/vr/ - Retro Games

Neither sun nor smoking cause this.
It's oxygen.

Those prices are fucking amazing though, less than $4 for the Famicom and $2 for the Super Famicom. I'd take them in a heartbeat. Even if they are broken, they can be used as donors for other systems.

>>10666513
owner had a "high oxygen" home ? or something ?

For some reason the only parts on mine that were yellow were the controller panel and the nameplate. It was pretty bad. Went too far on the retrobrite a year of so ago

Both my SNES and SFC didn't turn yellow.
My original japanese PS1 turned yellow, though.

>>10666513
>>10666519
It's both oxygen and sun/heat. Limiting one of those factors is enough to slow down the process. So putting your consoles in a vacuum is just as effective as keeping it in the dark.

>>10666523
and it is super stylish somehow ! Mine turned yellow just underside, never exposed the belly to the sun obviously, i do smoke and i bought her back in 1997 new in box. All the rest including the controller is vanilla grey, i don't dare do a retrobrite i'm to afraid of hurting the case or else.

>>10666529
can't wait for those 300£ vacuum boxes circa 2030

>>10666540
Anything that restricts air flow will help tremendously. Just a simple box or a ziplock bag will work.

I hope that someday someone will make oem style shell replacement for these consoles. Like just a white famicom shell, not transparent smoke "This is Cool" style shit. Just a new piece of plastic that looks like the old one did when it was new.

>>10666543
i've also heard about some people doing a retrobrite on an 1st generation Gameboy (it went very well), The guy then keeped it 1 year in the original box on his shelf, and it turned back yellow while his Pcengine which he done around the same time and she stayed white and he is actually playing it. I've read that it can also have to do with the different polymer mixture the manufacturer used and those changed apparently very often even for Nintendo. That's why most of the PCfx's are clean but mine is starbucks cream but i don't care anymore she works and thats great.

Still scratches my head on the subject tho it may be kinda goofy but i find this kind of tricky things fascinating.

>>10666551
Yeah it seems like how long a retrobrite sticks is all up to how the plastic was mixed that day and what conditions the surface was exposed to over the years. I've had many magical successes, and a couple of things that are just oxidation magnets no matter what.

If it works, it works

>>10666513
>>10666529
I bought a bunch of new Dreamcast controllers from Toys R Us when they were dumping them for $5 each. I opened one around 2015, enjoyed its pristine original color, kept it in the dark, and a few months later the color looked like the SNES in >>10666510. It changed so fast. I have older consoles that never yellowed. Maybe it has to do with each particular batch of plastic.

>>10666549
This guy thinks 3D printing is a far-off future technology and not something that's existed for years, lol

>>10666517
>Hey guys, wanna play my limited edition poo SFC?

>>10666510
>>10666517
They are indeed labelled as junk for parts.

>>10667282
I actually already have a 3d printer and love to use it for retro parts. But I'd really like to see something more durable in the long run that can really do matte finishes right

>>10667282
3D printing is nowhere near as good as injection molding.

There's a newer type of 3D printer that makes something closer to injection mold plastic. And you can buy replacement SNES shells from China but they're made of very cheap and ultra-brittle plastic well below the standard of the original shells.

That discoloring was caused by bromine mixed with the plastic as a means of fireproofing but they don't use that particular process anymore, it was replaced since the mid-90s with newer techniques that don't cause yellowing.

>>10666510
Doesn't have to be sunlight, florescent lights can also bake stuff with UV radiation.

>>10667448
I have a 2006 HP Laserjet 1020 that's turned yellow, though not as bad as those consoles in OPs pic.

>>10666551
I had a famicom that I put back in the styrofoam box that turned super orange after just a few years.

>>10666510
Regrettably, the SFC/SNES of my past was placed near windows and the vents for the HVAC so they got plenty of sunlight and air throughout the years. It was not something that I thought of at the time and treated them like any other device at the entertainment center.

also nowadays they prefer to use black plastic for electronics as it doesn't yellow

>>10667439
>And you can buy replacement SNES shells from China but they're made of very cheap and ultra-brittle plastic well below the standard of the original shells.
that's like those Chinese replacement controller membranes. not quite to the original spec. one of my NES pads I suspect has replaced membranes because the buttons on this controller have always been oddly stiff and hard to press while the other controller's buttons press easily and with no effort. i got it from a used game store and they could have given me a refurbed controller that the original membranes got KO-ed and they put a Chinese one in there.

