It's only a partial rescue, but it's my first one, so here it is.
My wife and I had an eMac in the first years of our marriage, and about five years or so ago, the screen started acting funny. I put it in storage, thinking someday I might fix it. At some point my wife decided it was time to say goodbye and put it outside in the enclosure where we keep the garbage. I couldn't ever bring myself to actually get rid of it, but it sat outside for more than a year, rain and shine.
Finally yesterday I decided to do something and pulled it back in. With my boys help, we opened it up to assess the situation.
It was wet:
And dirty.
As I got things disassembled, it became clear that at some point water had pooled in the bottom of the machine. There was a distinct waterline about 2 inches up on the inside. Fortunately, due to the solid case design, nothing higher than that had ever gotten wet except for the fan at the back. Also fortunately, the only thing down at the bottom is the optical drive.
The optical drive was a mess.
Its integrated circuit board had been entirely underwater for an unknown amount of it, but the waterline was 1/4 inch below the laser diode assembly, so it wasn't an entirely hopeless situation.
The rest of the machine looked pretty much fine. As you can see, the upper chassis, logic board, and hard drive had never been wet.
I disassembled the optical drive, cleaned it, and dried it out. I cleaned anything else that was dirty (mostly plastic stuff), and let everything dry out for most of the day.
Then I put it all back together and fired it up.
Yes! Sadly, the optical drive does not appear to work, now. It ejects disks upon command, but does not read them. I have an external, though, and it's an easy fix anyways.
Now I just have to figure out how to solve the video problem.
It's like a squeeze, except what's really happening is that the upper and lower corners all extend too far off the screen. The top and bottom margins are where they should be, but the left and right sides don't fit. It's the same problem we had before we put it in storage.
Any ideas?
UPDATE: And this morning the optical drive works! Running a clean install from the original CDs now.
My wife and I had an eMac in the first years of our marriage, and about five years or so ago, the screen started acting funny. I put it in storage, thinking someday I might fix it. At some point my wife decided it was time to say goodbye and put it outside in the enclosure where we keep the garbage. I couldn't ever bring myself to actually get rid of it, but it sat outside for more than a year, rain and shine.
Finally yesterday I decided to do something and pulled it back in. With my boys help, we opened it up to assess the situation.
It was wet:
And dirty.
As I got things disassembled, it became clear that at some point water had pooled in the bottom of the machine. There was a distinct waterline about 2 inches up on the inside. Fortunately, due to the solid case design, nothing higher than that had ever gotten wet except for the fan at the back. Also fortunately, the only thing down at the bottom is the optical drive.
The optical drive was a mess.
Its integrated circuit board had been entirely underwater for an unknown amount of it, but the waterline was 1/4 inch below the laser diode assembly, so it wasn't an entirely hopeless situation.
The rest of the machine looked pretty much fine. As you can see, the upper chassis, logic board, and hard drive had never been wet.
I disassembled the optical drive, cleaned it, and dried it out. I cleaned anything else that was dirty (mostly plastic stuff), and let everything dry out for most of the day.
Then I put it all back together and fired it up.
Yes! Sadly, the optical drive does not appear to work, now. It ejects disks upon command, but does not read them. I have an external, though, and it's an easy fix anyways.
Now I just have to figure out how to solve the video problem.
It's like a squeeze, except what's really happening is that the upper and lower corners all extend too far off the screen. The top and bottom margins are where they should be, but the left and right sides don't fit. It's the same problem we had before we put it in storage.
Any ideas?
UPDATE: And this morning the optical drive works! Running a clean install from the original CDs now.
A member here offered me a nice one for the cost of shipping, hopefully once I've got some spare cash I can afford the $70ish to do so.
