[Noisebridge-discuss] Mac Book Pro + Water = Sad Mac Keyboard

[Daniel Pitts]

You could try washing it with an alcohol solution (rubbing alcohol), and 
hoping that displaces enough of the material to fix the problem, but 
chances are you'll need to replace the keyboard.
On 3/3/12 2:31 PM, Jared Dunne wrote:
> NB-
>
> My gf spilled a decent amount of water on my old 17" MBP's keyboard 
> the other day.  I was wondering if people with experience with similar 
> incidents with A1212 17" MBPs could share some tips.
>
> I immediately turned it off, unplugged, and removed the battery.  I 
> inverted it and wiped down as much of the water as possible.  I left 
> it inverted overnight.
>
> The next day I put back in the battery and powered it up.  It worked 
> fine except some of the keys were "stuck", meaning it was acting like 
> they were held down, namely some combination of shift, control, and 
> command.  The behavior was that when I typed everything was in all 
> CAPS and numbers were punctuation, etc.  Also when I clicked links in 
> the web browser they opened in new windows.
>
> I found some helpful videos on http://www.powerbookmedic.com and used 
> them to dissemble the MBP and remove the keyboard.  Once removed, I 
> was better able to remove various crud that had found its way under 
> the keys over the last 4-5 years.  I then ran it under fresh water 
> (didn't submerge) then allowed it to dry for 36 hours.
>
> The following evening I tried reassembling the machine.  I had some 
> trouble getting the keyboard's ribbon cable back snugly into it's 
> slot, so I'm not sure that it made a good connection.  I continued 
> anyways and powered it on.  The "stuck" key problem had gone away.  
> While most keys now worked, a seemingly random subset of them didn't 
> do anything on key press, including T, G, B, left shift, tab, command, 
> etc.
>
> I've removed the keyboard again and removed the keys that were still 
> having issues.  There isn't anything obviously afoul with them, aside 
> from there being some dusty/cloudy appearance between the layers of 
> transparent plastic housing the connections to/from the nubs that get 
> depressed, which isn't dramatic different than the appearance 
> surrounding the working keys.
>
> Questions:
> - Could the behavior be caused by a incomplete connection of the 
> ribbon cable?  Or would that cause boot errors or all-or-none 
> behavior?  Tips on getting that ribbon cable in snugly despite the 
> lack of slack in the cable?
> - Did I screw up by rinsing it off?  Alternatively, did I not go far 
> enough in my rinse?
> - Any other tips on what I should do next?  Clearly I can buy a 
> replacement, but I'd like to eliminate the possibility of repair 
> before doing so.
>
> Thanks!
> Jared-
>
>
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