>>10666551
on VCFED there was a guy saying that he had an IBM Model M keyboard that the cord was delaminating and becoming a goopy mess but usually those keyboards don't have that issue. get a bad batch of plastic though and...

>>10666510
It's the type of plastic that ages weird like that.

>>10666510
Thats not yellowed man its the Sunburst Orange edition

>>10667486
where you buy dat clear shell

>>10667570
https://retrogamerestore.com/store/

>>10666510
This is 100% cigarette yellowing. Systems yellow for a lot of reasons but this is cigarette gunk.

>>10666510
I do. I play my yellow ones in bright sunlight because that makes them white even without retorobright.
>>10666517
>Those prices are fucking amazing though
Not really. There's no timestamp on the picture and I've bought hundreds of working non-yellowed ones for ¥500.
>>10667282
This kid has never 3D printed anything in his short life.

>top half of my snes looks like it's brand new
>bottom half aged like milk

Yellowing is whatever, but man, that rubber shit that they coated all electronics with in the late 90s/early 00s that turned into a melty, sticky mess pisses me off.

>>10667928
Clearly you kept your system upside down in the sun while blowing smoke all over it. I have it on good authority from many fine sirs who have attained the ripe old age of twelve that this is exclusively what causes plastic to turn yellow.
>>10667941
It's annoying, especailly on things you handle a lot like controllers. Fortunatlly it's easy to remove, and even replace with better alternatives.

congratulations /vr/ on an actual interesting thread

>>10667479
That's interesting now thst you mention it. I saw hundreds of Laserjets of that era over the years. Some,but not all, had a yellow tint to them. Maybe they used up old materials making some of them.

>>10666549
Some consoles have them.

>>10667342
Resin 3d printing is 95% there. You gotta pay out the ass for it though.

>>10666532
Try this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdWRsjnVD3s

Japanese take a lot better care of their stuff than Westerners and they don't sweat as much so don't get gunk on controllers but they do smoke like chimneys.

You know what the weirdest thing is? All the 3rd party crap I bought that perfectly matched my consoles when new still retained their original color while the consoles themselves turned to piss. I guess China does what Nintendon't.

>meanwhile my Sega Genesis will retain its original color until the heat death of the universe

>>10666631
It depends on the plastic, yes. Dreamcasts yellow FAST, while super nintendos generally take a long time if they're kept in good conditions.

>>10669091
maybe be they don't use bromine anymore ? Or another chemical i don't know, even real researches seems to don't agree with each other, so weird for a thing seemingly so simple

>>10666519
Since no one seems to be answering you seriously and you seem genuinely confused and not shitposting; this happens because of an imbalance of fire retardant chemicals in the plastic used for some parts in old game consoles. It wasn't universal, only certain batches, which is why you see lots of old systems where only specific parts of the shell are miscolored like >>10666523

>>10669370
thanks ! kind of you

>>10669221
>Dreamcasts yellow FAST,
This is unironically the reason I went for the Sega Sports model when I decided to get one. I saw so many yellowed Dreamcasts, I figured it was better to just sidestep the issue entirely.

>>10666523
Not gonna lie, that Super Famicom actually looks really cool colored that way.

>>10669370
For the same reason you sometimes get cords that lose their plasticizer and become a sticky gooey mess but it doesn't always happen. It may depend on how well the plastic was mixed.

>>10666523
Retrobright doesn't effect printing? Huh

>>10669672
but it can destroy some small internals hardware like tracks or a small resistance or even a chip, just with the peroxyde or the bleach if doing so with too more ... Zèle..mmMMMMH...Nintensus situation dare i say

>>10669098
Hate to break it to you but black plastics yellow as well

>>10666510
We have to go YELLOWER

>>10666510
OG and AV famicoms don't yellow on their own! The previous owner was a damn slob.

>>10669867
They absolutely do, you moron.

>>10669867
Yeah, they do. I have a famicom that's as orange as OPs pic and one that's white as snow. Both were made around the same time, according to the chip dates inside. The orange one doesn't smell like smoke and it doesn't wipe off so it's in the plastic. It's also brittle as hell.

