Looking forward to it!

ok,

Glad to hear your back to using the same music from most of your recent videos. I love that track

Can you explain what brand of Eucalyptus oil you use? Are you sure it does not cause long term damage?

I think you're not storing your things properly I've never had this sort of problem with 10, 15, 20, or 30 year old tech of any sort. Tech doesn't just spontaneously combust. You seem to love putting some sort of oil all over your plastics - yeah that's a recipe for disaster through chemistry. There's a reason that electronics engineers only ever use alcohols to clean plastics (aside from acrylic), PCBs, contacts, etc - it evaporates and afterward there's no chemical reaction taking place Humidity is also a major factor Your tech problem is you - sorry Long term storage of tech: in a cool, dry, dark place. Use desiccant pouches if you can. REMOVE ALL BATTERIES. Lithium batteries should be stored in lithium pouches - not plastic ziploc bags Cleaning: with soapy water in wringed-out clean cloth (microfiber works), followed by alcohol, let dry

Microplastics and heavy metals ;)

literally

Perfectly done! Every word!

@@ahmetcanaksu6821what bro said ☝️… 💀

😂😂😂

Battery life is insane.

no one can read your writing after 1000 years

@@Blox117 Ea-nasir would strongly disagree

@@Blox117 If we can translate Gilgamesh, I’m sure future generations will figure it out

@@thedapperdolphin1590 expressions and stories lose their meanings over time. A joke about people from new York means nothing to someone when new York hasn't existed for a long time

It is certainly disappointing that the only way to preserve old technology is to keep replacing obsolescent parts to the point where it literally becomes something that is like the Ship of Theseus.

You can take that sticky stuff off with acetone. I did it on some knobs a few years ago and they still work. It didn't destroy them yet.

@@therabbitchannel2059 Thanks. I've been looking for a solution to that problem.

I am actuallt tempted to print some of my old pics on my phone and pc.

TRASHPPLE PISSPRODUCTS BELONG IN THE TRASHCAN ANYWAH HA HA

Planned obsolescence + oxidation 💀

@@GardeDuCoeur I wouldn't say planned. These devices still worked decades after being manufactured

@@GardeDuCoeur That is not planned obsolescence. People are using these words way too easily nowadays.

HP test gear from the 80s is mostly aluminum, that lasts a lifetime, if you do the occasional electronics repair. It's just crApple garbage, that dies. No big loss, if you ask me. That company went garbage, at the time they ditched 68k.

Is this every display? Or ones cleaned with the wrong chemicals?

@@goclunker every LCD display made in the 2000s to 2010s can develop this thing in this 2020s due to age (i have successfully replaced the polarizer on my LG Scarlet TV)

@@goclunker i have a few ancient lcds that haven't had any issues at all. so its either improper cleaning, or limited to specific types of plastic polarizers from certain companies. or perhaps a combination of the two.

@@goclunker the issue is caused by the triacetate cellulose base (what the polarizer is usually made of) reacting with moisture/humidity or even the adhesive layer. So yes, almost every LCD display including LED backlit ones are affected, because they all have a polarizer. This issue seems to be less prevalent in temperate climates though. Wrong or harsh cleaning liquids are unlikely to be the primary cause, but they can worsen or quicken the damage if the chemical process has already started.

@@sengyew83 damn. Everything is made to fail. I am now reconsidering my retrotech collection

Good thing not everything uses it :) lots of old electronics are still fine and will remain to be fine. If ANYTHING.... Apple has always played the game with planned obsolescence. It's possible they didn't see this coming- but I understand they did something like this again to a few MacBook Pros, a few years in a row. 2014-2017? But yeah. Thankfully not everything uses this crap. I hate it so much. It "feels" neat for a while... but then it goes sticky. And what's more I'm pretty sure it rubs off particles we don't really want to carry with us. 🧠

Yup. Happens in as little as 5 years. I have an Ableton Push 2 that has the problem...

Some of my old mice had the same issue. The scroll wheel had this plastic layer on top that just seems to have melted down to a goop. I had to remove the whole polastic bit and clean the inside of the mice from all that goop that drooled down inside.

