COMPUTER FOOD DISASTERS MAY RESPOND TO HOME REMEDIES.

Byline: Bill Husted Cox News Service

The guy on the telephone was excited; I could hear him breathing in big gasps between words.

When I found out what was wrong, I could understand his excitement.

``My kid stuck a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich in the VCR,'' he said. ``I guess he watched me put tapes in there and was imitating me.''

That was a pretty easy problem to fix. You take the top of the VCR off, wipe off the worst of the goo with a damp cloth, then clean the recording heads with a cotton swab and alcohol. Like a lot of high-tech disasters, things looked worse than they were.

You'd be surprised at the trouble food and drink cause gadgets. You can worry about software viruses and power surges all you want, but the real culprits in the high-tech world are made of tastier stuff.

When it comes to computers, for instance, one of the most frequent disasters involves spilling coffee or a soft drink into the keyboard. If it hasn't happened to you, it just means you're not clumsy enough.

Today, let's talk about the weirder side of computer maintenance - what to do when your computer loses a food war. We'll start with the example I just mentioned: spilling something onto the keyboard.

The first thing to do is curse, or if you're against cursing, talk loudly. Even if you're a mild-mannered person, you'll find this will clear your head. Meanwhile, turn off the power switches to the computer and your monitor and unplug all electrical cords.

Next you need to make a judgment call. Some technicians advise doing nothing more than turning the keyboard upside down. If you follow this scenario, simply let the keyboard drip-dry for a couple of days. Then plug it back in and hope. Most often, the keyboard will work just fine. (The two major cola drinks are about the worst things to spill onto a keyboard, but even then, it's worth a try.) Use a damp cloth to clean the tops of the keys and thank your lucky stars.

If the keyboard doesn't work, or if you're sort of brave, you can proceed to Course of Action No. 2. It's decidedly more radical and even sounds a little crazy. But if you check around computer shops, you'll soon learn that it's a fairly common remedy.

Fill a clean kitchen sink with distilled water and bathe the keyboard for 10 minutes or so. Then remove it from the water and set it upside down to dry for several days. Toward the end of the drying period, use a hair dryer on cool setting to speed the drying. Most often, once it's completely dry, the keyboard will work just fine.

Spilling liquid into a monitor or the computer processing unit itself is a different story, and most often a tragic one. If this happens to you, don't waste time fumbling for the on/off switches. Pull out the power plugs as quickly as you can. In the case of the monitor, there is some really high voltage inside the case, so get the power off fast and don't touch the case. Even if the monitor is already ruined (which is doubtful), you need to cut the power off to avoid a fire.

In the case of spilling liquid inside a computer processing unit, or CPU, a lot depends on your luck and your choice of drink (water being the best thing to spill and something gooey being the worst). No matter what you spilled, pull the power cord and turn the unit into a position so the liquid can drain out.

Some commercial repair shops treat a spill like this - assuming the spill didn't immediately short out something and ruin it - just like a keyboard spill. They bathe the CPU in distilled water and let it air-dry.

Please don't try this yourself. Even if everything was working fine when you pulled the cord, I'd take the computer to a repair shop. My theory is that it's better to have a trained professional ruin your equipment than to do it yourself.