The orange one probably spent a lot of time near a window, in the original styrofoam or under a fluorescent light.

I have a cat litter box that has cracks and white marks from sitting by a window.

>>10667629
>>10667486
unfortunately those chink replacement shells are very cheap, brittle plastic nowhere near as good as the original was

>>10669853
yup they become "marble grey" or "Gray" as i call it

>>10666510
$2.03 for a Super Famicom. I'd buy it

>>10670103
I have a SNES I got back in 2004 when Gamestop was still selling them for $15 and no you can't have it.

>>10670103
If it has a serial number starting with S and not SM it probably doesn't work properly or at all anymore. I've bought probably 15 of them for cheap from Japan and every one of the S serials were broken.

S models were made in Japan and SMs were made in China FWIW.

>>10670205
Forgot to mention that the SM models worked fine.

>>10667570
They came from Taiwan.

>>10669927
That's a shame, since I was considering those transparent Xbox shells. I already have a clear blue and clear black one, but I do want to give the softmodded a better look. Orange, purple, and red are calling out to me. I think I am gentler with my devices now than the harsh treatment the systems had in my youth, so hopefully the replacements will suffice.

>>10670205
That's shorthand for saying if it has an S serial number it's one of the first revision models with the faulty CPU.

>>10669878
Florescent lights have a very small UV output compared to the Sun, not enough to degrade plastic to any significant degree. If it was strong enough to do that you would get a sunburn from being exposed to florescent lights and nobody's ever had that happen to them.

>>10670581
>>10670205
if that's the SNES with the separate sound board, those can come loose sometimes and it won't boot if that happens

-

>>10668386
>Resin 3d printing is 95% there. You gotta pay out the ass for it though.
They're getting more affordable than they were.

it yellows because the bromine used as fireproofing is pulled to the surface of the plastic by oxygen. the structural integrity of the plastic isn't actually harmed, it just looks ugly. exposing it to sunlight like if the console was sitting in a window does degrade the plastic as UV rays break down the polymer bonds. also as anon said florescent lights emit a tiny amount of UVs compared to the Sun so they aren't gonna damage plastic.

https://www.ami64.com/c64-cases

Replacement C64 cases sans bromine. These are not made with 3D printing, but one of the original case molds which was discovered in Germany, apparently from a Commodore assembly plant there. It's quite fortunate that that mold survived and wasn't thrown out.

>>10666529
I play mine in a dark room with it submerged in non-conductive mineral oil. Mine is still yellowed. EXPLAIN THAT!

>>10667529
LMAOES!

>>10669370
So if I mix and match plastic bits that survived in the proper color, I could have a naturally colored console that won't yellow over time?

>>10671578
Plastic welding can be used to repair damaged or weakened stuff.

I have an ol' 14" VGA monitor from 1990 in my closet (was it a Taxan? don't remember). Sitting completely in the dark for years with no light. It's pretty yellowed but the case is in otherwise fine condition, I felt it and pressed on various areas and there was nothing brittle or weakened, the plastic all seemed completely solid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge4djX6c5ak

>>10672081
What happened here? Did this SNES sit in the original styrofoam for years? The bottom shell on mine is gray and has no yellowing (the top is fairly yellowed).

>>10671874
>I play mine in a dark room with it submerged in non-conductive mineral oil. Mine is still yellowed. EXPLAIN THAT!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH2mr12hqZ8

https://medium.com/@pueojit/a-look-into-the-yellowing-and-deyellowing-of-abs-plastics-db14b646e0ad

I think this is a bit unfair because you can see the left SNES only yellowed on the outer shell and the cartridge slot area and bottom aren't yellowed. It seems like the issue isn't merely UV exposure but different batches of plastic having different properties.

>bromine is the cause of the yellow
It's mostly the breakdown of "B" in ABS, the rubber copolymer, which is added to the plastic so it doesn't shatter when it falls.
>plastic yellows in darkness
All you need for oxidation is oxygen and energy. Heat and air, no light needed, no extreme heat needed

>>10666510
>Who here plays with their console in full sun during the month of August?

Direct full sun would have whiten the console, not yellow it.