The soulution I found for most rubbers becoming sticky is straight up getting rid of the rubber with gasoline, alcohol, acetone... it mostly depends on which solvent the other materials can withstand

I wonder if coating the rubber in something like clear varnish could help prevent it further breaking down.

I used to have a CRT monitor in the late 90s which turned pink every now and then. I started tapping it gently and it returned normal. As time passed I had to use bigger and bigger force. Months later I was banging the top of the display with full force until it returned normal. Later I learned that the issue was with the power outlet and the display had no issues. Still managed to sell the CRT display.

My dad calls that "gentle abuse" lol

It works great on fridges with jammed compressors after being in storage. Give it a good whack with a hammer just as you turn it on.

That phenomenon happened alrady 40 years ago. I was called to someone having a VAX machine (digital/DEC) and it would not boot anymore. They wanted to copy the data one final time. When hard drives ran for a long time and then are turned off for a prolonged time, the bearing grease gets thicker. By giving a gentle knoch it moves a bit - enough for the torque of the motor to spin it up again. The hard drive heats then up a bit making it running again.

It's how my PowerBook G3 has been operating for the last year. The HDD seizes up after a while of not running so I keep a hammer in its bag for starting the system.

That sounds like an IBM Model M keyboard, they started coming with IBM PCs in 1985. I'm using one from 1994 to type this, I love it. There is a company called Unicomp that still make them.

The old saying seems perfect for this😂

​@@JustinHiggins "2nd generation IBM" probably refers to the IBM 5160 PC XT, the successor to the IBM 5150 PC. These computers used Model F keyboards! Far superior to the Model M, IMO.

@@AerFixus I thought ‘2nd generation’ might refer to PS2. I would love to try a Model F, but they are a lot harder to find than the Model M.

@@JustinHiggins given the rest of the context: The IT department wanting the user to upgrade the machine in 1987, presumably because it is out of date, wouldn't make sense to be a PS/2 since that was released in 1987. Also notable is that it had a monochrome green screen, which was no longer a standard option for the PS/2. Also, having a "big floppy disk" seems to refer to the 5 1/4" size of disk, rather than the smaller 3 1/2" floppy disks. Anyway, it's an interesting story. And Model M and Model F keyboards are both great. I'm just a snob and I enjoy typing on an F significantly more than an M. Don't get me started on Beamsprings!

Fellow car guy here! Thankfully, 3D scanning and 3D printing are solving this issue for us! Guys are 3D scanning plastic parts and just printing replacements or even making molds with the 3D scan so pieces can be reproduced with injection molding.

Price wasn’t the only reason for switching to plastic parts in cars. Injection molding is incredibly useful, allowing the creation of parts that you’d never be able to make with metal casting. They also respond better to a lot of the conditions cars face. In fact if say when done right, with glass fibre reinforcement and good design, plastic parts are somewhat better for cars than we think

Plastic engine parts have been such an issue for me my car is 8 years old and has had a plastic valve go out each year for the last couple years

You better get yourself a classic car that’ll last you a lifetime. Unless you feel like buying a new overpriced car every 3-4 years.

Its designed to fail on purpose sadly, more money in parts being needed rather than being set for life

This is a good reminder to change my cassette player belts haha

Not just the 70s, most belt driven electronics older than about 20 years are either suffering from a deteriorating belt or have had the belt fail entirely.

I've found the same with an 8mm projector and an EIAJ reel to reel video, belts all either goo or crumbly

Happens with USB storage apparently... Learning about that made me think, yep, paper would be better. Imagine having your saved data just suddenly gone.

I’ve started trying to get back in the habit of paper due to that. Even screen shots if I can’t copy/paste the text into word. I’m starting to deploy binders by subject.

@@sam12587 Same! Even if you use external storage and a format for your documents which is sure to be supported for years to come (e.g. I'm willing to guess that even Windows XP Word files can be used with Windows 11), data corruption can still happen on there. And goodness knows how many times you might need to replace the external storage due to physical rot between 20 years. Expensive! Paper in plastic "wallets" for protection is the way to go. When they're in plastic covering, they can't be damaged.

you should always download what you like on the internet, and ideally keep 2 or more copies

Buy multiple USBs and transfer every couple years lol

old cars also have plastic and everything is fine with them

Had a old E class w211 merc, i wont say that every plastic bit was still maluable but literaly all of it was like new, the only exception being the plastic bits that hold the side spoiler. and the car was from a place where the roads get salted

It depends on how you see it. Because everything is getting expensive nowadays that. Plastic is becoming expensive to produce and make

Cars are made to a different standard though. Modern cars are also probably mostly more durable than those from five decades ago.

