Mike's PCjr Page

What?

Yes I know, many of you on this forum are hardware guys (and know this), but many probably are not.

I bought a Jr that had a bad internal power supply failure before I bought it and the entire insides were trashed. Soot, etc.
I made sure it all worked (at least the motherboard) then disassembled it and .... put the motherboard and the parallel port card in the dishwasher along with the case after retro-brite'ing it.

Came out super clean. Dried in the oven for a few hours (sub 150deg f) and it literally looks like new. I was worried about the "speaker" on the motherboard but it was fine.

Obviously, do this at your own risk, but the machine looks like the day it was born.

I've heard of people putting Model M keyboards through the dishwasher.

What I would be concerned about is deposits from any detergent or hard water. The mechanical stress of getting pounded by jets of water can't be too healthy either. If the machine was a basket case, then fine, you saved it, but I wouldn't do this casually.

I've actually had great luck with it. I read all the stuff about detergents, etc. After watching everything, and finally, the 8-bit guy do it, I just went for it. It's stunning how clean they come out. Just be sure to dry them completely. I have doing resto stuff for a while and frankly, the IBM boards are actually quite bullet proof. The C64 stuff you breathe on them and you'll cook something. The old MOS chips, while not really much older, are just so fragile.

Just be sure everything on the board looks like it was probably there when the board was wave soldered and it will be fine. I was concerned about the weird little mainboard speaker but it was all metal so I figured it probably went through the process at manufacture anyway. One thing I do suggest is to pull the socketed chips. I actually forgot and it didn't seem to make any difference. On the flip side, it took me like a half-hour to put the NECV20 in without bending any pins so consider the risks.

Most of the boards I have bought on Ebay were new old stock so super clean, the older ones had a ton of greasy grim on them and I think there has to be some risk from that.