>>10672229
it actually is mostly UV light which damages plastic because UV reacts with oxygen. no light=no UVs. as to why some SNESes only partially yellow and why some don't yellow at all, it appears to be related to the specific mixture of UV inhibitors in the plastic. some batches had less than others.

https://www.reddit.com/r/psx/comments/mf4r5b/pls_read_my_post_before_posting_how_to_remove/

Completely different take. He says that putting yellowed plastic in direct sunlight behind a UV-blocking glass will bleach it and remove the yellow and theorizes that darkness may yellow plastic more than bright light. Peroxide is also bad as it will probably structurally weaken the plastic.

https://www.reddit.com/r/legostarwars/comments/102bpt9/how_can_i_remove_the_yellowing_and_prevent_it/

and this dude says the yellowed plastic is a "shield" that protects the plastic underneath from further photodegradation. so lol, who knows?

>>10672296
>>10672336
>>10672354

>>10672336
It's not the darkness that yellows the plastic. It's sun, through glass.

sun -> glass -> console = yellows
sun -> console = whitens

Anyone who has issues with yellowed console should think about the console placement relative to the window; then you'll know. If you have the consoles behind the glass display (as was the case with my game boy >>10672270) then it's extra fucked

>>10666510
i had yellowed psx controllers that have been sitting in a zipped duffel bag in my basement for 20+ years. i switched to the dualshock when it came out and just left those in the bag. a long time later i got a spare psx from a garage sale and gave it away with those controllers. they had become completely yellow.

with SNES shells it may just be bad batches of plastic that cause yellowing because often it happens regardless of sunlight exposure and not all of the shell is affected, usually the cartridge slot piece doesn't yellow while the surrounding top shell does. but usually yellowing is UV exposure.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p4432023.m570.l1313&_nkw=zenith+supersport+286&_sacat=0

as an experiment I searched for Zenith 286 laptops on Ebay just to get a sample size. some of these are yellowed, some are not. the laptop at the top of the page is pumpkin orange and if you look at the pics on the listing it has numerous cracks and areas with damaged plastic indicating some serious UV damage.

Ha ha, I was actually listening to Black Sabbath - Iron Man when I came across this.

>>10672430
tartar is the shield that protects your teeth from other, more degrading things like kisses

ABS plastic is half a witch's brew and can vary quite a bit from batch to batch

>>10666517
Japanese retro gear is cheap as fuck, even for big name franchise games. I once considered stockpile a shitload of it as an investment but it's a good thing I didn't because years later it's still worthless. Nobody cares about Japanese games.

Resin printers are getting cheaper, although it's still difficult to produce textured plastic which a lot of vintage console/computer have.

once ABS plastic gets sun damage the only fix is to completely melt it down and re-mold it

>>10672779
There's three real reasons for this
1. Collectors for worldwide editions of certain games are surprisingly rare, and worldwide players cannot read the japanese of most games, so most those games are only collected by the Japanese
2. The Japanese have a hatred of old things, such as how they always rebuild houses, so collecting old things is seen as out of style
3. The Japanese don't have much space at all in homes so they can only keep so many games
Hence prices stay very reasonable, boxes as well are cheaper since they usually keep them

>>10672928
Lol what?
Everything gets sun damage anon
Even you

>>10672430
but anon people have reported stuff that was in a dark closet and yellowed

>>10672430
Basically, there are three kinds of UV rays

>UV-A
These are mostly blocked by the Earth's atmosphere and never reach the ground.
>UV-B
These are blocked by window glass.
>UV-C
These are not blocked by window glass unless it's car windows which have UV blockers in them and is what yellows plastic. Outdoors where both UV-B and UV-C rays are present, it will have the opposite effect and bleach the plastic.

>>10672430
>People have known *for years* what the cause of the yellowing is, and it's not sunlight
>this fucking retard knows differently, though

>>1067243
It’s the Bromine in the plastic coming to the surface
The sun accelerates this with heat and UV

bromine doesn't cause yellowing because it is know that ABS plastic can yellow whether it has bromine mixed in it or not

UV damage in ABS plastic manifests as streaky white lines. Like I mentioned earlier in the thread I have a cat litter box that has sat in a sunny area and developed white areas and cracks. The plastic isn't brittle, though. It's perfectly flexible.