Your car will be a clump of rust, before the plastics start to deteriorate.

Indeed, nothing lasts forever.

With enough effort, things can be remade. The C64 community is a great example - various failing custom chips but through the hard work of enthusiastic people, modern replacements are now available!

@@krnlg Yes so true, there is some impressive work being done in those retro computer scenes.

Everything has its lifespan.

Especially devices designed to not be repairable.

Not without completely replacing all the electronics that make them work. That's why I love old non-computerized cars. Keep it simple, stupid! :)

What you are saying is 100% correct. But do we need cars that last 100 years or more?

@@finkelmana Why would you not want a car that had the possibility of lasting a century? I'm baffled.

​ @jamesgizasson Now I am the one that is baffled. First, lets discuss "Survivor Bias". Yes, there absolutely are cars from 100 years ago that can be driven today. 15,000,000 Ford Model T's were built. It is estimated that less than 10,000 are actually able to driven today. That is a percentage of a single percent - 0.0666%. So what happened to the other 14,990,000? They are scrap. The surviving cars werent driven for the past 100 years either. They were parked somewhere and forgotten about. I would expect if you took a bunch of modern cars and you put them in a garage for 100 years, I would definitely expect more than .06% to work. Cars are not rare and for the wealthy anymore. Around 15% of Americans owned cars 100 years ago. Today over 80% own cars - some owning multiple. There are even children today purchasing cars before they are even able to drive. Car Leasing cars is increasing yearly, with 1/3 of all Americans trading in a leased car after 1 or 2 years. People who purchase cars sell them after an average of 7 years. Simply put, people do not want cars that last. And it goes without saying, consumers want to pay as little as possible for them. This means car manufacturers have no incentive to make cars that last. This video is discussing electronics. Consumer grade electronics are no different than cars. Manufacturers COULD use electronics that lasted, but it would cost significantly more and people still would not want to pay the additional cost. If they did, they would still move on, regardless of the state of the product. In the most general of terms, of course people want things they purchase to last forever. They just dont want to keep them forever.

@@finkelmana Tell you what... when whatever you drive outlives my 30 year old diesel with O'Reilly toggle switches and a Blue Sea fuse block, we'll talk. If you get bored with your ride every presidential election, go ahead and inhale the next line of consumer garbage. Those of us that want our stuff to last, want it to last for centuries. :3

If dos has then it wouldn’t be a surprise if the old Apple computers were being emulated too.

@@science_bear Check out Sheepshaver

@@science_bear They definitely are

For classic Macintosh OSs, there's Basilisk II and SheepShaver.

Yes! I’m trying to figure out how to take my OLD pc games and convert them because now I’m thinking if I buy a late 90s or early 2000s PC it may not work. 😣

Yeah. Now I'm worried about my Wii U, but it still works for now.

Voultar showed a method of fixing it pretty easily

some wii u issues are fixable with the UDPIH method, and if you have a dumped nand (which you should if youve ever touched wii u modding) you can actually replace the nand with a replacement chip or a micro sd card

geez as if the Wii U wasn’t disappointing enough

@@protocetid I mean, the PS4, PS5, XBOX One and Series XS are justsilly locked down PCs, so from my perspective these devices are just as dull as the WiiU to you.

Same thing here. I have such a deep connection with my computers and my game consoles. I care so much about them that I did everything I could to protect them.

Me too also.

We still have emulators on our new tech to remember them. Better than nothing.

Seems like an Apple problem.

@@papabird4425it’s the polarizer on the screen it is any old device with a polarizer they actually aren’t that hard to replace

NES never dies! 🤓

You will die before your consoles

I guess vacuum sealing it should make them last longer

i doubt all components would withstand a vacuum (i think back to the The Martian where he brings a notebook out into the martian atmosphere and the lcd screen breaks because of very low pressure)

or you could shoot all of your old tech into space then bring it back when you want to use it.​@@DeepSouthernTX

Can you make a video on how to do this?

