The effect of Stabilant 22 in computers is to increase long-term reliability and reduce repair costs. This is done by reducing the number of times the system locks up or crashes due to contact malfunction, the single greatest cause of computer malfunctions. Often, it eliminates non-software crashes completely.

 

There are a very large number of contacts in each computer. Many keyboards use an array of electromechanical switches. Other contacts include socketed integrated circuits, and in the card-edge connectors used on plug-in boards.

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Yet others are used to connect keyboard, mouse and other peripheral equipment such as printers, scanners, etc. Often it takes just a single failure of one of these contacts to cause a computer to crash.

 

In educational applications, it's no secret that the computers receive very hard usage, usage that sometimes slips over into near-abusive levels. Quite often, a computer will be down because of an intermittent problem caused by a connector, a problem that may not re-occur on demand when the technician is attempting to service the unit. No one should be surprised when such a problem is almost impossible to locate even though it may be hard for the teaching personnel to understand why it is so difficult for the technicians to solve this type of problem on a permanent basis.

 

Let's review the conditions within a contact that cause this type of problem. If we were to examine the connecting surfaces of a contact under a microscope, we would find that the metal, which looks quite smooth to the naked eye, seems as rough as a mountain range. The actual contact is made by a number of points scattered over the total area of the contact. In between these points is open space. The volume is certainly small, but it does provide a path for the entry of airborne contaminants such as moisture, oils, waxes, chemicals, and even tar from cigarette smoke. While many contacts are gold plated to prevent corrosion, this does not prevent the entry of airborne contaminants. The situation is even worse for many contacts (such as some cheaper RS-232c printer connectors) that do not use gold plating.

 

Depending upon the type of connector, contaminant entry may cause several possible effects:

1. The contaminant may swell, forcing the contact points apart,

2. The contaminant may spread over the contacting points leaving a thin film having odd partially conductive properties,

3. The contaminant may cause corrosion of the contacts. This can cause some very strange effects as many metal oxides and sulfides exhibit semi-conductive effects that may result in turning the contact into a rectifier. While this might not bother the signal by itself, it would make the contact very susceptible to any RF signal that might be picked up. Thus, a radio signal could cause a signal artifact within the computer that could cause it to crash or could result in corruption of stored data.

 

Sometimes, temporary relief is as simple as unplugging and replugging the connector, although this may only shift contaminants about as the contacts are re-seated. In the case of RF susceptibility, the problem may only exist when the computer is in a specific physical location. Where AM/FM/CB/ham radio or TV broadcast signals are the source of interference, moving the computer or its cables even a few feet may make the problem go away. To complicate matters, some broadcasting stations change their antennas’ directional patterns at different times of the day which may alter the RF fields near the computer. Thus, a computer that might fail in the classroom might function perfectly in the test facility. But the potential for failure is still there.

 

There are other environmental hazards as well. No one would expect soft drinks or coffee to find their way into keyboard contacts, much less the computer itself, yet it does happen.

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Contacts, including electro-mechanical switches, are generally the least reliable part of any system. As the number of contacts increases, and as the power level of the signals handled by these contacts decreases, the potential for system malfunction increases very rapidly.

 

The shift to ICs requiring very low operating currents and voltages has cut the power requirements of microcomputers tremendously, but it has also made them much more susceptible to both RF interference (sometimes called Electronic Smog), and even the slightest amount of contaminant penetration.

 

Stabilant 22 (also available diluted with isopropyl alcohol as Stabilant 22A) offers the only active means of ensuring contact reliability. Unlike cleaners. the material is applied and left in place! This is technically termed an active or resident treatment. Use it once throughout a computer and one finds that crashes due to contact problems are virtually eliminated. This translates into very large savings in maintenance not to mention an improvement in the availability of computer resources to the instructional program itself!