>>10673245
It’s the B part of ABS, whatever that’s called, I just thought it was called bromine
It’s to do with that being affected by heat and sun and also oxygen I guess

https://deskthority.net/viewtopic.php?t=12765

This seems to confirm that bromines do make ABS less structurally stable in combination with UV radiation.

>>10673273
I found a better link
https://medium.com/@pueojit/a-look-into-the-yellowing-and-deyellowing-of-abs-plastics-db14b646e0ad

>>10673269
that is butadiene

>>10673279
Yeah that one

not all plastics are created equal, but Apple have been known to use some especially horrible ones

Atari 2600 Jr. These are infamously brittle and cheap and it's not age-related, they were like that when they were new. Just looking at the picture and you can notice the plastic looks low rent.

>>10673376
On the subject of brittle plastics, gold plastics are infamous for their fragility.
https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Gold_Plastic_Syndrome
Just look at ebay for Majora's Mask and you'll see countless chipped cartridges.

>>10673419
The gold flake additive definitely caused a major structural weakness in the plastic.

as others said IBM back in the '80s used to paint the plastic on their PCs so it doesn't degrade as it's completely insulated from UV rays and you will never find an IBM PC/XT/AT/PS/2 with yellowed plastic for that reason. most manufacturers didn't bother with this extra touch.

>>10673419
I had a few of those toys and can confirm
But it’s unrelated to this issue

>>10673376
sometimes shells would be made of recycled re-grind plastic to save costs and this stuff was not as structurally solid as virgin plastic

The evidence is quite overwhelming that UV light is the primary cause of polymer degradation and as with wood and metal, putting paint or a coating over it will preserve it from environmental damage.

>>10674357
I wonder if a clear coat would protect it

>>10669878
A Famicom that has yellowed was probably exposed to sunlight as I don't think those had brominated plastic. For SNESes it's quite different and yellowing is not necessarily indicative of UV damage although it certainly can be. Mine has a yellowed top shell but the cartridge slot is not yellowed nor is the bottom shell. The plastic doesn't feel brittle at all, it seems completely solid so I don't believe this was UV damage. If you have a discolored and obviously brittle Famicom shell, it's almost certainly UV damage.

UV light specifically degrades plastic as it breaks the polymer chains and structurally weakens it. Excessive heat can also do it.

>>10674357
>>10674724
>>10674606
How do you samefags cope with my Super Nintendo that has never spent any significant time upside-down nor been bleached.

>>10674781
Some SNESes have yellowing of the top shell, others the bottom. The plastic mixes used seemed to vary a lot but it also seems that 1-CHIP units don't have yellowing problems as the plastic mix was improved over the older two chip unit.

>>10674781
your samefag sensor is malfunctioning

Mac Performa 5500. Like most mid-90s Macs from when Apple were near death the plastic on these is dollar store Chinese-made toy tier.

>>10674875
The 80s toaster Macs have more reliable CRTs as it's a simple monochrome tube that's not under as much stress as the CRT in an iMac.

What about a perfectly white Saturn ... but hey guess hat m8 ... the battery cache is yellow or should i say YELLOL MUHUHA !

Pooey, wrong pic.

yeah mid-90s Macs were ass. i bet they used a lot of recycled plastic instead of virgin material in those.

>>10675029
Any Mac from the Spindler era used...well, spindly plastics. All '80s Apple gear had much better plastic outside the IIc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_VKQogS-7U

at least the electronics in this Power Mac were ok and that's what really counts.

Nowadays electronics devices more often use polycarbonate and nylon shells over ABS as they tend to be more durable.

>>10675064
>0:20

>>10675153
That's not the Mac it's a fault with the LCD monitor he was using. I think it's broken solder joints.

Clean the internals, you can get a set of nintendo bits on Ali Ex. Then replace all internal capacitors including trim caps for the combust signal. ??? PROFIT?

My SNES has a yellowed top shell but the plastic doesn't feel brittle or weak at all, it seems quite solid. The texture is slightly sandier than the un-yellowed bottom which feels soft but when you press on it it seems as strong as it was in 1993. It has mostly been stored on a shelf in moderate temperatures and away from sunlight as long as I've had it. Yet I hear of people with chipped and cracked SNESes.