This screams business opportunity. A cottage industry needs to develop for computer restoration, just like what happened for old cars.

Glad to see some people promoting restoration in this comment section, Restoration is the only real way forward, not crying about it or living in Fear. Either restore it or move on (and ideally if you do move on allow someone else to have the opportunity to restore it).

​@@draconic5129 I enjoy rebuilding things because I have ASD and find the restoration process to be soothing and meditative. It sort of began with the family Betamax player when I was 8 and it sorta snowballed from there. The unintentional by-product is reducing the number of working or nearly working items in the trash, reusing components that are working to replace ones that are not, and recycling the rest to ensure it's disposed of accordingly. I even got my 3D printer as a broken store-demo at Micro-Center for $50. Rebuilt it with genuine Creality parts for $20 more, then threw another $100 in upgrades on it so it was still less than stock retail ($199 at the time) but with all the upgrades already done. I had never even touched a 3D printer prior, I sorta learned as I went along. My 1st print failed due to warping, but my 2nd print ever turned out perfect. It's been rather dialed-in since. I had to learn some CAD in high school to design and fabricate control-surface hooks for UAVs. so I'm a bit rusty but I'm down for a refresher course. I even have a part in mind that I should be able to test with since I have many and they're prone to embrittlement and breakage (Lian Li case faceplate-clips from the early 2000s). Otherwise I would need the dimensions of the particular item to be printed; while I have a decent collection of vintage tech, I literally can't have everything. Any sort of STL repository would require a substantial amount of collaboration, or at least a 3D-scan of each object.

In a couple decades it will be easier to find classic cars from the 50s and 60s than it will be able to find working examples of cars from 90s because of all the plastic and tech that just doesn't last.

Nature and Time destroys everything, even without using it I was looking for a cool honda from the 90s with a vtec. like i had when i was a teen But they are all in bad shape now, they are falling apart Same with other brands .... All the cool cars from the 90s are breaking down and parts are harder to find

Check out the UKposts channel “Garbage Time” where some of the old cars the owner of the channel has need extensive repairs because of the parts used in 80s and 90s cars. Then again, he also holds and destroys devices that have that sticky rubber surface on his other little known channel called…..DankPods.

@@Novusod plastic and tech can last, but it depend with quality. And at that time they found out that plastic was an awsome material to make some cost cutting part. And that plastic wasn't good either. Look at the plastic from 30's phone. My mother had à phone that her father had, it was from the 20s I guess. Full wood And Iron except for the handle that is hard plastic. Guess what didn't roted or rusted out.

@@mehdisol7094 Your mother's phone would have been made out of Bakelite. Not really a plastic in the modern sense.

Everything dies eventually. Nothing is immune to time.

On the plus side, at least the concerns about plastics sticking around forever in landfills has proven to be overblown!

More modular = more durable.

​@@AmazingArendsno, it has not, there are MANY types of plastic, some far more durable than others, not to mention, just because your eye can't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there poisoning the soil. microplastic has become a concern for good reason.

@@AmazingArends Just because a plastic is brittle and breaks apart doesn't mean it magically disappears

I will say data recovery is quite advanced these days. While yes everything may not be recoverable you would honestly be surprised of what can be recovered

If you think that's depressing, wait until you find out that you're going to die someday too. Don't feel bad about the lost files, though. Humans generate an insane amount of data on a daily basis, almost all of which is only worth keeping until you find out whether it will ever be useful someday. Most data is no more valuable than old purchase receipts.

Iost 2 years of work on a hard drive who suddenly died during the late 2000, at a time I didn't really know about data recovering... Anyway after few days of mourning, I rewrite the disk so now it's f...ed. Yep, it hurts.

as far as old films go, there is a special vault built into the excavated salt mines under the great lakes where Hollywood and the government store film reals and other documents that require extreme environment conditions to preserve. The only other way I can see of keeping stuff from degrading is in a perfect vacuum in a chamber that blocks as many high energy particles from hitting it as possible!

