Dry-joints and moisture: Prevention is better than cure.

JayKaye · 05-17-2004, 07:55 PM

Hi all,

I was just wondering if anyone has thought about possible implications of using domestic hardware in a mobile environment? The streets here in Sydney arent exactly the greatest and my car takes it fair share of bumps from the road, which led me to wonder whether dry solder joints could occur on the computer and/or LCD screen PCB's which were never intended for such use. Has anyone out there taken to prevention of something like this? perhaps using wax or the glue gun to secure components susceptible to dry joints?

Also, here in Sydney during summer the air can get extremely humid and this air inevitably will get inside the computer case and ultimately condense to moisture. Again the hardware was not built to withstand this sort of an environment and I am curious to know if anyone has used any prevention methods for this? Perhaps lacquering the board to increase its tolerance to moisture?

I am thinking of taking some precautionary measures so that I dont have any problems in the future but would like to hear from someone who has done something similar.

Thanks in advance

god_of_cpu · 05-17-2004, 08:21 PM

I've never had any problems with vibration and have had a computer with a car with very bad shocks for a couple years. I also doubt moisture would be much of problem within the car, do you notice moisture on the inside of your car now? Also I don't believe most of the PCBs they use in cars now are generally treated in any special manner. In my expereince, the things that have really caused carputer malfunctions are temperature and lack of power.

JayKaye · 05-18-2004, 09:44 AM

In Sydney I do get moisture problems for a month or two a year inside the car. As for shock, I figure it would be more of a precautionary measure than anything else. Sort of a peace of mind thing.

wizardPC · 05-18-2004, 01:01 PM

Back in the old days (circa 2000) we would put a dab of hot glue on each end of a PCI/ISA card after it was installed. Some cards were known to pop out whilst driving down the road, and the glue prevented that.