>>10675273
ok well the yellowing might be from the bromine mix but as long as you kept it in good storage conditions the plastic should hold up ok. i'm sure heat and sunlight are what degrades most plastics in vintage electronics.

>>10675064
https://tinkerdifferent.com/threads/a-new-quadra-800.1592/

it's a funny thing with Spindler-era Macs, the electronics in them are perfectly solid and reliable. just the cases that are unimaginably awful. take the motherboard out of the crumbled case and it will usually boot up without a hitch.

Apple in that era had an obsession with the idea that they must make a minimum 55% profit margin on all machines sold. They were not willing to take temporary profit losses for long term gain the way Sony did with PS1 and it was a poor decision on their part.

https://vintage-computer-garage.com/2023/09/12/an-apple-server-running-unix-in-1996-really/

>I started work at Apple Australia in January 1996 as an Education Sales Manager selling Macs to K-12 schools and universities. On my first day we got a briefing on a new product that would be launched the following month that was “just perfect” for universities. Sitting at the front of the briefing room (the “Cone Room” to locals as the roof was conical shaped) under a grey sheet was what looked like a small bar fridge. The shape was fascinating as it was much larger than any Mac I had ever seen. The local product manager started talking about Apple needing to “diversify its product line” and “find new markets”, my thoughts were more along the lines of “can we just make some Macs that don’t fall apart”. I had just dealt with a very upset private school who had recently taken delivery of 400 PowerBook 190’s which started falling apart as soon as they opened them. These were the first of the infamous Spindler Plastic Macintoshes.

ha ha oh fuck. these things were brittle when they were brand new.

is it me or do Mega Drives just not have the issues with plastic deterioration that affects SNESes outside sometimes broken screw posts?

>>10675668
Of course they do, just less noticeable

>>10675668
You're not wrong as they're black plastic which has some rather unique properties and doesn't really break down from UV light. It's a major problem for recyclers because the stuff won't disintegrate in the sun like lighter colored plastics will.

https://www.popsci.com/e-waste-black-plastic/

The other thing is that black plastic is colored with carbon so you can't recycle it into different colors. Once black, it's permanent.

https://sybridge.com/top-uv-resistant-plastics/

Here's another link about black plastic. I do agree retro gear with black shells like ZX Spectrums, Mega Drives, etc hold up better than stuff with lighter colors.

>>10675675
>>10675684
neat. Sega does what Nintendon't.

>>10675692
Kind of. And it was purely an aesthetic choice, doubt Sega thought about its durability in 30 years. Nowadays though everything is black plastic as it doesn't get UV damage. It took 20 years of shitty gray and white plastics crumbling to dust to learn.

>>10674606
Mine is yellowed inside and out. It's like they baked it under a UV lamp.

so yeah like anon said the carbon used to produce black plastic prevents UV rays from penetrating the polymer lattice and breaking it down

>>10675684
>Choose dark and intense colors for sun protection

>A study conducted in Spain found that fabrics with darker or more intense colors tended to have better UV radiation protection than lighter colors. Of all colors tested, dark blue offered the best levels of UV protection, making it the best color to wear in the sun. Contrary to the popular belief that they are the coolest colors in the sun, white and yellow were the worst performing colors in terms of UV protection.

>So why is this the case? The researchers admitted that, whilst the results of their tests were conclusive, they were not entirely sure why some colors performed better at preventing UV rays from penetrating fabrics than others.

>The Cancer Council in Australia suggests that darker colors absorb UV rays, which helps block them from your skin. That’s why dark blue, black, and dark red are the best colors for sun protection compared to white or pastel colors of the same fabric.

While this was about fabrics it can also apply to plastic and we guessed correctly that white and yellow are not what you want to do to keep UVs out.

>>10675768
I saw a thread on a car forum about a guy who said his Honda Civic's dark blue interior survived a decade in the Texas sun with no damage. He attributed it to superior Nipponese dashboards folded 1000x but it may just have been the color that preserved it.

Is it me or do US SNES have worse plastic than SFC and PAL SNES?

>>10676042
I have seen some really orange/yellow super famicoms, so I doubt the plastic is any different between the US and international systems.

bump

>>10676048
US consoles are just structurally weird. The ABS isn't cast very well to withstand stress and combined with their brittleness prone to shattering. SFCs are way stronger in comparison and the materials higher quality.