Everyone dies bud

Why? They are cool to look at but total garbage for anything useful

​@@270eman "I'll get my stuff off here later" kinda indicates why.

@@270eman he’s saying he’s got files on them that he never transferred

@@270eman For anything retro related they are the best.

@@270eman false I'm still using old tech in my business even windows 98

I think that's likely to have been the cause of the degradation here.

@Orobas 66 The oldest thing I have using plastic that comes to mind is a ~1960s pocket transistor radio made in the province of Taiwan. Zero, and I mean ZERO broken plastic parts, even on the exterior.

How is it that plastics breaking down is such a big problem but everyone also says plastics never break down and that's why they're such a scourge on the earth?

@@lukasg4807 Plastics are different

@@lukasg4807 Because reality doesn't have much impact on the religious fictions (and profits) of radical environmentalism. Now repent of your enviro-sins or mother gaia will wreak her global warming upon you!

@@lukasg4807 To add onto Orobas 66's reply, if somebody says plastics *never* break down, they're either exaggerating or they don't know what they're talking about. The reality is that plastics typically take several hundred years to decompose, compared to a few days for something like an apple up to a few years for an unembalmed corpse. In nature, it's not normal for anything to really take more than five years to decompose, but the low end for plastics is 20 years. And it's pretty rare for it to break down that quickly; again, a typical timeframe is a few hundred years. So even if it starts to get brittle and useless after 20 to 30 years, it's gonna take a hell of a lot longer than that to fully decompose. And as Orobas 66 pointed out, during the decomposition process for plastic, it 1. leaches out some nasty stuff, things that cause cancers and other similar health issues, and 2. spends most of those several hundred years just breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces. That's how we end up with not only things like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch but also things like fish being caught with stomachs full of plastic and studies showing a majority of humans having microplastics in their blood (you probably have plastic running through your veins right this very moment, and so do I). I hope this explanation helps clarify.

I like that idea!

you are COOL

its funny you should say that. because patent documents include exact measurements for the finished product. which are completely visible to anyone for free.

@@FingerinUrDaughter down to tiniest part level? I can see overall dimensions, but wasn't aware you get a full engineering diagram of every single part.

@@FingerinUrDaughter Are there specific websites where we can see patent documents?

@@brianmi40 x2 Do you know more about open patent documents.

@@RodolfoAmbriz no, sorry

There was also another capacitor plague in the late 1980s-early 1990s because during that time, companies were running out of the materials like tantalum to produce them, so most capacitors in electronics would be replaced with far cheaper and poorer quality ones like most notably ELNA that didn't quite measure the properties of the older capacitors.

@@Orobas-jb9fi i actually did find one of those very old Dell Dimension 2400s or something similar to it that eas still running. Someone was actually still using it and wanted me to fix it because it wouldn't boot anymore. The caps were all fine,the reason it didn't boot anymore was because the original hard drive decided to finally die. This was back in 2022,it was in service since 2002 or 2003 whenever those things were made until last year lol

@@Orobas-jb9fi True,there were a few Dimensions that would have bursted caps (mostly were the one that had higher end Pentium 4's that ran hot and damaged the caps) but overall the GXs did seem to have failed more than the Dimension. As for reliability yeah,i never owned one myself but i did come across a few of them for servicing and most of them were really basic and underpowered Celeron and 256MB RAM combinations,but they were very reliable and actually pretty snappy for the hardware they were using

​@@laur6405 I'm currently staring at my Pentium 4 Dell machine from the mid 2000s in fear

@@Orobas-jb9fi Well i wasn't trying to blame the heat for their failure,but those electrolytic caps would burst faster if they would get too hot.It's true that today's CPUs can make more heat,but all capacitors are now solid state and they don't have liquid aluminum inside them as the classic caps do. As for XP on low RAM it depends,SP3 doesn't really like low RAM and old CPU machines,but SP2 and under usually tend to run better on lower spec computers in my experience at least.

Nor well. I had to replace the capacitors in the computer of my old ford truck, and it was lucky to be only as bad as it was

So you keep them outdoors and not in air conditioning?

@@Doctorlockpick Keeping your house air conditioned 24/7 isn't feasible for everyone.

