Blowing in the dust

If you're like me you have plenty of very old computers coming across your work bench. I usually have a can of compressed air to clean off all the dust. Recently, I've come across information which may make my clean tendencies to be downright dangerous.

While I knew that using compressed air on a hot computer mother board was a bad idea because the extreme cold of the propellant could potentially crack the board, I had no thought of the possibility for static to be released. There is of course the concern of blowing dust deeper into the equipment and thus ruin an otherwise working computer.

Here's what I'm doing: I use a vacuum cleaner on keyboards, fan vents and drive bays. I used the compressed air on very dirty mother boards -- which have completely cooled down.

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