Today I finally got out of our loft a Dell machine from late 99. It 'died' In what we refer to as The great basement flood of 01. When I was younger we moved into a large 4 bedroomed house. The only issue we didn't know about was that the basement flooded everytime there was lots of rain. or when snow/slush started to thaw. Unknowingly we stored it in the basement. One day we woke up one morning, went down the basement and there was six feet of dirty water. Turns out the drain was damaged (and still is to this day. We don't even live there anymore but can tell when the basement is flooded as a large puddle grows on the street above.) and all the rain ran into the basement. Giving you multiple times a year a few feets worth of dirty water. When it all eventually drained out and was cleared most of the stuff down there got binned (3 wooden desks got eaten up by it) and this computer got put into my Grandma's loft. Earlier yesterday when clearing it up I found it. Remembered instantly what I was and stripped it and stuck it in the dish washer. Dirt was caked onto the motherboard. You literally could not see the color of the motherboard before it was washed. After washing everything but the disk drive and hard drive I let it dry and then fixed it all back up plug it in and it still works like the day we first used it. Minus the hard and disk drives as Im not sure if they would have got saturated and ruined. If a dell computer can sit under six feet of muddy,filthy and smelly water for a week and remain caked in crap for almost ten years and still work, well then it gains my respect.:thumbsup:
And thats whats astonishing. Poor quality components were able to withstand the stress they did for aslong as they did and still work!
I was under the impression Dell machines were shit until my workplace shifted to using them, circa 2006. Their consumer machines have a bad reputation for reliability, I wouldn't touch them (and come preinstalled with a truly incredible amount of crap software) but the corporate machines we had were inarguably more reliable than PCs from the previous supplier (a local firm who used off-the-shelf components). Their corporate IT repair line was usually competently staffed, too, which came as a surprise.
For me it went backwards. Generally, Dell machines sold in Mexico were better than most other makers. At least, above average. My university, back when I was a student, used Dell and IBM machines, and generally, the IBM ones failed more. I had to help staff the computer labs as a student (part of Scholarship at my school is you have to work for said school 5 - 10 hours a week), and I saw not much trouble with the Dells. I had a pretty positive opinion of Dell until I had to work with a Dell laptop given to teachers at a university (A different one) where I teach. What a piece of crap - nothing works on it. It was a complete disaster. And we had like four of these, bought in 2007, and they ALL have fallen apart - beyond usable, at least.
Dell had solid machines at one point. Then quality went down, but have recently started to go back up. Regardless, if you don't buy the cheapest of the cheap, as most people did when they bought Dells, they were still quite decent. But when people went and spend 300$ on a computer, keyboard, mouse, and monitor (plus FREE PRINTER!), of course they were terrible.
I once had an NES that I blew up with an M80. Afterwards, I took the 84 pieces it had broken into and put them in a pile. I taped a video cable to the pile and surprisingly Super Mario Bros. appeared on the screen! True story.
Take the CMOS battery out. With that still in there are parts that have current running through them. The main thing is letting it completely dry out without any soapy resedue.
The XPS M1330 was a powerful and cool looking machine but is also one of their biggest failures. My dad runs a used laptop business and we have had 10-20 of them with dead graphics chips, if you look on ebay you will find hundreds of them all not working out of warranty for this very reason.
The trouble with Dell is their supply chain is based out of china now, so it takes weeks to get new machines. The corporate fulfillment is terrible these days. I think their desktops are great, but their laptops are not very good.
Well they were assembled in USA back then, now they are all made in China ala Foxconn where low quality electrolytic capacitors have a monopoly there... I've changed a lot of bad caps on 'dead' dell motherboards and got them working again. Fortunately, working dell parts (motherboards) sell for a pretty penny on ebay.
When I heard about PCB's in the dishwasher for the first time I thought it was a joke. Now I don't even hesitate when I encounter a dirty PCB. I fixed an Atari Falcon computer by putting it in the dishwasher (it had LOADS of nicotine residue on it combined with dust and adhesive from badly performed mods). Came out brand new. It fixes also 99% of the problems with MVS cartridges.
As long there is no salty agressive water in use, it wouldn't harm the PCB at all. Important is, that it gets dried very well and fast after the big shower. So my concerns are more on the passive elements than on the IC chips side.
most dishwashers now filter the water. with the issues of hard water and softwater they had to do it as the limescale just ruined the machines. so when the water does enter the main bit (with the electronics in) its fairly clean. the main issue is letting it dry. A few minutes with a hair dryer is not enough. I leave them out in the sun for a few days to dry. If in autumn and winter and there isn't much sun its the airing tank for a week then turned over and another week. its slower but it gets it dry.