One word: "dehumidifier."

@@user-yg1dg6xm2g The corrosion comes from battery leak vapours. Moisture only accelerates it or reactivates the residues.

Do you have an og Xbox?

Rubber coating, well my Dell e5440 has this problem. Gets sticky sometimes, on monitor bezel.

I have a Dell Latitude 7280 (roughly 5 years old) that is already starting to show signs of the rubber coating going

@@JustARegularNerd yeah rubber sucks.

E6430 models started getting this problem years ago, absolutely terrible idea.

@@treennumbers I found a Dell XT3 Tablet PC with a pen that's like splash proof and insanely shock resistant, with a display that has a single flipping arm. Got rid of the BIOS password, installed Windows, all works really well but the rubber is completely gone. I also had an HP EliteBook from about 2010 with a 1st gen i5, a dedicated MXM GPU and full size display port, experimental UEFI and USB 3, insane machine, but rubber destroyed. I am writing from a pretty healthy ruberized Dell Latitude, I wonder how long that will last. STOP USING RUBBER

I was wondering why vinyl records are making a comeback. My hunch is that vintage cd's and cd players are experiencing the same problems as the computers in this video are.

I notice these are ALL Apple products. Apple doesn't make REAL computers, just cheap knock offs built for the public school system.

@@Ketchyuki I'm wondering why vinyl records are outselling cd's right now.

@@tomcollins5112because of the aesthetic of them, and vinyls being bigger and easier to put on display. record labels also prefer them to cd’s as there are bigger profit margins on them. and due to the lack of facilities to produce vinyls, albums often sell out very quickly thus many are able to make profit off of them in the secondhand market, and vinyl collecting has become a hobby

@@tomcollins5112 CD's aren't popular anymore, so these 'bigger' sales aren't really a good indicator of anything other than the decline of CD's to such a level where trendy Vinyls outsell them. Nothing to do with durability or usefulness, just nostalgia.

and pvc cables can melt into plastic casings and styrofoam

​@@andygozzo72Yes, because of the plasticizer chemical that keeps them flexible. The downfall of course is a cord touching something else and melts into it. It's very maddening when that happens. I always put cords in seperate bags when storing ANY electronic that's not in use, regardless the age.

Not me replaying it to make sure it wasn't just me hearing my own Budgie pair funny 😂

🤣

Unless it's something ancient you don't have to worry. Couple of generations behind is nothing.... I have mainboards from 20 years ago (Pentium 4 era) and their batteries still work. My oldest still working PC is from 14 years ago, works like a charm, so don't worry these things are robust. Also the displays start to take mold when they don't use them... a working display would never catch mold (if you don't literally dump water on it).

@@Slav4o911 Good to know thank you, I put together a nice pc recently and was praying it would still be good in 10-20 years

I'm _in no way_ what one might call a 'tech~head', but I believe equipment assembled in those years is so notorious for its 'Bad Caps' (capacitors) that it's an actual 'thing'. As far as I can remember, as well as the usual corporate penny~pinching, there is actually quite an involved story involving industrial espionage and counterfeiting behind the problem but I'm afraid I'm hazy at this point about the details. Apart from low~grade electronic components and the well known problem of built~in obsolescence, I am constantly shocked by the lack of forethought or possibly even ignorance about the way material used in the more mechanical parts and basic construction can degrade in what, to a Gen X'er like me, seems like a remarkably short time - rubber drive belts; those ubiquitous and annoying - even - when - new rubberized coatings, plastic gear trains and doo~dads, plastic and even metal housings... Of course, if you _wanted_ this stuff to degrade (as in, in the environment) it would still be here polluting watercourses and strangling the wildlife come the year 8510, by which time (so the song says) God is supposed to be here - as if to spite us and him both!

It's almost as if it's all intentional 😂

@@richiehoyt8487 planned obsolescence is now in architecture, most houses built in 2020 wont last half as long as a medium quality house from the 1970s

True, but the tech gets obsolete these days, so quickly, it doesn't matter.

I agree. I've been trying to start collecting old tech and this is like watching your childhood idols succumb to mental illness. I just want to hug all the clunky monitors goodbye just one more time. I may never hear the beautiful tingy noise of my fingernail on a glass monitor screen again.

