Spilled beer on my B+

[cslide]

The subject says it all, got it unplugged immediately, should I swab it with rubbing alcohol before trying to power it up?

It was in a case but still got good splash.

[rpdom]

I'd go the whole hog and wash it in warm soapy water, then rinse thoroughly, ideally finishing with de-ionised/distilled water to get rid of any residue, path dry with paper towels then leave to dry in a warm (not hot) place for a few days to ensure the connectors are free from water.

Make sure you clean or replace the SD card too, as that could get liquid inside.

Then I'd get another beer and try again (without spilling any this time )

[ShiftPlusOne]

I'd also use a desiccant of some kind to suck up liquid that may be trapped under a chip.

[DougieLawson]

This reminds me of a story from an IBM hardware engineer.

Someone spills their coffee on a 3270 keyboard. The first question the engineer asks is "Do you take sugar in your coffee?". The reason being that it goes sticky and needs more work taking the keyboard to bits and cleaning everything. Coffee without sugar can be rinsed off and dried.

The biggest problem with liquids and circuit boards is the random shorts that can kill the device (even if you quickly pull the power). Getting it dry is relatively easy by packing it in a food container filled with rice.

[Burngate]

Four in the morning, the phone goes. "Edit suite 13 here. My keyboard stopped working"

If they'd said "I've just spilt coffee in the keyboard" I'd swap it out with the one from next door, and dunk their's in a bath of water.
Then I'd NOT tell their supervisor what had happened, because it's a sacking offence.

But as it is, they've left it for three hours, trying to pretend nothing's happened ("It's a mystery it was working perfectly up till now"),or it must have been someone else who did it ("What, me, Gov?")
The Keyboard is a write-off. The editor gets sacked.

[cslide]

Thank you all for the replies! I have it in a bowl of rice right now, and am going to leave it for another day before cleaning it more.

On the plus side, when the beer spilled it was like a Rube Goldberg machine...an incredibly cruel one that apparently likes to knock over an IPA......

[cslide]

Success!!!

Kept it in rice for 24 hours, washed it with warm soapy water and used distilled water to rinse it... Been air drying until today, put it back together and it booted right up!

I think I lost the external HDD that I had next to it, I think it got some beer in it as well. I have a spare though..

Thanks again!!!

[W. H. Heydt]

At one job I had, our offices were on the 13th floor of a 45 story building. The water-cooled IBM mainframe was on the 14th floor. A pipe came apart (at a joint) in the water distribution unit. Since no one had ever told the operators where the shutoff valves were, the entire 10K gallon holding tank on the roof of the building was drained under the false floor in the machine room. Some of the water ran down through the floor cuts around the return drain lines...and into (among other things) various IBM 3270 terminals in the offices. After everything got dried out, the field techs went through and tested the terminals. Out of perhaps a dozen terminals, one had a bad board that had to be replaced. The terminal covers had rust spots on them ever after that, though.

At least in that case, it was very clean water, except for whatever it picked up after coming out of the pipe.

[Burngate]

Upstairs: canteen with kitchen, including dish-washer.
Downstairs: 128-square matrix, feeding (mainly) channel outputs to satellite transponders and other clients
The dish-washer's drain got blocked, so someone took a broom-handle to the drain pipe.
The water that ended up in the matrix was anything but clean.