iPod Dangerous When Wet 531
puggsincyberspace writes "What do you do when your mom washes your iPod? Fix it, of course. A teenager in Australia found out the hard way that messing with the insides of his iPod is dangerous and needed medical attention after it exploded."
Electronics Surviving the Wash (Score:2, Interesting)
One drunken evening it got put into the wash - a full cycle. When I found it in the shirt pocket afterwards, it was full of water... there was a bubble in there too so it was more useful as a spirit level.
I tried to turn it on (you never know) but no joy - so I put it in a cupboard and forgot about it.
Four years later I found it again (thoroughly dried out) and tried turning it on - success! Amazingly enough, it worked fine.
I suppose an electronic gadget can recover from being soaked as long as you haven't short-fried any circuits.
Damn kids and their modern technology.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Same with cellphones, flash keys, etc. But noooo, someone had to go and put rustable moving parts into mp3 players...
Warranty anyone? (Score:2, Interesting)
Now why couldn't our exploding friend do the same?
Re:I heard somewhere that (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:I heard somewhere that (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This boy has a great future... (Score:1, Interesting)
I'd also like to note, that although my nephew's GBA SP was thrown in the dishwater by a relatives little kid, I was able to remove the li ion battery cell, without problems because it was secured with a single screw, and the contacts were far enough apart, and the case water resistant enough that the cell didn't short out from a brief exposure to water... a prolonged submersion would have probabbly shorted the cell out, but we fished it out in a hurry...
I wouldn't be at all surprized if someone washed an SP in the washing machine, let the unit dry, replaced the battery with a new one that it wouldn't work just fine.. an ipod you'd have to throw in the trash, there wouldn't be enough to salvage, the hd would have been corrupted, the screen would probably be the only part that was still salvagable.. a fat lot of good a screen (without it's controling logic chips) with no hd no main board (gb sp's main boards are water proofed) and no working battery is..
Re:Great (Score:2, Interesting)
Another wet ipod (Score:5, Interesting)
There may have been something happening with the washing powder in solution or water being forced into various places by the high Gs at high spin; however as I opened up my ipod it was completely inert. Something really strange must have happened to pierce his battery (solid Li skids around and pops a little when placed on top of water); however then you would expect it to have happened inside the washing machine. The implication there is that he pierced the battery with the screwdriver, which is no mean feat since it's around a 180 corner when you're trying to get in. Makes me wonder exactly what he was trying to do at the time.
Return it? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I heard somewhere that (Score:3, Interesting)
It cost me 5 Euros instead of ~ 90 Euros. (Power supplies are strangely more expensive in European countries rather than in North America).
The tech told me he does this all the time and it's simple as hell.
I know that, from all things, non-tech people should not open their power supplies (PS). And I don't mind having a yellow-glued suspiciously looking PS, but knowing how Apple PS have/had a tendancy to break for silly reasons (at least with G3 ibooks), it would have been nice of them to have a tech-friendly way to fix them.
Re:I heard somewhere that (Score:2, Interesting)
Good luck isn't required to replace a microswitch. If you have a similar device e.g. a second, broken mouse that you have kept for parts then it's a trivially simple operation for those that can use a soldering iron.
Provided it's safe to work with (err on the side of caution if you're not sure) and it's not working anyway you might as well have a go at fixing it!
Even if you don't succeed you'll probably learn something in the process.
Re:This boy has a great future... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Logitech (Score:3, Interesting)
Running a thin, blunt knife e.g. a small butter knife or screwdriver around the joins should reveal where the plastic lugs are. Then insert similar shims at each locked point until the container pops open. It takes a bit of practice but if you're careful you soon learn the tolerance of the material - i.e. how hard to apply pressure before anything snaps. Also - check there aren't any screws hidden behind sticky labels etc. by running your finger over them and feeling for giveaway circular depressions. When you're putting it back together bend the lugs out a bit so they catch.
You might want to consider investing in a mouse with screws - the couple of Logitech meeces I use are only secured with a couple of easily-accessible screws. Which is handy if I need to clean them or do simple maintenance such as pushing the optical sensors back in line.
Re:Lithium poly batteries the cause (Score:3, Interesting)
Potassium made a nice little splash, Rubidium produced a decent explosion and Caesium blew chunks out of the tub with a pretty big bang.
Quite a nice demonstration of "don't mix alkali metals and water".
This is not very new.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Waaay back in the early 70's I worked as an Engineer in the Texas Instruments Calculator division. We purposefully tested calculators to destruction to see what sort of trouble people could cause by doing stupid things. One thing we learned early on was that it was stupid of **us** to use the standard 3.5 mm jacks for chargers if the jack was connected directly to the batteries because you can short then during normal insertion. This was brought home to us graphically when that scenario happened on a desk model scientific calculator that had NiCad C-cells! Nobody was hurt but the calculator was destroyed internally. This led to the use of the barrell type connectors you see nowadays for power connections. Another design thing we did was to use small gage wire to connect the batteries so that the wire would "fuse" before other "bad stuff" happened.
Back to the destructive testing.. We tried using the wrong chargers, including those from various other manufacturers and escalated on up to applying 120 VAC to the charging terminals. We also, where the batteries were in an externally accessible holder, tried other similar sized batteries, alkaline and carbon-zinc dry cells. All testing was done inside a sturdy wooden enclosure. The worst-case situations sounded like someone had fired a 12 gauge shot-gun in there. In that case, where 120 Vac was applied to carbon-zinc cells, the carbon rods had gone through the side of the plastic calculator case.
It's clear to me that people can mess up most anything. Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.". I'm in agreement.
Re:I heard somewhere that (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.snopes.com/science/lightbulb.asp [snopes.com]
Re:Great (Score:3, Interesting)
The power density of a *jelly donut* is higher than TNT, FFS! Batteries can't even hold a CANDLE to a JELLY DONUT!
Re:I heard somewhere that (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I heard that getting wet for electronic devices is a common occurance among the females of the species. Admittedly, it can be dangerous when they come to prefer them to the biological alternative, but shorting out the batteries to the metal casing usually takes care of that after one application.
However, getting electronic devices wet is probably a Bad Idea. Stabbing them with your screwdriver just makes it worse. Which, coincidentally, is also true when it comes to the female of the species.
And before someone makes a dirty joke about that, I'll point out that if you are equipped in such a way that "screwdriver" immediately reminds you of such equipment, perhaps you should keep it to yourself and hope none of the girls tell their friends.