I believe the SNES did have a bit worse plastic than its contemporaries. The more yellowed/browned something is the greater the deterioration. A light yellow plastic may still be ok but if it looks like the OP consoles it's pretty much fucked. Those things have some serious-ass UV damage.

case in point. this laptop is seriously UV damaged.

>>10671891
Most likely, yes. Although it'll cost you more in the long run.

>>10672158
>people might be retrobriting their shit before selling it online
Fuck I never even considered that possibility.

>>10676425
If it's UV damage, why is the yellowing so uniform? The inside of the laptop that (most-likely) remained closed most of the time is just as yellow as the outside. If it was UV, I would expect the outside to yellow much more than the inside.
This anon >>10674781 made a good point. Why is the bottom half so uniformly yellowed? When is the bottom exposed to much sunlight at all?

>>10676425
More examples and note that these look normal and not yellowed.

>>10676975
>>10676425
not necessarily UV damage. heat or poor storage conditions can also do that.

>>10676425
Could have spent too much time in its storage bag with no ventilation.

Some Xboxes especially the 1.4 and 1.6 models had horrible plastic that's about mid-90s Mac tier. Also the Duke controller isn't the best design in the world, it has a lot of empty space and no shock absorption.

like anon said ABS plastic is kind of a witch's brew and different batches can have different properties. if you want flexibility you increase the amount of butadiene in the mixture. more styrene means more rigidity. a high styrene concentration will make the plastic more brittle. also from seeing some of those posts on Reddit it seems people there know nothing of plastic chemistry and mostly just repeat a lot of urban myths and memes about it.

GBA SPs have pretty lousy plastic but I knew that since they were new. The shit always felt cheap and brittle compared to original GBA's much more substantial shell.

>>10677701
pull up any random picture online and you can see the plastic looks cheap and low quality

White and beige plastic was a curse of the electronics industry for almost two decades before black began to take over at the start of the 21st century. Always turning to the shade of piss, always falling apart.

>>10676389
Weren't some of the US shells made in Mexico? That would explain a lot.

>>10676389
As mentioned above, they might have used an ABS mix with a high amount of styrene and a lower amount of butadiene in those shells so they were more brittle and can't tolerate impacts as well.

>>10677835
i've seen loose, flexible ABS items like dustpans develop cracks in them but they definitely won't shatter if you drop them on a concrete surface

>>10677420
if you wanted anything but 90 IQ NPCs you wouldn't be on that site

>>10676425
I gotta wonder what some people did with their retro gear to get it in this condition. Is it that hard to wash your hands before using it, not letting sunlight hit stuff, not putting stuff in shitty storage conditions, etc.

>>10678172
Sometimes like with 90s Apple plastics you just can't help it as they were made like crap.

>>10678172
>not letting sunlight hit stuff
No thanks. I'm more concerned with preserving my eyesight than the condition of the plastic on obsolete computers.

Don't always blame plastic failures on it being 30 years old like Reddit does, it's more complicated than that. ABS plastic gets its name as it's a blend of three components--acrylonitrile, styrene, and polybutadiene. The characteristics and durability of ABS varies a lot depending on the mixture used, some mixes produce a nearly bombproof plastic, others result in stuff that will crumble apart at the slightest provocation.

>>10678495
>>10677835
just so you know butadiene is the most expensive component in ABS so manufacturers are liable to skimp on it. the less butadiene the more brittle the plastic is.

I de-yellowed mine under the sun in a peroxide bath. Guess what, it made it so brittle that I broke the vents while drying it. So yeah, don't be a gonk like me, just leave them yellow.

>>10667629
>100+ bucks for that crap
You gotta be shitting me.

>>10679202
>fell for the Retrobrite meme

Certain colors of plastic age worse than others, white and beige in particular. For darker colors I believe the pigments provide a measure of protection against UV damage.

>>10679309
*and clear plastic

I have heard that lighter colors are generally weaker.