Would storing them in a vacuum environment help?

​@younglee6469 oh totally, just yeet your macbook to space with help from Elon, you got this 😅

@@MrHocotateFreight LOL but seriously though a vacuum chamber, or at the very least a sealed membrane that prevents outside O2 and N2 might mitigate the rusting and other adverse mechanisms

@@younglee6469 Some plastics degrade sooner than others, no matter what. Plasticizers just migrate out the material. Volatile components will actually escape faster in a vacuum. Inert gas environment, like argon or even nitrogen, would be a better choice.

@@younglee6469 I suppose for most of the components that would be beneficial. But I guess there will be some components that will not like it. Maybe CRT some CRT screens are kind of sealed? Maybe capacitors will be more likely to leak because vacuum will "pull" the liquid out?

Big fan

I got a sony handycam from 2006 with same issue.

When I was growing up we had a Atari . Then a commodore. And the list gos on. .

@@diamond6719 I didn't grow up with a commodore but have a c64 it's my favorite retro computer. Lol

Vacuum tubes hold up pretty well, they will fail quicker than transistors when being actively used but will store for decades, if not centuries. New old stock of vacuum tubes seem to work just as well today as they did when they were new.

I went to a video game museum and some of that was really need. I got to play an Atari 2600, Super Famicom, and some Sega systems I'd never seen in person before. I still have a lot of my GameBoy games that I play on a GameBoy Advance, and my dad has some old Mac stuff. So far the cheese grater looking ones seem to be okay, but I'd love to ask a guy that ran a Mac museum at a university I went to what his experiences were like. I think all of them worked except maybe a neon orange iMac, and the Apple II. I think the coolest one was a working Mac Portable. Certainly discoloured, but it worked. The first battery powered Mac.

@@wolfcanine100 We didn’t have a commodore till 77 .

Some aftermarket companies will make new replacement parts especially batteries. I have many times found stuff on eBay or Amazon

someone else mentioned that the vinegar syndrome happens to most old LCD's, and all you have to do to fix it is by replacing the old polarizer with a new one, which is a fairly quick and easy fix (as opposed to replacing the entire screen)

Store in a room with a Dehumidifier. Storing in a damp basement guarantees corrosion. It's the cheapest sheet available used in the manufacturing.

@@RetroCaptain I definitely need to do this. I have a finished basement room with all my vintage macs, and it can get /a little/ moist in summers. Bone dry in winter, but I definitely need to get a dehumidifier.

the internet archive is incredibly important for stuff like this, in the future we can probably manufacture something almost the same in aesthetic

The process of making an optical drive requires precision and effort that's not really acheivable (financially viable) on a small scale While anyone can make a phonograph. The only specialized part is the cartridge.

Also, sometimes manufacturers just have a bad batch or two of those parts.

to be fair the capacitor plague was due to counterfeiting in the electrolytic capacitor market, caused by an ex-employee stealing an old/prototype formula from Nichicon and running off to china with it, selling it on so hundreds of factories produced millions of capacitors during the late 90s (either 1996 or 1998, I forget which) until 2002ish and took until about 2006 for all the stock to be either found and destroyed, or inadvertantly used *coughoriginalxboxprerevision1.6cough* I'd avoid flash drive for archival though, depending on the NAND quality they can lose data after a year of being turned off, as their modus operandi is billions of nanoscopic capacitors - better off using magnetic tape or archival HDDs, stored in a climate-controlled and EMP-proof safe

Tech archival and preservation is very difficult in tropical countries (so both SG and the Australian costal areas). Unless you have constant climate control eg. air conditioning and/or dehumidifier, many of the components like rubberized coatings and ALL forms of LCDs will simply deteriorate. LCD vinegar syndrome is accelerated if kept in an airtight condition as heat is trapped inside with no airflow. Deterioration is actually slowed down if the device is still regularly used. Got an Epson 386 PC along with a CRT at home, CRT can receive power, but no display. The PC POSTs but the HDD is dead. Been wanting to donate to a museum but no one wants to take it in such a condition. Got a Pentium MMX that only boots successfully when it pleases, but the CD drives rubber bands have long since disintegrated. The only things in my retro collection that still work reliably are the game consoles from before the CD era.

