that happened since there was a keyboard plugged in during the flooding. My only guess is that whoever unplugged it did so via the grab case and run method - leaving the keyboard to catch and disconnect itself. None of the MS servers survived. None had backups either. I suspect that will be a significant problem. However, I do have backups for the mail server and did recover the complete disk and dumped it to my laptop so that will be a simple restore. To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