>>10666523

My snes started to turn yellow in 1995. I miss that little bastard like you wouldn't believe. I appreciated how beautiful the snes was to look at, and the smell, and the feel. I haven't felt a snes in soon 29 years

>>10679139
dunno what happened here but it does confirm my earlier suspicion as the white parts of the shells are destroyed while the gray parts are not

>>10679408
Shipping damage. He can get a new replacement shell online although it's a US SNES type. A very adventurous person could weld those back together.

plastic that has become brittle develops a kind of sandy texture to it, it feels gritty

I could buy the idea that white plastic doesn't hold up well.

>>10666513
Yeah that's why my super famicom doesn't look like this, I breath up all the oxygen in my room with my heavy sobbing and sniffling

>>10677757
You forgot the silver consumer electronics craze of the early to mid 00s. Everything suddenly had a silver coating on it around that time. Those generally seem to have held up pretty well.

>>10679408
> the white parts of the shells are destroyed while the gray parts are not
You do realize that the gray parts aren't structural, right?

now I don't dispute that some black plastic doesn't fall apart, it's a known issue with some Xboxes as others have said but that would be because it was a shitty plastic mixture and not related to UV damage

It sounds like the factory might be recycling sprues in with the virgin plastic. It can cause all sorts of weirdness.

>>10681058
Most probably this. Bad batch of plastic--the factory mixed previously processed (and re-shredded) plastic back in with new plastic pellets before heating and molding, which causes the consistency of the plastic mix to be 'polluted', especially when the resulting plastic mix isn't integrated enough (i.e. not stirred well enough).

-

now i have a portable tape recorder and a portable AM radio from the early '90s and the plastic on them looks great and like brand new. the latter has spent its entire life in a box pretty much, though.

Red is also one of the less UV-resistant colors while blue is the most resistant.

Motorcycle helmets usually come with a recommendation in the user instructions to discard them after five years or so as riding around in the Sun all day could weaken the plastic and ruin their structural integrity.

>>10681065
I remember seeing an Amiga 500 where the top half of the case was almost crumbling apart yet the bottom half was as good as new. they were both exposed to the same environmental conditions too.

just like 3d print a new plastic shell

>>10680256
>craze
more like
>sony does a thing
>companies A, B, C, D see what sony did and copy it
>companies E-Z see all those companies doing thing and figure there must be a reason for it so they start doing it
while consumers are like
>wtf is this ugly shit

>>10677128
>heat or poor storage conditions can also do that.
yeah, clearly this guy had the bottom half of his console in molten magma and the top half was covered in ice

>>10683125
based

>>10666510
It's 300 hundred and yen and says junk parts on the label.

>>10666513
Higher temperature significantly speeds up (most) chemical reactions so while sun may not be the direct reason it is a culprit.

>>10683750
ABS plastic melts at 221F so even if it was in the Sahara Desert in July you'd never get close to that point.

>>10683978
It's not a matter of melting or boiling. Higher temperature environment just has more energy to react. (and chemical reactions often need a treshold energy to start after which the reaction itself generates heat to sustain it.)

i used to have a 13" Panasonic color TV from 1978 but it got trashed in a basement flood in 2020 and i got rid of it

>remember using it to watch the infamous Saints-Vikings NFC Championship in 2010
>the thing was over 30 years old at that point
>the case (an off-white ABS plastic) didn't seem to have brittled at all with age and it never even occurred to me that that could happen as i knew absolutely nothing of plastic science back then
>i would carry it around with the handle on the top of the case, bang it around, never had anything happen to the case although this TV was already an oldie when i was born

my take is not all plastic is created equal and if it hasn't fallen apart after 25-30 years then it's probably not going to and not to worry about it. if it's circa 1995 Apple plastics though...oh dear. that stuff was born on a bad sign like the Albert King song.

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4360/15/8/1966

testing of ABS plastic after being bombarded with UV-C light to show how it becomes structurally compromised

>>10684172
my grandfather had a 32" Triniton from the mid-'90s and the bottom of the shell broke apart. poor quality plastic that couldn't handle the weight of the chassis/CRT.

>>10684885
I once knocked a shitty Chinese computer desktop speaker from a table onto a wooden floor and it survived completely intact with no damage to the plastic shell.

>>10684172
90s Macs probably used plastics with a very low polybutadene content to save money which is why they're so brittle.

the idea that bromine causes yellowing of plastic is a meme, it's due to UV damage and would happen regardless. the yellow is a layer of broken, crumbled polymer chains.