Write a little API that interfaces with the old operating system to the new and exposes the variables of the battery meter, you can write a little interface module that will work with the old operating system to control the battery gauge application or tray icon and manipulate it artificially. You could use VB and winforms.

@@HikikomoriDev That would work for Windows 3.x where there wasn't a standard, but Windows 95 introduced a unified battery gauge without device manufacturers having to make their own utilities or use an 'information panel', so I'd rather have emulated APM for older OSes or emulated ACPI for newer OSes, but what you mentioned for Windows 3.x and early Linux distro guests.

Imagine that happening to your knobs and switches in your lamborghini or Ferrari.

It's the hydrolysis of polyurethane unfortunately...Going green comes at a cost...I had to remove foam insulation surrounding wiring from a Volvo. The foam was a sticky green, gelatinous mess...Not fun. Sneaker collectors experience this too when their prize sneakers yellow and literally disintegrate before your eyes!

​@@andrewx86x PU is also the stuff that makes headphone pads crumble apart. I hate it. I keep my headphones in a dark plastic bag against ozone and UV exposure now, but if the decomposing substance is already inside (e.g. glue of the foam rubber) it won''t help. Also battery leak vapours strongly damage foam rubber. I collect music keyboards, and all with rusty battery contacts have damaged foam.

See also PS3 controllers :( people use talc powder on the thumbsticks to make em a bit more useable. Hardly a solution but it works in a pinch

@@andrewx86x With sneakers it may help to store them airtight (in dry state, not freshly worn) in a dark place and add an absorbent if decomposition forms acid or such things. But migrating plasticizers between different materials are hard to avoid. Seiko made a talking watch "Robo-Air" using the same crumbly sneakers materials. The pneumatic cuff mechanism always decomposed. I did buy the remains with the LCD watch part because of the robot voice, but the strap would need to be completely replicated with different materials (silicone?) if anybody cares. (I collect sound toys and things with strange sound chips.)

That’s a good positive on this doomsday video

you are not sysyphus. Anything that rescues any thing from E waste is a godsend for earth.

Thankfully I don't have a condition affected by flickering images, but I rewound the video to see how I'd missed the epilepsy warning you've highlighted here. ⏪ Turns out it's quite easy to miss if you have subtitles turned on! ⚠

Disagree, solid caps like tantalums don't really degrade and electrolytic caps from pre 1990 are also generally fine as well. Bad caps (AKA the capacitor plague) started in the early 90s and right now its killing everything from Game Gears to big box Amigas. Preventative maintenance should only be done if its 100% required otherwise you risk ripping pads off trying to replace caps that don't actually need replacing. Edit - also kinda obvious but its worth mentioning, if you are replacing leaky caps be EXTRA careful when removing them as the fluid is corrosive and will almost certainly have eaten away at the pads making them much easier to rip off.

There is some time , late 1990s, and 2000s, where a lot of bad caps have been used which then bulge. I also had a Dell Pentium 4, similar to the one in the video, albeit with a larger case. That completely broke down due to caps issues after only a few years of use. Actually Dell had a recall / mainboard swap program in place but at that time, I lived in a country where this could not be done and I did not have the possibility to bring it elsewhere, and so it eventually failed.

@@mudi2000a Pentium 4 mainboards are notorious for their leaky caps. That also goes for original Intel boards, it's not a Dell issue.

@@dungeonseeker3087 caps from after the plague tho are fine for the most part i thought

@dungeonseeker3087 it sister start it the 90s it was just worse in the 90s, electrolytic capacitors basically will fail eventually, look into antique radios for example, it's the #1 failure

Yeah that was a really ballsy thing to do. I remember around the 2000s some thought it would be cool to have windows on hard drives and the recommended procedure was to do it in a steamy room. If you ever see an image comparison of the drive head vs. dust or hair it's huge.

I worked at a hard disk drive production plant, and yes, dust & also particles from your body that are too small to see can cause a head crash. That's why we suited up & the whole plant used laminar airflow with HEPA filters, raised flooring, and airlocks.