Hardware Help 3ds drenched!

[darkworldz]

Help!! my 3ds got drenched in water. I have soaked it in rice for like 2days, and it is working now, fully functional, but the charging light(the orange one) lights up even when not charging.. Is it a problem of the battery? or just my 3ds got messed up by the water?

 

[chavosaur]

Was your 3ds On when it got drenched? Or did you just have it sitting somewhere off, and a glass of water fell on it?

 

[chris888222]

Maybe there are some rice bits inside, or the water fucked up the set.

Can you elaborate a bit more on what happened?

 

[darkworldz]

I put it in my bag and my water bottle leaked.. i opened the case to dry it. tried turning it on but was unable to. at this point the charging light was already light up.
Then i was told that putting it in rice can help and it indeed worked, after putting it in uncooked rice for about a day, i was able to turn it on and play a few rounds of kid icarus. but the charging light is still on..

 

[chris888222]

I put it in my bag and my water bottle leaked.. i opened the case to dry it. tried turning it on but was unable to. at this point the charging light was already light up.
Then i was told that putting it in rice can help and it indeed worked, after putting it in uncooked rice for about a day, i was able to turn it on and play a few rounds of kid icarus. but the charging light is still on..

Oh god.

Water conducts electricity. Whatever you do NEVER on the system when it is with water!

It might cause a short circuit too. And I think this caused the light problem.

 

[darkworldz]

so it was a problem with the motherboard?? oh noes.. time to send to nintendo for repairing then..

 

[3DSGuy]

Help!! my 3ds got drenched in water. I have soaked it in rice for like 2days, and it is working now, fully functional, but the charging light(the orange one) lights up even when not charging.. Is it a problem of the battery? or just my 3ds got messed up by the water?

My 3DS found it's way to the bottom of a semi-dirty pool. And it showed the same symptoms, the orange light is the 3DS refusing to boot because the circuitry is acting properly. Remember all of the crucial components on the motherboard (NAND, CPU, RAM etc) have their connectors protected with an insulator. So it is unlikely that they are damaged, unless you seriously screwed it up. But you did turn it on after it got dropped in water once an that is a big no no. The water may have gone, but the chances are the water in your bottle wasn't pure water, and the dissolved salts would be left on the connectors when the water evaporated, which might cause the 3DS to freak out.

I took mine apart, dried every piece. I also cleaned the electronic connections between parts with methylated spirits. Now my microphone only works some of the time but everything else is fine.

Also if your 3ds turns on, and gives an error after about 20 seconds, your WiFi board might be faulty. You can prevent the error from making your 3DS crash, by turning off wifi with the wireless switch. Try giving the wifi board a bath and a good scrub in methylated spirits, it worked for me.

If your screens are water logged, I'm not sure of the best approach to fixing that, but I spent about half an hour drying each screen before putting it back together, and over time (a few weeks) the water receded. Don't be worried about using the system while the screen is water logged.

If you are good with taking things apart and putting them back together again, and your warranty for your 3DS expired try this. Otherwise if your warranty hasn't yet expired, send it to Nintendo.

 

[jalaneme]

Lesson learned here, always protect your console with a case even a hard case is good enough, don't think its a good idea to chuck your 3ds in there naked into you bag and expect nothing to happen, especially when you have a drink in there too, that was asking for trouble.