If you ever spin a fan up with air (as opposed to electricity) it is toast. Spinning a fan with air generates enough EMF to burn the innards out. Voice of experience. Stick a q tip stick in there to prevent spinning.

 

If you ever spin a fan up with air (as opposed to electricity) it is toast. Spinning a fan with air generates enough EMF to burn the innards out. Voice of experience. Stick a q tip stick in there to prevent spinning.

Done that before and no damage to the fan. However, it does generate an ac voltage (about 2-3 volts at low current) and this can kill components in the mainboard or sometimes even the power supply. One thing I noticed is there is a 12V/5W fan installed and the service manual mentions it is connected to 15V. Probably for additional airflow. The fan is connected to the mainboard via a single clip connector and I can remove this during service. Must remember to put it back though - or it could overheat. The fan mostly cools the power supply along with the acquistion section.

 

Any more ideas?

Hopefully, this weekend, I'm going to get some electronic cleaner and contact cleaner and clean out the scope. Then I'll try and see if it will work properly again. Hopefully.

 

Got some compressed air and contact cleaner. Should I just clean out the dust, and what should I do with the contact cleaner? Apply it to the PSU connector or what?

 

Well I thought I'd update you all on the situation. It's been about 2 months and after using a can of compressed air (£6.99 at Maplin) to clean the unit out, it has been working perfectly. I cleaned the main board, CRT board and PSU. I didn't clean the keyboard & RPG PCB, because they were working adequately. The board wasn't covered in dust, but it did have big clumps of dust around groups of components.

I'm hoping it will stay like this, and for the past 2 months it hasn't shown any sign of problems. So I'd recommend you try it out if you've got a broken scope (or any piece of equipment, for that matter), you've got little to lose.