The Dreaded Powerbook Stink.
Short story: As the legends foretold, my Powerbook 12 1.25 smells like burnt crayons / body odor when the cpu heats up. It does not appear to be overheating, but definitely has a distinct odor that makes the machine less appealing to use.
Have any of you guys experienced this? Did you ever find a solution? I've found a ton of websites with people complaining about the issues but very few suggestions on what to do.
Posted Jan 8, 2020, 6:04 PM UTC
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Its typically the degrading adhesive in the keyboard, try taking it off and running it with an external one for a bit to see if its the case.
I did try that as a test, but honestly the smell permeates the keyboard / top shell pretty well so I had a hard time determining the source exactly. But you're pretty sure it's the keyboards specifically? If so, do you know if you can run those through the dishwasher?
It's the adhesive that was used on the keyboard, that's what stinks like homeless gym socks. I'm not sure how you fix it though.
I have a TiBook that had this problem, but after a few months it stopped smelling so I guess everything at that point had been vaporised so you could try putting it under load somewhere will ventilated for a chunk of time and see if that helps but definately do not put it in the dishwasher, iv had keyboards cease to work after half a cup of water was spilt on them
You could try to stick the keyboard somewhere warm and ventilated to gas off.
Sadly won't have too many options for detaching the keyboard to put it somewhere warm that's also ventilated around here until summer rolls around. Not a bad idea though!
There's an idea. Alright, I'll give that a shot. Thanks for the suggestion and warning!